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 captives two days without resting, and intended marrying them, but were overtaken by the colonel and his son, and a lover of the lady. The young couple, previous to this event, were on the point of marriage, and are now living as husband and wife in Kentucky. The captives cunningly indented the ground all the way from the Colonel's house with their high-heeled shoes, {230} so that they might be tracked; and when they saw their brave deliverers coming up full speed, they fell flat on the earth, while the firing of rifles commenced on the Indians, who tried in vain to kill their fair prisoners by throwing their knives and tomahawks at them; but the pursuers triumphed, and all were recovered and restored unhurt. General Boon now lives in solitude 600 miles up the remote Missouri. He is 80 years old, very active, very poor, a hunter and a recluse by choice, and trains up his sons in the same path, feeling more happiness than he possibly could in society, where he would have lived and died, if he had willed it, full of scars, and honours, and days. His parents were always poor; his disposition is kind and hospitable; his manners simple and gentle; preferring to live meanly and rudely as a hardy hunter and squatter, wanting nothing but what nature gives him, and his own hands get him. He sleeps on a bear-skin, and clothes himself in dressed deer-skin, and though shy, is kind to intruding strangers. The western country is indebted to him, as he leads the way into the best spots of the wilderness. He was the first white man in Old Kentucky, and the wide, wild west is full of his licks. A flourishing settlement always rises wherever he has once squatted, and whenever any settlers begin to approach near his location, he quits it for ever, and moves on further west; and the place, which he thus abandons, is called Boon's {231} Lick. He never wants