A knock at the door would bring the
amiable invitation to enter, and the two young men would step
across his threshold, while their followers crowded about the
open door and hailed the old pathfinder.
One of the two leaders--the dark slender man with a subtle touch
of the dreamer in his resolute face--was a stranger; but the
other, with the more practical mien and the shock of hair that
gave him the name of Red Head among the tribes, Boone had known
as a lad in Kentucky. To Daniel and this young visitor the
encounter would be a simple meeting of friends, heightened in
pleasure and interest somewhat, naturally, by the adventure in
prospect. But to us there is something vast in the thought of
Daniel Boone, on his last frontier, grasping the hands of William
Clark and Meriwether Lewis.
As for the rough and hearty mob at the door, Daniel must have
known not a few of them well; though they had been children in
the days when he and William Clark's brother strove for Kentucky.
It seems fitting that the soldiers with this expedition should
have come from the garrison at Kaskaskia; since the taking of
that fort in 1778 by George Rogers Clark had opened the western
way from the boundaries of Kentucky to the Mississippi. And among
the young Kentuckians enlisted by William Clark were sons of the
sturdy fighters of still an earlier border line, Clinch and
Holston Valley men who had adventured under another Lewis at
Point Pleasant.
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