He was apparently cut off from
escape, for the savages were on three sides, advancing without
haste to take him, meanwhile greeting him with mock amity. Over
the cliff leaped Boone and into the outspread arms of a friendly
maple, whose top bloomed green about sixty feet below the cliff's
rim, and left his would-be captors on the height above, grunting
their amazement.
During this summer Boone journeyed through the valleys of the
Kentucky and the Licking. He followed the buffalo traces to the
two Blue Licks and saw the enormous herds licking up the salt
earth, a darkly ruddy moving mass of beasts whose numbers could
not be counted. For many miles he wound along the Ohio, as far as
the Falls. He also found the Big Bone Lick with its mammoth
fossils.
In July, 1770, Daniel returned to the Red River camp and there
met Squire Boone with another pack of supplies. The two brothers
continued their hunting and exploration together for some months,
chiefly in Jessamine County, where two caves still bear Boone's
name. In that winter they even braved the Green River ground,
whence had come the hunting Shawanoes who had taken Daniel's
first fruits a year before. In the same year (1770) there had
come into Kentucky from the Yadkin another party of hunters,
called, from their lengthy sojourn in the twilight zone, the Long
Hunters.
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