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kicking again for the shore.
    The river came out of its heavy flow and began to race. The timber swung around, and around again. Water swam in his sight, and the two shores and quick patches of sky before the timber settled again to the current like a mule to a lead rope.
    Boone kept kicking, trying to keep pointed right, trying to push beyond the hold of the channel. It was a time before he realized that the current had changed and was washing over toward the Indiana shore. He locked his chin on the timber and hung there, numb, and after a while made his feet kick again, seeing only the rifle shining wet and dark on the wood and the water moving around him.
    He knew when an Indiana farmer fished him out and got his arms around him from behind and dragged him to his cabin. He heard the man grunting over him. "Let 'er go, sonny! Your rifle will be safe as anything. Let 'er go!"
 
 
    Chapter V
    The river lay behind him, the river and the Indiana farmer who had put him up and had given him flint and steel, a horn of powder, a little poke of coarse meal, and a chunk of salt meat. "If you kin use that there rifle like she was made to be used, you'll make out," the farmer had said, and Boone had thanked him while he scuffed the ground with the toe of his boot. "Maybe it'll be turn about one day," he muttered. The farmer smiled and waved away the idea, and Boone turned and headed west out of the valley.
    The land was flattening out. Back of him when the trees thinned he still could see the dark arches of the hills that flanked the river, but ahead the way was leveling, broken by low rolls covered with oak and maple and hackberry, and sycamore whose trunks stood out white and naked from the rest.
    The air was heavy, the sky gray and cold like a winter's pond. The bare branches of the trees veined themselves against it, forking darkly down to the trunks.
    Boone wondered how soon he could reach St. Louis. "Take a man a full week, likely, if he kep' at it," he said to himself, thinking ahead to beaver and buffalo and the free plains. The road was good. Once in a while he saw a cabin at the base of a hill or the edge of a grove and felt better for its company. Sometimes he met horsemen, and once a Conestoga wagon, crowded to the canvas, rolling on west.
    "We'd lift ye, boy," the driver said through a mat of whiskers as the wagon drew abreast, "but we're so jampacked we hadda make the bedbugs git out and walk." He added, "They're gonna be some sore-footed chinches, time we get to Martllasville." The faces of a woman and two children, crowded to his left, made stiff smiles and sobered again as the driver swung his whip.
    As it drew on toward dusk, Boone kept an eye out for game. He had seen a turkey earlier, and deer tracks at the side of the trail, but now the way was empty of game or sign of it. Overhead a V of wild geese drove to the north, high-flying and silent except for one inquiring honk that found no answer below. Then a rabbit bounced from roadside to bush and settled, its lines and color melting into the brown tangle of twig and blade and only the dark ball of its eye showing clear.
    It was poor game, but Boone came up slow with his rifle so as not to scare it, remembering Pap's brag that if a man was sharp-eyed and steady he could knock out a possum's eye with Old Sure Shot, far as he could see it. The gun cracked, and the rabbit leaped as if jerked from above and came down kicking. Boone patted the butt of his weapon and, bringing the piece into the crook of his arm, went over and stood above the stilling body as he reloaded.
    The air was thickening with dusk, with the wet, sad dusk of early spring. The sun that had ridden all day behind a veil whitened the sky line ahead. It was getting colder.
    Boone picked up the rabbit and started on, looking for a place to spend the night. No house was in sight, and no light, but a little farther on, just off the road, he found a smooth and level spot among the trees, at the side of