Boone was a natural woodsman. In him the craft of the forest and trail reached perfection; no other man in the annals of the West possessed the cunning with which he threw the enemy off the trail and baffled his pursuit.
Toward the end of July Squire Boone returned with horses, meal and ammunition. Then after a time they pressed on toward the Cumberland River, or what is now so called, and explored the country in that direction. More and more beautiful the region grew to Daniel; more and more he determined that it would be his future home.
“It’s a paradise on earth,” he told Squire. “There never was such a hunting-ground, such forests or such a chance for farming. If any man is to find peace anywhere, it is in this country which we have discovered.”
And filled with this thought they completed their explorations in the following spring, and then made their way back to the settlements with the news.
CHAPTER VII
ATTACKED!
With the return of Daniel Boone and his brother to North Carolina the news of the beautiful country beyond the ridge began to spread. People were eager to hear of his adventures and of his discoveries; and from all the region around about the Yadkin they came to listen to him.
A great deal of discontent was abroad in North Carolina. The government was not at all what it should have been. Tryon was a corrupt, overbearing official, detested by the settlers; and the hardy spirits who kept the border were not of the sort to submit to tyranny. So when Boone came back with the beauties of Kentucky upon his tongue, the richness of her soil, the size of her streams and woods and the promise she held out to all who were willing to come to her, he set them all by the ears.
But the settlements were thin and far between; men were few; conditions were such that not all could drop their affairs in the north state and undertake an adventure into the new land. This being so, by the time a party of settlers was organized to go into and take up homesteads in Kentucky, several years passed.
Among the first to enlist in this expedition were Oliver Barclay, Eph Taylor and Sandy Campbell. Eph’s father meant to move his whole family into the new region, and the man for whom Sandy worked was about to do the same. Well grown, broad of shoulder and strong as young oaks, the three made no mean addition to the band.
“A few years make a great difference,” said Boone, as he looked at them. They were gathered before him by the sides of the horses upon which they had ridden over to his place. His head was nodding approvingly. “It’s such lads as you that are needed where there’s forests to be felled and redskins to be fought.”