4 The Winning of the West 



one day he saw the huge moccasin tracks of Spen 

 cer, and on the following morning the party passed 

 close by his cabin in chase of a wounded buffalo, hal 

 loing and shouting as they dashed through the un 

 derwood. Whether he thought them Indians, or 

 whether, as is more likely, he shared the fear and 

 dislike felt by most of the Creoles for the American 

 backwoodsmen, can not be said ; but certainly he left 

 his cabin, swam the river, and plunging into the for 

 est, straightway fled to his kinsfolk on the banks of 

 the Wabash. Spencer was soon left by his com 

 panions ; though one of them stayed with him a short 

 time, helping him to plant a field of corn. Then this 

 man, too, wished to return. He had lost his hunt 

 ing-knife; so Spencer went with him to the bar 

 rens of Kentucky, put him on the right path, and 

 breaking his own knife, gave his departing friend 

 a piece of the metal. The undaunted old hunter 

 himself returned to the banks of the Cumberland, 

 and sojourned throughout the fall and winter in the 

 neighborhood of the little clearing on which he had 

 raised the corn crop; a strange, huge, solitary man, 

 self-reliant, unflinching, cut off from all his fellows 

 by endless leagues of shadowy forest. Thus he 

 dwelt alone in the vast dim wastes, wandering whith 

 ersoever he listed through the depths of the melan 

 choly and wintry woods, sleeping by his camp-fire 

 or in the hollow tree-trunk, ever ready to do battle 

 against brute or human foe a stark and sombre 

 harbinger of the oncoming civilization. 



Spencer's figure, seen through the mist that 



