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Our readers will excuse the length of this quotation, as the first part of it gives so graphic a picture of the hunter and pioneer life of the times of Daniel Boone, and also shows what had been done by others in western explorations before Boone's expeditions commenced.
Boone's, and before a great while, by dint of industry, had a good farm of more than a hundred acres. This farm was beautifully situated. A pretty stream of water almost encircled it. On the banks of the Schuylkill, Daniel Boone found all his education, such as it was; on the banks of the Yadkin he found something far better. I must tell you now of a very strange adventure.
Jim had been inveigled to the Mingo camp taking risks as he always did, and there been ordered to reveal the whereabouts of the hunting party. He had refused, and endured the ordeal... Memories of their long comradeship rushed through Boone's mind and set him weeping in a fury of affection.
Six men were killed, among them Boone's eldest son, and the cattle were scattered. This misfortune brought such gloom upon the party that all turned back for a time to a settlement on the Clinch River. But Daniel Boone was one of those who would not give up.
Why should a hope spring up within me that would die as other hopes had died? But back of all my thought was the longing to help Beverly, and a faith in Aunty Boone's weird, prophetic grip on things unseen. He had just "gone out" to her why not to all of us? I could not understand Little Blue Flower's part in this tragedy, so I let it alone.
It wouldn't take me but a little time to run into Harrodstown or Boone's Station from here, and fetch a party to follow ye." Two days went by, two days of strain in sunlight, and of watching and fitful sleep in darkness. But the Wilderness Trail was deserted.
Such urgent desire as Boone's, however, was not to be defeated. The next year brought him his great opportunity. John Findlay came to the Yadkin with a horse pack of needles and linen and peddler's wares to tempt the slim purses of the Back Country folk. The two erstwhile comrades in arms were overjoyed to encounter each other again, and Findlay spent the winter of 1768-69 in Boone's cabin.
Yet, to avoid strife, a friend of Boone's, Richard Henderson, and a few others made treaties with the most powerful tribe, the Cherokees, who said that they might settle there. As soon as it became certain that the Indians would not make trouble, Henderson sent Boone, in charge of thirty men, to open a pathway from the Holston River through Cumberland Gap to the Kentucky River.
Boone's brother killed, and Boone himself narrowly escapes from the Indians Assault upon Ashton's station and upon the station near Shelbyville Attack upon McAffee's station. We have already spoken of the elder brother of Col. Boone and his second return to the Yadkin. A fondness for the western valleys seems to have been as deeply engraven in his affections, as in the heart of his brother.
His first concern was to recall the surveying parties from Kentucky, and for so hazardous an errand he needed the services of a man whose endurance, speed, and woodcraft were equal to those of any Indian scout afoot. Through Colonel Preston, his orders were conveyed to Daniel Boone, for Boone's fame had now spread from the border to the tidewater regions.
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