ers. They hadn't stayed long in Rockingham County, barely long
enough to raise a crop, when they moved again. This time they journeyed
on down to the valley of the Yadkin River in North Carolina and there
they stayed. All but one son--Daniel Boone, a lad of eighteen. Even as a
boy he had roamed the woods alone, and once was lost for days. When his
father and friends found him, guided by a stream of smoke rising in the
distance, Daniel wasn't in tears. Instead, seated on the pelt of a wild
animal he had killed and roasting a piece of its meat at the fire, he
was whistling gaily. He had made for himself a crude shelter of branches
and pelts. It was useless to chide his son, the older Boone found out.
So he saved his breath and let Daniel roam at his will. Soon the boy was
exploring and hunting farther and farther into the mountains.

On one such venture the young hunter alone "cilled a bar" and left the
record of his feat carved with his hunting knife upon a tree. His
imagination was fired with the tales of warfare about him, of the
courage and independence of the men who dwelt far up in the mountains.
He knew of the heroism of George Washington who, four years after the
Boones left Pennsylvania, had led a company of mountain men against the
French. He had heard the stories of how Washington had been driven back
with his mountain men at Great Meadows. Boone longed to be in the thick
of the fray. So in 1755, when General Braddock came to "punish the
French for their insolence" and Washington accompanied him with one
hundred mountain men from North Carolina, Daniel Boone, for all his
youth, was among them--as brave a fighter and as skilled a shot as the
best.

This was high adventure for young Daniel. It spurred him to further
daring, and he set out on more and more distant explorations. Each time
he returned from his trips with marvelous tales of what he had seen, of
unbelievable numbers of buffalo and deer and wild beasts he had
encountered. He always had an audience. No one listened with greater
eagerness than the pretty dark-eyed daughter of the Bryans who were
neighbors to the Boones. Daniel was still a young man, only
twenty-three, when in 1755 he married Rebecca Bryan. They had five sons
and four daughters. Rebecca stayed home and took care of the children,
while her adventurous husband continued to rove and hunt on long
expeditions.

Neighbors gossiped, even in a pioneer settlement. They said Daniel
wasn't nice t