Bereft of its graceful beauty, drooping with its gory burden, the long leather was a deadly message.

It had been Silvertip's pride; it was now a challenge, a menace to the Shawnee chief.
"Come," said Wetzel, leading the way into the forest.
* * * Shortly after daylight on the second day following the release of the Downs brothers the hunter brushed through a thicket of alder and said: "Thar's Fort Henry." The boys were on the summit of a mountain from which the land sloped in a long incline of rolling ridges and gentle valleys like a green, billowy sea, until it rose again abruptly into a peak higher still than the one upon which they stood.

The broad Ohio, glistening in the sun, lay at the base of the mountain.
Upon the bluff overlooking the river, and under the brow of the mountain, lay the frontier fort.

In the clear atmosphere it stood out in bold relief.

A small, low structure surrounded by a high stockade fence was all, and yet it did not seem unworthy of its fame.