One of these, Gasper Mansker, afterwards related how the
Long Hunters were startled one day by hearing sounds such as no
buffalo or turkey ever made, and how Mansker himself stole
silently under cover of the trees towards the place whence the
strange noises came, and descried Daniel Boone prone on his back
with a deerskin under him, his famous tall black hat beside him
and his mouth opened wide in joyous but apparently none too
tuneful song. This incident gives a true character touch. It is
not recorded of any of the men who turned back that they sang
alone in the wilderness.
In March, 1771, the two Boones started homeward, their horses
bearing the rich harvest of furs and deerskins which was to clear
Daniel of debt and to insure the comfort of the family he had not
seen for two years. But again evil fortune met them, this time in
the very gates--for in the Cumberland Gap they were suddenly
surrounded by Indians who took everything from them, leaving them
neither guns nor horses.
Chapter VI. The Fight For Kentucky
When Boone returned home he found the Back Country of North
Carolina in the throes of the Regulation Movement. This movement,
which had arisen first from the colonists' need to police their
settlements, had more recently assumed a political character.
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