Chapter 2

One day the Indians went hunting. While they were gone, Boone ran away and started for Boonesborough.

The Indians followed him, but he was too clever for them. They lost his trail. In four days he traveled one hundred and sixty miles.

Finally he reached Boonesborough.

"The Indians are on the way! Get ready to fight!" he told the people.

Soon Chief Blackfish came with over four hundred Shawnees. He called Boone to come outside the fort. Daniel Boone went out bravely.

"Why did you run away?" Chief Blackfish asked Boone.

"I wanted to see my wife and my children," Boone answered.

"You have seen them," the Chief replied. "Now come back with me. You and all your people."

"Give me a little time to think it over," Boone said.

He hoped that help would come from other forts. He waited and waited, but no help came.

"We shall defend the fort as long as a man is living," Boone told the people.

The fight began. The Indians fired at the fort. The white men fired back. Everyone worked hard. The women and the children loaded guns and carried food to the men. The white men were outnumbered, but the Indians did not know this.

The men did not stop fighting for eight days and eight nights. By then everyone was very tired. The Indians had shot flaming torches, and the roofs of the cabins were on fire. Not a drop of water was left in the fort.

"Look! Look!" someone shouted.

The sky had been dark all day. Now it was starting to rain. It rained and it poured. The rain came down and put out the fires. It filled the tubs and pails with water to drink. Everyone felt hopeful again.

When morning came, no Indians were in sight. Every single one of them was gone. They had disappeared into the forest. The fort was saved.

Daniel Boone's Reward

The Indian raids kept on all over Kentucky. When the American Revolution ended, the British stopped helping the Indians fight the settlers. Some tribes kept on fighting on their own, but finally the settlers defeated the Indians and forced them to sign a treaty. Things slowly became more peaceful.

More and more settlers came west. They came over the Wilderness Road that Boone and his men had made. They came down the Ohio River in big flatboats. These settlers killed game in the forest. They cleared land, grew crops, built houses, and started towns.

Daniel Boone was fifty years old now. One day he discovered that he did not own any of the land he had thought was his.

"This does not seem right," he said. "I was one of the first to come to Kentucky. My life was hard. I risked it for the people many times."

It was not right, but it was true. Boone had been too busy hunting and trapping to put his claims on paper.

Boone lost almost all his land. He tried to farm, but he was not a good farmer. He tried to keep a store, but his heart was not in it. His good wife, Rebecca, often took his place in the store, while Daniel worked as a guide showing new settlers the way down the Ohio River. And he held some jobs with the new government.

One day hunters told Daniel Boone about land farther west near the great Mississippi River. "It's wild and free," they said. "There are bear and deer. There are herds of buffalo. It's the kind of land Kentucky used to be."

"That's the place for me," Boone said. "It's too crowded here. The other day I looked out of the window and saw the smoke of another man's cabin. I'll go west. I want elbow room."

And besides elbow room, he wanted land. He had always dreamed about owning a lot of land.

He was disappointed about losing his claims in Kentucky.

So Boone and his family went west. The land where they settled belonged to Spain. Later it was traded to the French and then bought by America. It is the land we now call Missouri.

The Spaniards were proud to have Daniel Boone live among them. They gave him all the land he wanted. He hunted and trapped in the new country as he had in the old. He sold the furs and skins for a good price.

Then Boone made a trip back to Kentucky. He called together all the people he had once known.

"I owed money to you when I left here," he said. "I want to pay my debts."

When he returned to his family in Missouri, Boone was a poor man again. But he had a smile on his face.

"I am a free man," he said. "I owe nothing to any man. That makes it worth being poor again."

The United States Congress voted to give Boone one thousand acres of land. It was a reward for all he had done in exploring and settling the West. He hunted and fished until he was very old. He never stopped exploring. He was still looking for adventure and elbow room!

But Daniel Boone, traveler, hunter, woodsman, and fighter, will be remembered longest as the man who opened the way to Kentucky.

* * * * *

"Get out of Kentucky and stay out!" the Indians told Daniel Boone. But Daniel Boone did not scare easily.

There was the time his daughter was kidnaped by the Indians. Boone tracked the kidnapers through the forest and rescued her.

There was the time Boone was captured by the Shawnees. He escaped in time to warn the people of Boonesborough: "The Indians are coming! Get ready to fight!"

Boone's life was full of adventure. And this book tells his story.

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