PAGE IN A TWINKLING I WAS BY HIS SIDE AND THERE SAW THAT WHICH CAUSED THE COLD CHILL OF FEAR TO RUN DOWN MY BACK FRONTISPIECE. THE BRUTE FELL, AS THOUGH STRUCK BY LIGHTNING AND A CRY OF TRIUMPH RANG FROM MY LIPS 62 WITHIN FIVE SECONDS I HAD FIRED, USING THE CURL OF VAPOR FOR A TARGET 103 WE ADVANCED FROM ONE PLACE OF SHELTER TO ANOTHER, FIRING RAPIDLY 142 STRAIGHT UP TO THE BIG GATE WE ADVANCED BELIEVING THAT IN THE NEXT SECOND WE SHOULD HEAR THE ALARM GUN 204 FROM OUT OF OUR BARRICADE WHISTLED THREE BULLETS AND EVERY ONE FOUND ITS MARK 258 ON THE KENTUCKY FRONTIER. CHAPTER I. SIMON KENTON. It is my purpose to set down what I saw during such time as Simon Kenton gave me my first lessons in woodcraft and it is well to make the statement in advance in order that others may be deprived of the opportunity of saying what would sound disagreeable:--that the pupil was for a time so dull that one less patient and painstaking than Kenton would have brought the lessons to a speedy close. That which now seems the most difficult is to decide how I shall begin this story of the little which I did on the Kentucky frontier during the year of grace 1778, and I can hit upon no plan which promises better success than that of copying here what I read in a printed book long years after I, a green lad, set out to do my little share toward bringing peace and a sense of security to the settlers who were striving to make homes for themselves and their families in what was then known as the colony of Virginia. I make use of such a beginning because it appears to me as if the wise man who thus explains the condition of affairs among us at that time, tells in a few lines what I might struggle vainly over many pages of paper to put into form one-half so concise and satisfactory: "With the single exception of Dunmore's expedition in 1774, hostilities west of the Alleghanies were nothing but a series of border conflicts, each little party acting upon its own responsibility, until 1778, when Major George Rogers Clarke led a regular expedition against the frontier posts of the enemy in the wilderness. Clarke first went toward Kentucky in 1772, when he paddled down the Ohio with the Reverend David Jones, then on his way to preach the Gospel to the Western Indians.