Alas, for the vanity of human presage!  We gained the top, and entered unmolested.  No Eden suddenly dazzled our eye, no splendor burst upon it.  Nothing told us, as we halted in our weariness, that we had reached the Promised Land.  The mists weighed heavily on the evergreens of the slopes and hid the ridges, and we passed that night in cold discomfort.  It was the first of many without a fire.

The next day brought us to the Cumberland, tawny and swollen from the rains, and here we had to stop to fell trees to make a raft on which to ferry over our packs.  We bound the logs together with grapevines, and as we worked my imagination painted for me many a red face peering from the bushes on the farther shore.  And when we got into the river and were caught and spun by the hurrying stream, I hearkened for a shot from the farther bank.  While Polly Ann and I were scrambling to get the raft landed, Tom and Weldon swam over with the horses.  And so we lay the second night dolefully in the rain.  But not so much as a whimper escaped from Polly Ann.  I have often told her since that the sorest trial she had was the guard she kept on her tongue,—­a hardship indeed for one of Irish inheritance.  Many a pull had she lightened for us by a flash of humor.

The next morning the sun relented, and the wine of his dawn was wine indeed to our flagging hopes.  Going down to wash at the river’s brink, I heard a movement in the cane, and stood frozen and staring until a great, bearded head, black as tar, was thrust out between the stalks and looked at me with blinking red eyes.  The next step revealed the hump of the beast, and the next his tasselled tail lashing his dirty brown quarters.  I did not tarry longer, but ran to tell Tom.  He made bold to risk a shot and light a fire, and thus we had buffalo meat for some days after.

We were still in the mountains.  The trail led down the river for a bit through the worst of canebrakes, and every now and again we stopped while Tom and Weldon scouted.  Once the roan mare made a dash through the brake, and, though Polly Ann burst through one way to head her off and I another, we reached the bank of Richland Creek in time to see her nose and the top of her pack above the brown water.  There was nothing for it but to swim after her, which I did, and caught her quietly feeding in the cane on the other side.  By great good fortune the other horse bore the powder.

“Drat you, Nancy,” said Polly Ann to the mare, as she handed me my clothes, “I’d sooner carry the pack myself than be bothered with you.”

“Hush,” said I, “the redskins will get us.”

Polly Ann regarded me scornfully as I stood bedraggled before her.

“Redskins!” she cried.  “Nonsense!  I reckon it’s all talk about redskins.”