Mrs. Boone and the younger children were safely stowed away in
canvas-covered wagons, such as were later known as "prairie schooners,"
and Squire Boone with Daniel and the older boys rode horseback, driving
the cattle before them, and forming an armed guard about the caravan.
They crossed the ford at Harper's Ferry and went on up the rich
Shenandoah Valley. At night camp was pitched by a spring and the wagons
drawn up in a circle about the cattle. A camp-fire was built and the
game which Daniel as huntsman had shot was cooked for supper. Sentries
were posted, and all night long father and sons took turns guarding
against attack from Indians.

Think what a prospect lay before the pioneers! A vast tract of the
fairest and richest land in the world waiting to be claimed from the
wilderness. They had only to choose and take. But the zeal for
exploration led them on, over the table-land of western Virginia,
through the primeval forests, up the currents of the many rivers that
flow toward the Ohio, and so on to the south and west.

As they neared the Yadkin they came to a splendid stretch of land; a
high prairie, with fine grass for cattle, and near at hand streams edged
with cane-brake. Daniel saw such fish and game as he had never seen
before, fruit to be had for the taking, and a cattle range only bounded
by the distant western mountains. But as he rode into the splendid
prairie he thought more of those distant blue-topped heights than of the
near-by meadows; he knew that on and on westward lay a great unknown
country and already he felt it call to him to be explored.

Squire Boone chose land at a place called Buffalo Lick near the Yadkin
River, and built a home there. Daniel now spent little time about the
farm, for he had learned the value of skins in the Atlantic cities.
Buffalo were plentiful all about the settlement, and he could kill four
or five deer in a day. It was in truth a hunter's paradise. In a single
day he could kill enough bears to make a ton of what was called
bear-bacon; there were numberless wolves, panthers, and wildcats;
turkeys, beavers, otters and smaller animals ran wild all about him, and
from morn till night he was out hunting in the woods.

But life was not all sport for the young Boones. Various Indian tribes,
the Catawbas, the Cherokees, and the Shawnese hunted not far away, and
although they were often on friendly terms with the whites, and came to
the settlement to trade, sometimes they