In December, however, they were attacked by Indians.  Boon and a companion were captured; and when they escaped they found their camp broken up, and the rest of the party scattered and gone home.  About this time they were joined by Squire Boon, the brother of the great hunter, and himself a woodsman of but little less skill, together with another adventurer; the two had travelled through the immense wilderness, partly to explore it and partly with the hope of finding the original adventurers, which they finally succeeded in doing more by good luck than design.  Soon afterwards Boon’s companion in his first short captivity was again surprised by the Indians, and this time was slain[13]—­the first of the thousands of human beings with whose life-blood Kentucky was bought.  The attack was entirely unprovoked.  The Indians had wantonly shed the first blood.  The land belonged to no one tribe, but was hunted over by all, each feeling jealous of every other intruder; they attacked the whites, not because the whites had wronged them, but because their invariable policy was to kill any strangers on any grounds over which they themselves ever hunted, no matter what man had the best right thereto.  The Kentucky hunters were promptly taught that in this no-man’s-land, teeming with game and lacking even a solitary human habitation, every Indian must be regarded as a foe.

The man who had accompanied Squire Boon was terrified by the presence of the Indians, and now returned to the settlements.  The two brothers remained alone on their hunting-grounds throughout the winter, living in a little cabin.  About the first of May Squire set off alone to the settlements to procure horses and ammunition.  For three months Daniel Boon remained absolutely alone in the wilderness, without salt, sugar, or flour, and without the companionship of so much as a horse or a dog.[14] But the solitude-loving hunter, dauntless and self-reliant, enjoyed to the full his wild, lonely life; he passed his days hunting and exploring, wandering hither and thither over the country, while at night he lay off in the canebrakes or thickets, without a fire, so as not to attract the Indians.  Of the latter he saw many signs, and they sometimes came to his camp, but his sleepless wariness enabled him to avoid capture.  Late in July his brother returned, and met him according to appointment at the old camp.  Other hunters also now came into the Kentucky wilderness, and Boon joined a small party of them for a short time.  Such a party of hunters is always glad to have any thing wherewith to break the irksome monotony of the long evenings passed round the camp fire; and a book or a greasy pack of cards was as welcome in a camp of Kentucky riflemen in 1770 as it is to a party of Rocky Mountain hunters in 1888.  Boon has recorded in his own quaint phraseology an incident of his life during this summer, which shows how eagerly such a little band of frontiersmen read a book, and how real