Ruby Roland, the Girl Spy: Simon Kenton's Protege

A tall, muscular young fellow, dressed in hunter garb, came silently out of the woods from the north side of the Kentucky river, about a hundred years ago, and pausing by the bole of a gigantic beech tree, scanned the opposite shore with keen, silent attention. There was a peculiar air of resolute fearless deviltry in the face of the young hunter, coupled with the piercing, roving glances of his intensely black eyes, that showed he was no novice to the trade of hunter and scout. He was in the midst of the hunting-grounds of Shawnee and Delaware, miles away from the then infant settlement of Boonesborough; and he was all alone with his rifle and knife, to take care of himself. The look of his face abundantly evinced that he felt quite equal to the task, and only the acquired caution of his craft kept him from wading boldly into the river at once. But as it was, he had learned the lesson of the successful Indian-slayer by hard experience. Therefore, now, it was with a long, deep scrutiny that he scanned the opposite banks, across the first open piece of landscape he had come on in a day’s travel. On the opposite bank all was still as death, save for the occasional note of a bird. It was late in May and the forest was all blinded with its canopy of leaves, while game was distant and hiding in the coverts. As the young hunter looked, a black squirrel, shyest of all its kind, ran out on a limb of a tree on the other side of the river, and stood, whisking its tail and chattering, before his eyes, above the stream. “Wal,” muttered the young man, as he stepped boldly out, “thar kurn’t be much to be skeered on whenyou’re thar, my little kuss. Go ahead, Simon.” Without further ado he descended the bank, deep, brown, and bare, for some sixty feet, and then ran quickly across a bed of sand into the shallow stream. The Kentucky river, in winter a broad and powerful stream, had dwindled under the summer heats to a rivulet not more than two hundred feet across, running over a sandy rocky bed walled in by high banks. Into this stream waded the hunter, and soon found himself midway between the banks and up to his armpits in water. He was obliged to lift up rifle and powder-horn over his head as he waded along, and every now and then he would stop to brace himself against the current, and glance anxiously up and down either side of the river, as if anticipating the presence of enemies, ready to take him at advantage.