Old Mr. Ripley grew
querulous and savage and hard to please. In the evening, when my work
was done, I often lay on the banks of the stream staring at the high
ridge (its ragged edges the setting sun burned a molten gold), and the
thought grew on me that I might make my way over the mountains into that
land beyond, and find Tom for Polly Ann. I even climbed the watershed to
the east as far as the O'Hara farm, to sound that big Irishman about the
trail. For he had once gone to Kentucky, to come back with his scalp and
little besides. O'Hara, with his brogue, gave me such a terrifying
notion of the horrors of the Wilderness Trail that I threw up all thought
of following it alone, and so I resolved to wait until I heard of some
settlers going over it. But none went from the Grape Vine settlement
that spring.
War was a-waging in Kentucky. The great Indian nations were making a
frantic effort to drive from their hunting grounds the little bands of
settlers there, and these were in sore straits.
So I waited, and gave Polly Ann no hint of my intention.
Sometimes she herself would slip away across the notch to see Mrs.
McChesney and the children. She never took me with her on these
journeys, but nearly always when she came back at nightfall her eyes
would be red, and I knew the two women had been weeping together.
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