“He’s not wuthless,” said Polly hotly, “he’s the best man in Rutherford’s army.  He’ll git more sculps then any of ’em,—­you see.”

“Tavy is ein gut poy,” Hans put in, for he had recovered his composure.  “I wish much he stay mit me.”

As for me, Polly Ann never consulted me on the subject—­nor had she need to.  I would have followed her to kingdom come, and at the thought of reaching the mountains my heart leaped with joy.  We all slept in the one flea-infested, windowless room of the “tavern” that night; and before dawn I was up and untethered the horses, and Polly Ann and I together lifted the two bushels of alum salt on one of the beasts and the ploughshare on the other.  By daylight we had left Hans and his farm forever.

I can see the lass now, as she strode along the trace by the flowing river, through sunlight and shadow, straight and supple and strong.  Sometimes she sang like a bird, and the forest rang.  Sometimes she would make fun of her grandfather or of me; and again she would be silent for an hour at a time, staring ahead, and then I knew she was thinking of that Tom McChesney.  She would wake from those reveries with a laugh, and give me a push to send me rolling down a bank.

“What’s the matter, Davy?  You look as solemn as a wood-owl.  What a little wiseacre you be!”

Once I retorted, “You were thinking of that Tom McChesney.”

“Ay, that she was, I’ll warrant,” snapped her grandfather.

Polly Ann replied, with a merry peal of laughter, “You are both jealous of Tom—­both of you.  But, Davy, when you see him you’ll love him as much as I do.”

“I’ll not,” I said sturdily.

“He’s a man to look upon—­”

“He’s a rip-roarer,” old man Ripley put in.  “Ye’re daft about him.”

“That I am,” said Polly, flushing and subsiding; “but he’ll not know it.”

As we rose into the more rugged country we passed more than one charred cabin that told its silent story of Indian massacre.  Only on the scattered hill farms women and boys and old men were working in the fields, all save the scalawags having gone to join Rutherford.  There were plenty of these around the taverns to make eyes at Polly Ann and open love to her, had she allowed them; but she treated them in return to such scathing tirades that they were glad to desist—­all but one.  He must have been an escaped redemptioner, for he wore jauntily a swanskin three-cornered hat and stained breeches of a fine cloth.  He was a bold, vain fellow.

“My beauty,” says he, as we sat at supper, “silver and Wedgwood better become you than pewter and a trencher.”

“And I reckon a rope would sit better on your neck than a ruff,” retorted Polly Ann, while the company shouted with laughter.  But he was not the kind to become discomfited.

“I’d give a guinea to see you in silk.  But I vow your hair looks better as it is.”

“Not so yours,” said she, like lightning; “’twould look better to me hanging on the belt of one of them red devils.”