Each member of the party carried a rifle, hunting knife and ammunition, and in addition they led three pack horses bearing more ammunition, their meal, jerked venison and buffalo meat. This little army expected to live upon the country, but it took the food as a precaution. They started early of a late but bright summer morning, and Henry found all his old love of the wilderness returning. Now it would be gratified to the full, as they should be gone perhaps two months and would pass through regions wholly unknown. Moreover he had worked hard for a long time and he felt that his holiday was fully earned; hence there was no flaw in his hopes. It required but a few minutes to pass through the cleared ground, the new fields, and reach the forest and as they looked back they saw what a slight impression they had yet made on the wilderness. Wareville was but a bit of human life, nothing more than an islet of civilization in a sea of forest. Five minutes more of walking among the trees, and then both Wareville and the newly opened country around it were shut out. They saw only the spire of smoke that had been a beacon once to Henry and Paul, rising high up, until it trailed off to the west with the wind, where it lay like a whiplash across the sky. This, too, was soon lost as they traveled deeper into the forest, and then they were alone in the wilderness, but without fear. "When we were able to live here without arms or ammunition it's not likely that we'll suffer, now is it?" said Paul to Henry. "Suffer!" exclaimed Henry. "It's a journey that I couldn't be hired to miss." "It ought to be enjoyable," said Mr. Pennypacker; "that is, if our relatives don't find it necessary to send into the Northwest, and try to buy back our scalps from the Indian tribes." But the schoolmaster was not serious. He had little fear of Indians in the western part of Kentucky, where they seldom ranged, but he thought it wise to put a slight restraint upon the exuberance of youth. They camped that night about fifteen miles from Wareville under the shadow of a great, overhanging rock, where they cooked some squirrels that the shiftless one shot, in a tall tree. The schoolmaster upon this occasion constituted himself cook. "There is a popular belief," he said when he asserted his place, "that a man of books is of no practical use in the world. I hereby intend to give a living demonstration to the contrary." Ross built the fire, and while the schoolmaster set himself to his task, Henry and Paul took their fish hooks and lines and went down to the creek that flowed near. It was so easy to catch perch and other fish that there was no sport in it, and as soon as they had enough for supper and breakfast they went back to the fire where the tempting odors that arose indicated the truth of the schoolmaster's assertion. The squirrels were done to a turn, and no doubt of his ability remained.