“Whar be they?” said he.

“Show him, Davy,” said Polly Ann.

I took him over to the oak, and Polly Ann told him the story.  He gave me one look, I remember, and there was more of gratitude in it than in a thousand words.  Then he seized a piece of cold cake from the stone.

“Which trace did he take?” he demanded of me.

But Polly Ann hung on his shoulder.

“Tom, Tom!” she cried, “you beant goin’ to leave us again.  Tom, he’ll die in the wilderness, and we must git to Kaintuckee.”

* * * * * * *

The next vivid thing in my memory is the view of the last barrier Nature had reared between us and the delectable country.  It stood like a lion at the gateway, and for some minutes we gazed at it in terror from Powell’s Valley below.  How many thousands have looked at it with sinking hearts!  How many weaklings has its frown turned back!  There seemed to be engraved upon it the dark history of the dark and bloody land beyond.  Nothing in this life worth having is won for the asking; and the best is fought for, and bled for, and died for.  Written, too, upon that towering wall of white rock, in the handwriting of God Himself, is the history of the indomitable Race to which we belong.

For fifty miles we travelled under it, towards the Gap, our eyes drawn to it by a resistless fascination.  The sun went over it early in the day, as though glad to leave the place, and after that a dark scowl would settle there.  At night we felt its presence, like a curse.  Even Polly Ann was silent.  And she had need to be now.  When it was necessary, we talked in low tones, and the bell-clappers on the horses were not loosed at night.  It was here, but four years gone, that Daniel Boone’s family was attacked, and his son killed by the Indians.

We passed, from time to time, deserted cabins and camps, and some places that might once have been called settlements:  Elk Garden, where the pioneers of the last four years had been wont to lay in a simple supply of seed corn and Irish potatoes; and the spot where Henderson and his company had camped on the way to establish Boonesboro two years before.  And at last we struck the trace that mounted upward to the Gateway itself.

CHAPTER IX

ON THE WILDERNESS TRAIL

And now we had our hands upon the latch, and God alone knew what was behind the gate.  Toil, with a certainty, but our lives had known it.  Death, perchance.  But Death had been near to all of us, and his presence did not frighten.  As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange aptness a quaint saying of my father’s that Kaintuckee was the Garden of Eden, and that men were being justly punished with blood for their presumption.

As if to crown that judgment, the day was dark and lowering, with showers of rain from time to time.  And when we spoke,—­Polly Ann and I,—­it was in whispers.  The trace was very narrow, with Daniel Boone’s blazes, two years old, upon the trees; but the way was not over steep.  Cumberland Mountain was as silent and deserted as when the first man had known it.