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 critters is everywhar, robbin’ men of their claims.  Davy,” said Mr. Boone, earnestly, “you know that I come into Kaintuckee when it waren’t nothin’ but wilderness, and resked my life time and again.  Them varmints is wuss’n redskins,—­they’ve robbed me already of half my claims.”

“Robbed you!” I exclaimed, indignant that he, of all men, should suffer.

“Ay,” he said, “robbed me.  They’ve took one claim after another, tracts that I staked out long afore they heerd of Kaintuckee.”  He rubbed his rifle barrel with his buckskin sleeve.  “I get a little for my skins, and a little by surveyin’.  But when the game goes I reckon I’ll go after it.”

“Where, Mr. Boone?” I asked.

“Whar? whar the varmints cyant foller.  Acrost the Mississippi into the Spanish wilderness.”