“Near the Crab Orchard, and the lad killed and sculped a six-foot brave.”

“The Saints save us!  And what’ll be his name?”

“Davy,” said my friend.

“Is it Davy?  Sure his namesake killed a giant, too.”

“And is he come along, also?” said another.  His shy blue eyes and stiff blond hair gave him a strange appearance in a hunting shirt.

“Hist to him!  Who will ye be talkin’ about, Poulsson?  Is it King David ye mane?”

There was a roar of laughter, and this was my introduction to Terence McCann and Swein Poulsson.  The fort being crowded, we were put into a cabin with Terence and Cowan and Cowan’s wife—­a tall, gaunt woman with a sharp tongue and a kind heart—­and her four brats, “All hugemsmug together,” as Cowan said.  And that night we supped upon dried buffalo meat and boiled nettle-tops, for of such was the fare in Harrodstown that summer.

“Tom McChesney kept his faith.”  One other man was to keep his faith with the little community—­George Rogers Clark.  And I soon learned that trustworthiness is held in greater esteem in a border community than anywhere else.  Of course, the love of the frontier was in the grain of these men.  But what did they come back to?  Day after day would the sun rise over the forest and beat down upon the little enclosure in which we were penned.  The row of cabins leaning against the stockade marked the boundaries of our diminutive world.  Beyond them, invisible, lurked a relentless foe.  Within, the greater souls alone were calm, and a man’s worth was set down to a hair’s breadth.  Some were always to be found squatting on their door-steps cursing the hour which had seen them depart for this land; some wrestled and fought on the common, for a fist fight with a fair field and no favor was a favorite amusement of the backwoodsmen.  My big friend, Cowan, was the champion of these, and often of an evening the whole of the inhabitants would gather near the spring to see him fight those who had the courage to stand up to him.  His muscles were like hickory wood, and I have known a man insensible for a quarter of an hour after one of his blows.  Strangely enough, he never fought in anger, and was the first to the spring for a gourd of water after the fight was over.  But Tom McChesney was the best wrestler of the lot, and could make a wider leap than any other man in Harrodstown.

Tom’s reputation did not end there, for he became one of the two bread-winners of the station.  I would better have said meat-winners.  Woe be to the incautious who, lulled by a week of fancied security, ventured out into the dishevelled field for a little food!  In the early days of the siege man after man had gone forth for game, never to return.  Until Tom came, one only had been successful,—­that lad of seventeen, whose achievements were the envy of my boyish soul, James Ray.  He slept in the cabin next to Cowan’s, and long before the dawn had revealed the forest line had been wont to steal