"Any settlers comin'? We air prepared to tote 'em up."
Ever a welcome guest to the home of General Clark, Daniel Boone strode along to the cottage on the Rue. At sight of Julia he closed his eyes, dazzled.
"'Pears to me she looks like Rebecca."
Never, since that day when young Boone went hunting deer in the Yadkin forest and found Rebecca Bryan, a ruddy, flax-haired girl, had he ceased to be her lover. And though years had passed and Rebecca had faded, to him she was ever the gold-haired girl of the Yadkin. Poor Rebecca! Hers had been a hard life in camp and cabin, with pigs and chickens in the front yard and rain dripping through the roof.
"Daniel!" she sometimes said, severely.
"Wa-al, now Rebecca, thee knows I didn't have time to mend that air leak in the ruff last summer; I war gone too long at the beaver. But thee shall have a new house." And again the faithful Rebecca stuffed a rag in the ceiling with her mop-handle and meekly went on baking hoe-cake before the blazing forelog.
Daniel had long promised a new house, but now, at last, he was really going to build. For this he was studying St. Louis.
A day looking at houses and disposing of his salt and beaver-skins, and back he went, with a boatload of emigrants and a cargo of school-books. Mere trappers came and went,—Boone brought settlers. Pathfinder, judge, statesman, physician to the border, he now carried equipments for the first school up the Missouri.
VII
A MYSTERY
Furs were piled everywhere, the furs that had been wont to go to Europe,—otter, beaver, deer, and bear and buffalo. American ships, that had sped like eagles on every sea, were threatened now by England if they sailed to France, by France if they sailed to England.