Mr. Boone and Father Return

Finally they came, father and Mr. Boone. They had traveled many hundred miles, going as far as the Falls of the Ohio and warning all the white men on that land, which the Indians called the "dark and bloody ground," of what was likely to happen.

"Now we'll make ready to go over into Kentucky, or to our old home," Jemima whispered to me as we listened to the news our men had brought, and I agreed. But before the first evening had come to an end we knew that there was no hope of our leaving the Clinch River yet. Lord Dunmore was about to send out an army in order—to clear Kentucky of the Indians, and Mr. Boone and my father had come back only to persuade the settlers in Powell's Valley and on the Clinch to enlist as. soldiers.

Mother was almost disheartened because father was to leave us again, and we children were silenced by the thought of more battles to be fought.

I need not write more regarding our life on the Clinch, save to say that our fathers joined Governor Dunmore's army and that we did not see them again until the war was ended, although the Indians were not driven out of Kentucky, as we have good reason to know.

The two men were no sooner with us again than there came to our cabin a Mr. Henderson, who had bought from the Cherokee Indians a large section of land in Kentucky and was eager to make settlements there. He wanted to hire Jemima's father to make a trace, which should, after crossing the Gap and following the Warriors' Path fifty miles or more, strike off to the north, running from Powell's Valley into the new country no less than three hundred miles.