, were surprised by Indians; the latter was killed and
scalped and Boone escaped with the greatest difficulty. At the battle of
Blue Licks, two years later, two sons fought at his side, one of whom
was killed and the other severely wounded. But Boone seemed to bear a
charmed life. His years in the wilderness had developed in him an
almost supernatural keenness of sight and hearing; and constant peril
from the Indians had made him very careful. Whenever he went into the
woods after game or Indians, he had perpetually to keep watch to make
sure that he was not being hunted in turn. Every turkey-call might mean
a lurking savage, every cracking twig might mean an approaching foe.

On one occasion, his daughter and two other girls were carried off by
Indians, and Boone, raising a small company, followed the trail of the
fugitives without resting for two days and a night; then came to where
the Indians had killed a buffalo calf and were camped around it, never
dreaming of danger. So Boone and his men crept up on them, shot down the
Indians and rescued the girls. On still another occasion, he was pursued
by Indians, who used a tracking dog to follow his trail. Boone turned,
shot the dog, and then made good his escape. Such incidents might be
related by the dozen. No wonder Boone was considered one of the most
valuable men on the frontier, and was a very tower of strength in
defending it against the Indians.

The end, however, was sad enough. When Kentucky was admitted to the
Union, Boone's titles to the land he had laid out for himself were
declared to be defective; it was all taken from him, and he moved first
to Ohio, and then to Missouri, where he spent his last years. He was
hale and hearty almost to the end, leading a hunting-party to the mouth
of the Kansas when he was eighty-two years old, and completely tiring
out its younger members. Nearly at the end of his life, Congress
recognized his services to his country by granting him eight hundred and
fifty acres of land in Missouri, and on this grant, the last years of
his life were spent. Chester Harding visited him just before the end and
painted a portrait of him which remains the best delineation of the
redoubtable old pioneer, whose striking face tells of the resolute will,
and unshrinking courage which made the settlement of Kentucky possible.

Scarcely less prominent than Boone on the Kentucky frontier, and with a
career in many ways even more adventurous, was Simon