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."