fle, after the harvest, aiding in
defense against the Indians. In 1759 he purchased from his father a
lot on Sugar Tree Creek, a tributary of Dutchman's Creek (Davie County,
North Carolina) and built thereon a cabin for himself. The date when he
brought his wife and children to live in their new abode on the border
is not recorded. It was probably some time after the close of the Indian
War. Of Boone himself during these years we have but scant information.
We hear of him again in Virginia and also as a member of the pack-horse
caravan which brought into the Back Country the various necessaries for
the settlers. We know, too, that in the fall of 1760 he was on a lone
hunting trip in the mountains west of the Yadkin; for until a few years
ago there might be seen, still standing on the banks of Boone's Creek (a
small tributary of the Watauga) in eastern Tennessee, a tree bearing the
legend, "D Boon cilled A BAR on this tree 1760." Boone was always fond
of carving his exploits on trees, and his wanderings have been traced
largely by his arboreal publications. In the next year (1761) he went
with Waddell's rangers when they marched with the army to the final
subjugation of the Cherokee.

That Boone and his family were back on the border in the new cabin
shortly after the end of the war, we gather from the fact that in 1764
he took his little son James, aged seven, on one of his long hunting
excursions. From this time dates the intimate comradeship of father and
son through all the perils of the wilderness, a comradeship to come
to its tragic end ten years later when, as we shall see, the
seventeen-year-old lad fell under the red man's tomahawk as his father
was leading the first settlers towards Kentucky. In the cold nights
of the open camp, as Daniel and James lay under the frosty stars, the
father kept the boy warm snuggled to his breast under the broad flap
of his hunting shirt. Sometimes the two were away from home for months
together, and Daniel declared little James to be as good a woodsman as
his father.

Meanwhile fascinating accounts of the new land of Florida, ceded
to Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, had leaked into the Back
Country; and in the winter of 1765 Boone set off southward on horseback
with, seven companions. Colonel James Grant, with whose army Boone had
fought in 1761, had been appointed Governor of the new colony and was
offering generous inducements to settlers. The party traveled along the