By September,
however, even this latest addition to the party was ready for
travel; and that month saw the Boones with a small caravan of
families journeying towards Powell's Valley, whence the Warrior's
Path took its way through Cumberland Gap. At this point on the
march they were to be joined by William Russell, a famous
pioneer, from the Clinch River, with his family and a few
neighbors, and by some of Rebecca Boone's kinsmen, the Bryans,
from the lower Yadkin, with a company of forty men.
Of Rebecca Boone history tells us too little--only that she was
born a Bryan, was of low stature and dark eyed, that she bore her
husband ten children, and lived beside him to old age. Except on
his hunts and explorations, she went with him from one cabined
home to another, always deeper into the wilds. There are no
portraits of her. We can see her only as a shadowy figure moving
along the wilderness trails beside the man who accepted his
destiny of God to be a way-shower for those of lesser faith.
"He tires not forever on his leagues of march
Because her feet are set to his footprints,
And the gleam of her bare hand slants across his shoulder."
Boone halted his company on Walden Mountain over Powell's Valley
to await the Bryan contingent and dispatched two young men under
the leadership of his son James, then in his seventeenth year, to
notify Russell of the party's arrival.
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