ace, and the wondrous wheel rimmed with cow
horns to dip the water. And fixed on the wheel there was to be a crank
that worked the pounder in the mortar. So we were to grind until I could
arrange with Mr. Scarlett, the new storekeeper in Harrodstown, to have
two grinding-stones fetched across the mountains.

While the corn ripened and the melons swelled and the flax flowered, our
axes rang by the river's side; and sometimes, as we worked, Cowan
and Terrell and McCann and other Long Hunters would come and jeer
good-naturedly because we were turning civilized. Often they gave us a
lift.

It was September when the millstones arrived, and I spent a joyous
morning of final bargaining with Mr. Myron Scarlett. This Mr. Scarlett
was from Connecticut, had been a quartermaster in the army, and at
much risk brought ploughs and hardware, and scissors and buttons, and
broadcloth and corduroy, across the Alleghanies, and down the Ohio in
flatboats. These he sold at great profit. We had no money, not even
the worthless scrip that Congress issued; but a beaver skin was worth
eighteen shillings, a bearskin ten, and a fox or a deer or a wildcat
less. Half the village watched the barter. The rest lounged sullenly
about the land court.

The land court--curse of Kentucky! It was just a windowless log house
built outside the walls, our temple of avarice. The case was this:
Henderson (for whose company Daniel Boone cut the wilderness road)
believed that he had bought the country, and issued grants therefor. Tom
held one of these grants, alas, and many others whom I knew. Virginia
repudiated Henderson. Keen-faced speculators bought acre upon acre and
tract upon tract from the State, and crossed the mountains to extort.
Claims conflicted, titles lapped. There was the court set in the
sunlight in the midst of a fair land, held by the shameless, thronged
day after day by the homeless and the needy, jostling, quarrelling,
beseeching. Even as I looked upon this strife a man stood beside me.

"Drat 'em," said the stranger, as he watched a hawk-eyed extortioner in
drab, for these did not condescend to hunting shirts, "drat 'em, ef I
had my way I'd wring the neck of every mother's son of 'em."

I turned with a start, and there was Mr. Daniel Boone.

"Howdy, Davy," he said; "ye've growed some sence ye've ben with Clark."
He paused, and then continued in the same strain: "'Tis the same
at Boonesboro and up thar at the Falls settlement. The critter