"Boonesboro'll keep the wagon-train as long as the grub holds out. The pesky redskins 'ain't got a thing to do but to lay round an' besiege the stockade 'til the buffaler come. When the herds git here the redskins will follow the game north and the wagon-train can move again. Trouble is that folks in stockades can't git along without eatin', and these are plumb out o' vittles." And Simon Kenton, who had often gone hungry in the Indian country, gave a little sigh of sympathy. "It ain't likely that we will have a brash with Injuns hereabouts." Yet these sagacious scouts slept in their clothes, had no fires, and took turns, two at a time, doing sentinel duty. They rode, always, with guns primed and loaded and ready under their trigger fingers. Their plan was to add their force to the small number of men in the train at Boonesboro and with a little food to bring them out to within reach of game and to escort them north to Cincinnati. The Indians generally fell back from any "Long Knives" train. The scouts had crossed the Ohio River at Cincinnati, coming down, gathering a few more fighters as they went. Doby's father, a seasoned frontiersman, had gone with them because he was anxious to learn the prospects for buying farming land in this richest soil of all the States. Now they were whirling down toward the Salt Lick Springs on the old Clark War Road of Indian raids. At first the famous path led them to the southwest. Doby had ridden bareback from babyhood. He could "break" a colt or subdue a "fractious" mare, but never had he gone down any pike at the pace these Kentuckians set him as they tore away on their errand of mercy. His legs clung to the saddle, his moccasins stuck to the stirrups, his hands grasped the bridle-rein as they flew. The scrambling up-hill over rough ground, the breakneck sliding down into valleys, were his delight. But when he saw the swollen Kentucky River that he must plunge into for the first of several times on its winding course, he could have screamed with hysterical excitement. He had no choice whether to go or to stay. His horse carried him with the others on a rush into the turbulent stream. The shock of the water and the sensation of leaving solid earth for this swirling danger shook his chest with heavy sobs. There is a contagion of courage as well as of fear. He caught the spirit of his companions. By imitating them he was able to hold his horse's head at an acute angle to the bank, so that the constant up-stream effort kept the swimming animal from being swept down. He stayed abreast of the others and landed with them at the road on the opposite shore. Then magnificent forests and open glades spun by them. They entered canebrakes, those bottom-land stretches of succulent sugar-bearing canes where wild turkeys scuttled in flocks before the sound of hoofs. Simon Kenton smiled at Doby: "There ye be! Cane! Turkey! Kain tu'key! There's where we git our name."