The siege lasted for nine days but the veteran riflemen of the fort, under Boone’s skillful direction, gained the day with only a loss of three or four men, while many of the four hundred Indians fell.
There were many other battles with the Indians who crossed the Ohio into Kentucky, and though Boone was always in the thick of the fray he came out uninjured.
And then misfortune came in another way.
Things had looked fair enough in the beginning when the Transylvania Company sold boundaries of land to settlers, with Colonel Henderson, a bright lawyer who had once been appointed Associate Chief Justice, to look after the legal side of the transactions. The company asked only thirteen and one third cents per acre for the land for one year and an added half cent per acre quitrent to begin in 1780. At such a low rate it was possible for a man to purchase a boundary of six hundred acres. When Daniel talked it over with Rebecca they concluded he would not be overreaching himself to invest in such an acreage.
The Transylvania Company did a land-office business. By December of the first year after Colonel Henderson opened up his office for business in Boonesborough 560,000 acres were sold. That was all right for the company, but what of the purchaser? What with the squabbles and disputes concerning title between Indian and settler, English and French, Boone like others soon found himself with not a leg to stand on. He had bought “wildcat” land. Land-sharks cleaned him out.
At the age of fifty-four, in 1788, Daniel had to start all over again. With Rebecca at his side and a larger family he moved on.
Boone had scouted through the West Virginia country long before, when he had passed a solitary winter in a hut on the Big Sandy. So now once more he turned in that direction, pressing on until he reached the mouth of the Great Kanawha River. He lived from place to place in the Kanawha country, following his old pursuits of hunting and trapping, and as usual absented himself from his fireside for long days at a stretch. But Rebecca was used to his ways. She looked after the family, cooked and mended. When Daniel returned home Rebecca always cleaned him up again before he started on another hunting trip.
Eleven years passed without a word being said about land titles. Then one day Daniel found himself facing the same situation that had robbed him of his acres in Kentucky. A man of sixty-five, and with a family of seven, three boys and four girls—two of their boys had been killed in battle with the Indians—Daniel, though still a fearless hunter, didn’t want to be bothered with squabbles over land titles. He told Rebecca there was an easier way around. There were places outside of the jurisdiction of the United States altogether. “We don’t have to be beholden to anyone,” he said boastfully.
Pioneer women followed their men. So once more Rebecca made ready for the journey. She mended garments; she gathered up their few cooking utensils and the furry hides that were their blankets. She tied some of her choice things in her apron. That she’d carry right on her arm. The boys helped their father make ready the great cumbersome cart that was to carry their possessions. When all was in readiness Daniel pulled on his coonskin cap and whistling up his dogs he started off resolutely ahead of his family.