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Several rough, brawny fellows were already staggering from Tennessee into Kentucky, and around one saloon hung a crowd of slatternly negroes, men and women. Heartsick with disgust, Clayton hurried into the lane that wound through the valley. Were these hovels, he asked himself in wonder, the cabins he once thought so poetic, so picturesque?
Here in truth was a new world, a land of peaceful customs, green and moist. The soft-toned bells of it seemed an expression of its life, so far removed from our own striving and fighting existence in Kentucky.
There was neither art nor display in the accompaniments of the food, but every luxury that an ample market could supply had been prepared by a cook who could have won immortality in a Paris restaurant, and the finest whisky that could be distilled in old Kentucky, the rarest wines that could be imported from the Rhine or from sunny Italian slopes, were ready to flow.
When his sister Gertrude questioned him concerning the Kentucky girls, he had described to her in glowing terms the extreme beauty of Julia, and the handsome eyes of "the widder," as he called Mrs. Carrington, but of Fanny he had never spoken. He could not bear that even his own sister should mention Fanny in connection with any one else.
"Hello! what brought you here, Frank Haywood, I'd like to know?" "Well, I reckon my horse, Buckskin, did, Peg." "And who's this with you your new chum; the boy from Kentucky?" "That's who it is, Peg Bob Archer; and he's come out West to see how life on the plains suits him." "Oh! a greenhorn, eh?" "Perhaps some people might call him that, though he knows a heap about horses.
In April, 1792, Kentucky was admitted into the Union as an independent state; improvements were steadily and rapidly progressing, and notwithstanding the hostility of the Indians, the population of the state was regularly increasing until the peace which followed the victory of Gen. Wayne. After which, as has been observed, the tide of emigration poured into the country with unexampled rapidity.
Before the assembling of the Southern convention in June, every one of the Southern states, save Kentucky, had given some encouragement to the Southern movement, and Kentucky had given warning and proposed a compromise through Clay.
My look must have been wistful. "I can't leave Polly Ann and Tom," I answered. "Well," he said, "I like that. Faith to your friends is a big equipment for life." "But why are you going?" I asked. "Because I love Kentucky best of all things in the world," he answered, smiling. "And what are you going to do?" I insisted. "Ah," he said, "that I can't tell even to you." "To catch Hamilton?"
Barbara was always singing to her about "My Old Kentucky Home," and "Going Back to Dixie," and when they played together on the beach their favorite game was building Grandfather Shirley's house in the sand. Day after day they built it up with shells and wet sand and pebbles, even to the stately gate posts topped by lanterns.
They had now been for some time at Westport, making preparations for their departure, and waiting for a re-enforcement, since they were too few in number to attempt it alone. They might, it is true, have joined some of the parties of emigrants who were on the point of setting out for Oregon and California; but they professed great disinclination to have any connection with the "Kentucky fellows."
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