THE GIRL AND THE BOY

The Beautiful River grows very wide in making its great bend around western Kentucky.  On the other side, its shores are low for many miles, but well guarded by giant cottonwoods.  These spectral trees stand close to its brink and stretch their phantom arms far over its broad waters, as if perpetually warding off the vast floods that rush down from the North.

But the floods are to be feared only in the winter or spring, never in the summer or autumn.  And nearly a hundred years ago, when the river’s shores were bound throughout their great length by primeval forests, there was less reason to fear at any season.  So that on a day of October in the year eighteen hundred and eleven, the mighty stream lay safely within its deep bounds flowing quietly on its way to join the Father of Waters.

So gently it went that there was scarcely a ripple to break its silvery surface.  It seemed indeed hardly to move, reflecting the shadowy cottonwoods like a long, clear, curving mirror which was dimmed only by the breath of the approaching dusk.  Out in the current beyond the shadows of the trees, there still lingered a faint glimmer of the afterglow’s pale gold.  But the red glory of the west was dying behind the whitening cottonwoods and beyond the dense dark forest—­reaching on and on to the seeming end of the earth—­a billowing sea of ever deepening green.  The last bright gleam of golden light was passing away on the white sail of a little ship which was just turning the distant bend, where the darkening sky bent low to meet the darkened wilderness.

The night was creeping from the woods to the waters as softly as the wild creatures crept to the river’s brim to drink before sleeping.  The still air was lightly stirred now and then by rushing wings, as the myriad paroquets settled among the shadowy branches.  The soft murmuring of the reeds that fringed the shores told where the waterfowl had already found resting-places.  The swaying of the cane-brakes—­near and far—­signalled the secret movements of the wingless wild things which had only stealth to guard them against the cruelty of nature and against one another.  The heaviest waves of cane near the great Shawnee Crossing might have followed a timid red deer.  For the Shawnees had vanished from their town on the other side of the Ohio.  Warriors and women and children—­all were suddenly and strangely gone; there was not even a canoe left to rock among the rushes.  The swifter, rougher waving of the cane farther off may have been in the wake of a bold gray wolf.  The howling of wolves came from the distance with the occasional gusts of wind, and as often as the wolves howled, a mysterious, melancholy booming sounded from the deeper shadows along the shores.  It was an uneasy response from the trumpeter swans, resting like some wonderful silver-white lilies on the quiet bosom of the dark river.