Chapter VII. The Giant Bones

About this time many people in Wareville, particularly the women and children began to complain of physical ills, notably lassitude and a lack of appetite; their food, which consisted largely of the game swarming all around the forest, had lost its savor. There was no mystery about it; Tom Ross, Mr. Ware and others promptly named the cause; they needed salt, which to the settlers of Kentucky was almost as precious as gold; it was obtained in two ways, either by bringing it hundreds of miles over the mountains from Virginia in wagons or on pack horses, or by boiling it out at the salt springs in the Indian-haunted woods.

They had neither the time nor the men for the long journey to Virginia, and they prepared at once for obtaining it at the springs. They had already used a small salt spring but the supply was inadequate, and they decided to go a considerable distance northward to the famous Big Bone Lick. Nothing had been heard in a long time of Indian war parties south of the Ohio, and they believed they would incur no danger. Moreover they could bring back salt to last more than a year.

When they first heard of the proposed journey, Paul Cotter pulled Henry to one side. They were just outside the palisade, and it was a beautiful day, in early spring. Already kindly nature was smoothing over the cruel scars made by the axes in the forest, and the village within the palisade began to have the comfortable look of home.

"Do you know what the Big Bone Lick is, Henry?" asked Paul eagerly.

"No," replied Henry, wondering at his chum's excitement.

"Why it's the most wonderful place in all the world!" said Paul, jumping up and down in his wish to tell quickly. "There was a hunter here last winter who spoke to me about it. I didn't believe him then, it sounded so wonderful, but Mr. Pennypacker says it's all true. There's a great salt spring, boiling out of the ground in the middle of a kind of marsh, and all around it, for a long distance, are piled hundreds of large bones, the bones of gigantic animals, bigger than any that walk the earth to-day."

"See here, Paul," said Henry scornfully, "you can't stuff my ears with mush like that. I guess you were reading one of the master's old romances, and then had a dream. Wake up, Paul!"

"It's true every word of it!"

"Then if there were such big animals, why don't we see 'em sometimes running through the forest?"

"Why, they've all been dead millions of years and their bones have been preserved there in the marsh. They lived in another geologic era-that's what Mr. Pennypacker calls it-and animals as tall as trees strolled up and down over the land and were the lords of creation."

Henry puckered his lips and emitted a long whistle of incredulity.

"Paul," he said, reprovingly, "you do certainly