e was
taken prisoner he got up, took one of their guns, and slipped away from
them without one of them waking up.

Many years afterwards, when he and others had built a fort in Kentucky,
and brought out their wives and children, Boone's daughters and two
other girls were carried off by Indians while they were out picking wild
flowers.

Boone and other hunters were soon on their trail, and followed it by the
broken bushes and bits of torn dress which the wide-awake young girls
had left behind them. In this way they came up to the Indians while they
were eating their supper, fired on them, and then ran up and rescued the
girls. These young folks did not go out of the fort to pick wild flowers
after that.

Once Daniel Boone was taken prisoner, and would have been burned alive
if an old woman had not taken him for her son. The Indians painted his
face and made him wear an Indian dress and live with them as one of
themselves. But one day he heard them talking, and found that they were
going to attack the fort where all his friends were. Then he slipped
out of the village and ran away. He had a long journey to make and the
Indians followed him close. But he walked in the water to hide his
footsteps, and lived on roots and berries, for fear they would hear his
gun if he shot any game. In the end he got back safe to the fort. He
found it in bad condition, but he set the men at work to make it strong,
and when the Indians came they were beaten off.

Daniel Boone lived to be a very old man, and kept going farther west to
get away from the new people who were coming into the Kentucky forest.
He said he wanted "elbow room." He spent all the rest of his life
hunting, and the Indians looked on him as the greatest woodsman and the
most wonderful hunter the white men ever had.

CHAPTER IX

A HERO OF THE COLONIES

DO you not think there are a great many interesting stories in American
history? I have told you some, and I could tell you many more. I am
going to tell you one now, about a brave young man who had a great deal
to do with the making of our glorious country. But to reach it we will
have to take a step backward over one hundred and fifty years. That is a
pretty long step, isn't it? It takes us away back to about the year
1750. But people had been coming into this country for more than a
hundred and fifty years before that, and there were a great many white
men and women in America at that time.

These people