So the rude pioneer home, with its lack of conveniences and space and its few rude, imperfect tools, was the factory where were prepared not only the clothing and food, but also the furniture and the medicine. BOONE'S ILLUSTRIOUS PEER Among the hardy backwoodsmen, fearless hunters, and brave fighters, there looms no nobler figure than that of Simon Kenton, born of humble, Scotch-Irish parents in Virginia, April 13, 1755. At sixteen he was a stalwart youth with scarcely any education, with a kind heart but unrestrained emotions. Having fallen very much in love with a beautiful girl of his neighborhood, and having lost her to a successful rival, he went as an uninvited guest to the wedding festivities, where he made himself so disagreeable that the infuriated groom and his brothers gave him a severe beating. Shortly after this, meeting his former rival, William Veach, Kenton provoked a fight and was so much the physical superior that soon his adversary fell bruised, bleeding, and unconscious; kind-hearted Kenton, feeling that he had been cruel in his treatment, lifted up the head of his insensible victim, spoke to him, but receiving no reply, thought him dead. Much alarmed, he left the seemingly lifeless body and fled to the woods. Feeling himself a murderer and a fugitive from justice, he warily made his way to Cheat River, where he changed his name to Simon Butler, and worked long enough to secure a gun and ammunition. In order to lose himself and forget his trouble in the western wilderness, he joined a party to Fort Pitt, where he hunted for the garrison and forts, and met Simon Girty, who afterwards saved his life. Two others, George Yeager and John Strader, came with him that autumn on his first visit to Kentucky, lured on by the glowing accounts of the "cane land" that Yeager had heard of from the Indians. They came down the Ohio to the mouth of the Kentucky, but soon returned to the Big Kanawha, where they camped, hunted, and trapped until March, 1773. Yeager was killed by the Indians, and Kenton and Strader fled to the woods barefooted and almost naked, with no food and no weapons. For six days they wandered weary, footsore, and hungry, until finally in despair they lay down to die. Gathering hope anew, they pressed on and near the Ohio met some hunters who gladly gave them food and clothing. Going with them, Kenton worked for another rifle and in the summer of the same year went down the Ohio with a party in search of Captain Bullitt. They failed to find him and the party returned through the wilds of Kentucky to Virginia with Kenton as guide.