Page:The Conquest.djvu/37

Rh easily influenced red men they hope to annihilate our frontier. Never shall we be safe until we can control the British posts."

Unknown to any he had already sent scouts to reconnoitre those very posts.

"And what have you learned?" he whispered, when on the darkest night of those tempestuous midsummer days they gave the password at the gate.

"What have we learned? That the forts are negligently guarded; that the French are secretly not hostile; that preparations are on foot for an invasion of Kentucky with British, Indians, and artillery."

"I will give them something to do in their own country," was Clark's inward comment.

Without a word of his secret intent, Clark buckled on his sword, primed his rifle, and set out for Virginia. With regret and fear the people saw him depart, and yet with hope. Putting aside their detaining hands, "I will surely return," he said.

With almost superhuman daring the leather-armoured knight from the beleaguered castle in the wood ran the gauntlet of the sleeping savages. All the Wilderness Road was lit with bonfires, and woe to the emigrant that passed that way. Cumberland Gap was closed; fleet-winged he crossed the very mountain tops, where never foot of man or beast had trod before.

Scarce noting the hickories yellow with autumn and the oaks crimson with Indian summer, the young man passed through Charlottesville, his birthplace, and reached his father's house in Caroline at ten o'clock at night.

In his low trundle-bed little William heard that brother's step and sprang to unclose the door. Like an apparition George Rogers Clark appeared before the family, haggard and worn with the summer's siege. All the news of his brothers gone to the war was quickly heard.

"And will you join them?"

"No, my field is Kentucky. To-morrow I must be at Williamsburg."

The old colonial capital was aflame with hope and