It had been
Silvertip's pride; it was now a challenge, a menace to the Shawnee
chief.
"Come," said Wetzel, leading the way into the forest.
* * *
Shortly after daylight on the second day following the release of
the Downs brothers the hunter brushed through a thicket of alder and
said: "Thar's Fort Henry."
The boys were on the summit of a mountain from which the land sloped
in a long incline of rolling ridges and gentle valleys like a green,
billowy sea, until it rose again abruptly into a peak higher still
than the one upon which they stood. The broad Ohio, glistening in
the sun, lay at the base of the mountain.
Upon the bluff overlooking the river, and under the brow of the
mountain, lay the frontier fort. In the clear atmosphere it stood
out in bold relief. A small, low structure surrounded by a high
stockade fence was all, and yet it did not seem unworthy of its
fame. Those watchful, forbidding loopholes, the blackened walls and
timbers, told the history of ten long, bloody years. The whole
effect was one of menace, as if the fort sent out a defiance to the
wilderness, and meant to protect the few dozen log cabins clustered
on the hillside.
"How will we ever get across that big river?" asked Jim,
practically.
"Wade--swim," answered the hunter, laconically, and began the
descent of the ridge.
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