Simon still thought that he had killed his rival Leitchman. He kept his name of Butler. Daniel Boone was glad to have such reinforcement. Soon he liked the young man. In the course of the sieges of 1777 Simon rescued him, before the gates; shot his nearest foe and grabbing him carried him, leg broken, into the fort.
Daniel Boone was a man of few words. But he spoke roundly—for him.
"Well, Simon, you have behaved yourself like a man, today—indeed, you are a fine fellow."
It was a great tribute from Daniel Boone.
However, even the excitement of the daily life at Boonesborough palled on young Simon Kenton-Butler or Butler-Kenton. He was the restless kind. When danger did not come to him, he went out to seek it. He delighted in the daring foray and in spy work. A narrow squeak was a joke to him. The greater the risk, the more heartily he laughed about it.
The two Indians whom he had tumbled from their frisky pony at one shot, near Paint Creek, and the whish of the bullet grazing his head, and his dive for a tree, only whetted his appetite for more fun; consequently when the Daniel Boone party turned about, he and his comrade Montgomery lingered, to experiment with Paint Creek town itself.
All the rest of that day they hid in the corn-field on the edge of the town, waiting for Indians to appear and gather roasting-ears. That was sheer nerve; they were in the heart of the Indian country and more than one hundred miles from any protection except their own wits and their rifles. But they saw no Indians other than a few little children. The town certainly was deserted for the war trail.
Therefore at dusk they slipped into the town, stole four horses, led them out, mounted two, drove the others, rode all night, to the Ohio River, swam it, and avoiding the trail of the Indian army to Boonesborough galloped gaily into Logan's Station beyond the Kentucky.
One scalp and four horses! Simon laughed easily. The trip had been worth while.
He "loafed" only until the danger to Boonesborough was past. For that space all the Kentucky forts sat tight. But Colonel John Bowman of the militia was here, at Logan's. Boonesborough had come safely through the red tempest; the Indians had retired; he planned a counter blow, and wished to learn just what were the conditions at the Chief Black Fish town of Little Chillicothe on the Little Miami River: whether it was on guard, whether the warriors had left to strike at another point, and so forth. That called for skillful work.