lowed himself to be so far
excited by the heroic behavior of a friend who had saved his life in
an Indian fight, at the risk of his own, as to say, "You behaved like a
man, that time."

This friend was Simon Kenton, or rather Simon Butler, one of the
greatest of all the Indian hunters of Kentucky and Ohio. He had changed
his name to escape pursuit from his old home in Virginia, when he fled
leaving one of his neighbors, as he supposed, dead on the ground after
a fight, and he kept the name he had taken through the rest of his life.
He wandered about on the frontier and in the wilderness beyond it
for several years, fighting the savages single handed or with a few
comrades, and at times serving as scout or spy in the expeditions of the
English against them. When the Revolution began, he sided of course with
his own people, and he stood two sieges by the Indians in Boonesborough.
It was here that Boone found him in 1778 when he escaped from Old
Chillicothe, and they promptly made a foray together into the Ohio
country, against an Indian town on Paint Creek. They fell in with a war
party on the way, and after some fighting, Boone went back, but Kenton
kept on with another friend, and did not return till they had stolen
some Indian horses. As soon as they reached Boonesborough the commandant
sent them into Ohio again to reconnoiter a town on the Little Miami
which he wished to attack, and here once more Kenton was tempted by the
chance to steal horses. He could not bear to leave any, and he and his
men started homeward through the woods with the whole herd. When they
came to the Ohio, it was so rough that Kenton was nearly drowned in
trying to cross the river. He got back to the northern shore, where they
all waited for the wind to go down, and the waves to fall, and where
the Indians found them the second morning. His comrades were killed and
Kenton was taken prisoner by the Indians whose horses they had stolen.
The Indians were always stealing white men's horses, but they seemed to
think it was very much more wicked and shameful for white men to steal
Indians' horses. They fell upon Kenton and beat him over the head with
their ramrods and mocked him with cries of, "Steal Indians' hoss, hey!"
But this was only the beginning of his sufferings. They fastened him
for the night by stretching him on the ground with one stick across
his breast and another down his middle, and tying his hands and feet to
these with thongs of buff