“Well, if you’ve nothing to keep you, Hardy, we’ll make tracks for the fort. No telling how many more Indians there may be about, and I’d rather eat than fight just now.” He threw his rifle over his shoulder and led the way to the beaten path with easy swinging strides, whistling as he went. Hardy presently ranged up alongside of him and immediately proceeded to unburden his mind. “You saved my life,” he said. “I hope I may do as much for you some day.” “Well, if I’m ever caught in the same kind of a fix,” said Kenton, with a laugh, “I hope you may be somewhere around. But it’s nothing to make a palaver about. In the backwoods it’s every man for himself and every man for his neighbor. If we didn’t stick together and help one another the redskins would soon wipe us out. “Say, that was a right pretty throw of yours with the tomahawk,” continued Kenton. “Who taught you?” “Daniel Boone,” replied Hardy, proudly. He then went on to explain his relationship to the great hunter. With boyish enthusiasm he told Kenton how Boone had taken him, a forlorn orphan, into his family and had treated him as a son. How the great hunter had tutored him in woodcraft, in the use of the rifle and the tomahawk and in the rude arts of the backwoods. When he had concluded his companion extended his hand, saying: “Shake again, Hardy! We shall see a good deal of each other, if I’m not mistaken. I’ve been at Hinkston’s, but when they all cleared out for fear of the Indians I made up my mind to come over here, because I know that there won’t be any backing down with Boone. He’s here to stay and so am I.” Their mutual admiration of Boone brought these two close together in a very short while. Kenton had only had one brief meeting with Hardy’s adoptive father but that had made a deep impression on him, and he listened with avidity to his young companion’s enthusiastic accounts of the man who had fostered him in his loneliness and had cared for him since. They picked up Hardy’s turkey on their way and Kenton helped to eat it at the Boone cabin a few hours later. The party was completed by the arrival of the head of the family from Harrodsburg in time for supper. Boone warmly welcomed Kenton to the settlement, for that young man had already made a name for himself as a good fellow, a fearless fighter, and an expert hunter. Boone strongly suspected that the time was fast approaching when such men would be invaluable to the community. As to Hardy, from the first he was strongly drawn to this handsome, cheery son of the wilderness and the more he saw of him the better he liked him. In fact, their dramatic encounter in the forest proved to be the beginning of a friendship that lasted through life. Many years afterwards, when another generation dwelt peacefully in Kentucky, Colonel Goodfellow was a frequent guest at the humble home of General Kenton in Urbana, Ohio. VII. THE CAPTURE OF BOONE