For a decade these settlers had known Daniel Boone, as
storekeeper, as surveyor, as guide and soldier. They had eaten of
the game he killed and lavishly distributed. And they too--like
the folk of Clinch Valley in the year of Dunmore's War--had
petitioned Virginia to bestow military rank upon their protector.
"Lieutenant Colonel" had been his title among them, by their
demand. Once indeed he had represented them in the Virginia
Assembly and, for that purpose, trudged to Richmond with rifle
and hunting dog. Not interested in the Legislature's proceedings,
he left early in the session and tramped home again.
But not even the esteem of friends and neighbors could hold the
great hunter when the deer had fled. So Daniel Boone was now on
his way westward to Missouri, to a new land of fabled herds and
wide spaces, where the hunter's gun might speak its one word with
authority and where the soul of a silent and fearless man might
find its true abode in Nature's solitude. Waving his last
farewells, he floated past the little groups--till their shouts
of good will were long silenced, and his fleet swung out upon
the Ohio.
As Boone sailed on down the Beautiful River which forms the
northern boundary of Kentucky, old friends and newcomers who had
only heard his fame rode from far and near to greet and godspeed
him on his way.
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