The buds reddened and popped, and the briers grew pink and white.  Through the lengthening days we toiled in the truck patch, but always as I bent to my work Polly Ann’s face saddened me—­it had once been so bright, and it should have been so at this season.  Old Mr. Ripley grew querulous and savage and hard to please.  In the evening, when my work was done, I often lay on the banks of the stream staring at the high ridge (its ragged edges the setting sun burned a molten gold), and the thought grew on me that I might make my way over the mountains into that land beyond, and find Tom for Polly Ann.  I even climbed the watershed to the east as far as the O’Hara farm, to sound that big Irishman about the trail.  For he had once gone to Kentucky, to come back with his scalp and little besides.  O’Hara, with his brogue, gave me such a terrifying notion of the horrors of the Wilderness Trail that I threw up all thought of following it alone, and so I resolved to wait until I heard of some settlers going over it.  But none went from the Grape Vine settlement that spring.

War was a-waging in Kentucky.  The great Indian nations were making a frantic effort to drive from their hunting grounds the little bands of settlers there, and these were in sore straits.

So I waited, and gave Polly Ann no hint of my intention.

Sometimes she herself would slip away across the notch to see Mrs. McChesney and the children.  She never took me with her on these journeys, but nearly always when she came back at nightfall her eyes would be red, and I knew the two women had been weeping together.  There came a certain hot Sunday in July when she went on this errand, and Grandpa Ripley having gone to spend the day at old man Winn’s, I was left alone.  I remember I sat on the squared log of the door-step, wondering whether, if I were to make my way to Salisbury, I could fall in with a party going across the mountains into Kentucky.  And wondering, likewise, what Polly Ann would do without me.  I was cleaning the long rifle,—­a labor I loved,—­when suddenly I looked up, startled to see a man standing in front of me.  How he got there I know not.  I stared at him.  He was a young man, very spare and very burned, with bright red hair and blue eyes that had a kind of laughter in them, and yet were sober.  His buckskin hunting shirt was old and stained and frayed by the briers, and his leggins and moccasins were wet from fording the stream.  He leaned his chin on the muzzle of his gun.

“Folks live here, sonny?” said he.

I nodded.

“Whar be they?”

“Out,” said I.

“Comin’ back?” he asked.

“To-night,” said I, and began to rub the lock.

“Be they good folks?” said he.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Wal,” said he, making a move to pass me, “I reckon I’ll slip in and take what I’ve a mind to, and move on.”

Now I liked the man’s looks very much, but I did not know what he would do.  So I got in his way and clutched the gun.  It was loaded, but not primed, and I emptied a little powder from the flask in the pan.  At that he grinned.