“And leave Kentucky?” I cried.

“Davy,” he answered sadly, “you kin cope with ’em.  They tell me you’re buildin’ a mill up at McChesney’s, and I reckon you’re as cute as any of ‘em.  They beat me.  I’m good for nothin’ but shootin’ and explorin’.”

We stood silent for a while, our attention caught by a quarrel which had suddenly come out of the doorway.  One of the men was Jim Willis,—­my friend of Clark’s campaign,—­who had a Henderson claim near Shawanee Springs.  The other was the hawk-eyed man of whom Mr. Boone had spoken, and fragments of their curses reached us where we stood.  The hunting shirts surged around them, alert now at the prospect of a fight; men came running in from all directions, and shouts of “Hang him!  Tomahawk him!” were heard on every side.  Mr. Boone did not move.  It was a common enough spectacle for him, and he was not excitable.  Moreover, he knew that the death of one extortioner more or less would have no effect on the system.  They had become as the fowls of the air.

“I was acrost the mountain last month,” said Mr. Boone, presently, “and one of them skunks had stole Campbell’s silver spoons at Abingdon.  Campbell was out arter him for a week with a coil of rope on his saddle.  But the varmint got to cover.”

Mr. Boone wished me luck in my new enterprise, bade me good-by, and set out for Redstone, where he was to measure a tract for a Revolutioner.  The speculator having been rescued from Jim Willis’s clutches by the sheriff, the crowd good-naturedly helped us load our stones between pack-horses, and some of them followed us all the way home that they might see the grinding.  Half of McAfee’s new station had heard the news, and came over likewise.  And from that day we ground as much corn as could be brought to us from miles around.

Polly Ann and I ran the mill and kept the accounts.  Often of a crisp autumn morning we heard a gobble-gobble above the tumbling of the water and found a wild turkey perched on top of the hopper, eating his fill.  Some of our meat we got that way.  As for Tom, he was off and on.  When the roving spirit seized him he made journeys to the westward with Cowan and Ray.  Generally they returned with packs of skins.  But sometimes soberly, thanking Heaven that their hair was left growing on their heads.  This, and patrolling the Wilderness Road and other militia duties, made up Tom’s life.  No sooner was the mill fairly started than off he went to the Cumberland.  I mention this, not alone because I remember well the day of his return, but because of a certain happening then that had a heavy influence on my after life.