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Updated: June 2, 2025
As we climbed towards the Gap, I recalled with strange aptness a quaint saying of my father's that Kaintuckee was the Garden of Eden, and that men were being justly punished with blood for their presumption. As if to crown that judgment, the day was dark and lowering, with showers of rain from time to time. And when we spoke, Polly Ann and I, it was in whispers.
And then, "You want me to go to Kaintuckee with you?" "That's what I come for," he stammered, his assurance all run away again. "I'll go," she answered, so gently that her words were all but blown away by the summer wind. He laid his rifle against a stump at the edge of the corn-field, but she bounded clear of him. Then she stood, panting, her eyes sparkling.
Shall we go against Kaintuckee, destroy the settlements there, and then, when an avenging army comes against our villages, lose our country, because the King's men who should help us are far away, as the Iroquois lost theirs?" He folded his arms across his broad chest and, stern and accusing, awaited the answer. De Peyster quailed again, but he quickly recovered.
'Tis a fine day, and Kaintuckee's over yonder." She picked up her skirts and sang: "First upon the heeltap, Then upon the toe." The men by the cane-brake turned and came towards us. "Ye're happy to-day, Mis' McChesney," said Riley. "Why shouldn't I be?" said Polly Ann; "we're all a-goin' to Kaintuckee." "We're a-goin' back to Cyarter's Valley," said Riley, in his blustering way.
"Wal, Polly Ann, are ye tired of hanging out fer Tom?" he cried, when a dozen paces away. "I wouldn't be if you was the only one left ter choose," Polly Ann retorted. Chauncey Dike stopped in his tracks and haw-hawed with laughter. But I could see that he was not very much pleased. "Wal," said he, "I 'low ye won't see Tom very soon. He's gone to Kaintuckee."
You will forgive a backwoods boy, self-centred, for lack of wider interest, and with a little imagination. Bear hunting with my father, and an occasional trip on the white mare twelve miles to the Cross-Roads for salt and other necessaries, were the only diversions to break the routine of my days. But at the Cross-Roads, too, they were talking of Kaintuckee.
"Has he?" said Polly Ann, with brave indifference. "He met a gal on the trail a blazin' fine gal," said Chauncey Dike. "She was goin' to Kaintuckee. And Tom he 'lowed he'd go 'long." Polly Ann laughed, and fingered the withered pieces of skin at Chauncey's girdle. "Did Tom give you them sculps?" she asked innocently. Chauncey drew up stiffly. "Who? Tom McChesney?
One, whose name was Cutcheon, was a little man with a short forehead and a bad eye, and he wore a weather-beaten blue coat of military cut. The second was a big, light-colored, fleshy man, and a loud talker. He wore a hunting shirt and leggings. They were both the worse for rum they had had on the road, the big man talking very loud and boastfully. "Afeard to go to Kaintuckee!" said he.
But Polly Ann hung on his shoulder. "Tom, Tom!" she cried, "you beant goin' to leave us again. Tom, he'll die in the wilderness, and we must git to Kaintuckee." The next vivid thing in my memory is the view of the last barrier Nature had reared between us and the delectable country. It stood like a lion at the gateway, and for some minutes we gazed at it in terror from Powell's Valley below.
He was silent for a long while, and so was I. For a notion had struck me, though I hardly dared to give it voice. "Are you going away?" I asked at last. He laughed. "Why?" said he. "If you were going to Kaintuckee " I began, and faltered. For he stared at me very hard. "Kaintuckee!" he said. "There's a country! But it's full of blood and Injun varmints now.
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