But books were not the only things Sam Hardwicke was familiar with.

He could ride the worst horses in the country and shoot a rifle almost as well as Tandy Walker himself, and Tandy, as every reader of history knows, was the most famous rifleman, as well as the best guide and most daring scout in the whole south-west.

Sam had hunted, too, over almost every inch of country within twenty miles around, trudging alone sometimes for a week or a fortnight before returning, and in this way he had learned to know the distances, the directions, and the nature of the country lying between different places,--a knowledge worth gaining by anybody, and especially valuable to a boy who lived in a frontier settlement.

He was strong of limb and active as he was strong, and his "book knowledge," as the neighbors called it, served him many a good turn in the woods, when he was beset by difficulties.
Sam's father was one of the very last of the settlers to go into a fort.
He remained at home as long as he could, and went to Fort Sinquefield at last, only when warned by an Indian who for some reason liked him, that he and his children's lives were in imminent danger.

That was on the first of September, and when the Hardwicke family, black and white, were safely within the little fortress, there remained outside only two families, namely, those of Abner James and Ransom Kimball, who determined to remain one more night at Kimball's house, two miles from Sinquefield.