The soil is so rich you can raise two crops in one season. With some stock, and a few good hands, you’ll soon be a busy man.”

“I didn’t expect so much land; I can’t well afford to pay for it.”

“Talk to me of payment when the farm yields an income. Is this young nephew of yours strong and willing?”

“He is, and has gold enough to buy a big farm.”

“Let him keep his money, and make a comfortable home for some good lass. We marry our young people early out here. And your daughter, George, is she fitted for this hard border life?”

“Never fear for Helen.”

“The brunt of this pioneer work falls on our women. God bless them, how heroic they’ve been! The life here is rough for a man, let alone a woman. But it is a man’s game. We need girls, girls who will bear strong men. Yet I am always saddened when I see one come out on the border.”

“I think I knew what I was bringing Helen to, and she didn’t flinch,” said Sheppard, somewhat surprised at the tone in which the colonel spoke.

“No one knows until he has lived on the border. Well, well, all this is discouraging to you. Ah! here is Miss Helen with my sister.”

The colonel’s fine, dark face lost its sternness, and brightened with a smile.

“I hope you rested well after your long ride.”

“I am seldom tired, and I have been made most comfortable. I thank you and your sister,” replied the girl, giving Colonel Zane her hand, and including both him and his sister in her grateful glance.

The colonel’s sister was a slender, handsome young woman, whose dark beauty showed to most effective advantage by the contrast with her companion’s fair skin, golden hair, and blue eyes.

Beautiful as was Helen Sheppard, it was her eyes that held Colonel Zane irresistibly. They were unusually large, of a dark purple-blue that changed, shaded, shadowed with her every thought.

“Come, let us walk,” Colonel Zane said abruptly, and, with Mr. Sheppard, followed the girls down the path. He escorted them to the fort, showed a long room with little squares cut in the rough-hewn logs, many bullet holes, fire-charred timbers, and dark stains, terribly suggestive of the pain and heroism which the defense of that rude structure had cost.

Under Helen’s eager questioning Colonel Zane yielded to his weakness for story-telling, and recited the history of the last siege of Fort Henry; how the renegade Girty swooped down upon the settlement with hundreds of Indians and British soldiers; how for three days of whistling bullets, flaming arrows, screeching demons, fire, smoke, and attack following attack, the brave defenders stood at their posts, there to die before yielding.

“Grand!” breathed Helen, and her eyes glowed. “It was then Betty Zane ran with the powder? Oh! I’ve heard the story.”

“Let my sister tell you of that,” said the colonel, smiling.

“You! Was it you?” And Helen’s eyes glowed brighter with the light of youth’s glory in great deeds.

“My sister has been wedded and widowed since then,” said Colonel Zane, reading in Helen’s earnest scrutiny of his sister’s calm, sad face a wonder if this quiet woman could be the fearless and famed Elizabeth Zane.

Impulsively Helen’s hand closed softly over her companion’s. Out of the girlish sympathetic action a warm friendship was born.

“I imagine things do happen here,” said Mr. Sheppard, hoping to hear more from Colonel Zane.

The colonel smiled grimly.

“Every summer during fifteen years has been a bloody one on the border. The sieges of Fort Henry, and Crawford’s defeat, the biggest things we ever knew out here, are matters of history; of course you are familiar with them. But the numberless Indian forays and attacks, the women who have been carried into captivity by renegades, the murdered farmers, in fact, ceaseless war never long directed at any point, but carried on the entire length of the river, are matters known only to the pioneers. Within five miles of Fort Henry I can show you where the laurel bushes grow three feet high over the ashes of two settlements, and many a clearing where some unfortunate pioneer had staked his claim and thrown up a log cabin, only to die fighting for his wife and children. Between here and Fort Pitt there is only one settlement, Yellow Creek, and most of its inhabitants are survivors of abandoned villages farther up the river. Last summer we had the Moravian Massacre, the blackest, most inhuman deed ever committed. Since then Simon Girty and his bloody redskins have lain low.”

“You must always have had a big force,” said Sheppard.

“We’ve managed always to be strong enough, though there never were a large number of men here. During the last siege I had only forty in the fort, counting men, women and boys. But I had pioneers and women who could handle a rifle, and the best bordermen on the frontier.”

“Do you make a distinction between pioneers and bordermen?” asked Sheppard.

“Indeed, yes. I am a pioneer; a borderman is an Indian hunter, or scout. For years my cabins housed Andrew Zane, Sam and John McCollock, Bill Metzar, and John and Martin Wetzel, all of whom are dead. Not one saved his scalp. Fort Henry is growing; it has pioneers, rivermen, soldiers, but only two bordermen.