During all these dangers there had ever been the horrible feeling that he was a fugitive and a murderer; but meeting by chance some one from his boyhood home, Simon Kenton learned that his former rival, William Veach, was still alive. He resumed his rightful name, hastened home, made friends with Veach, and started with his father and family again to this great paradise of the West. [Illustration: Simon Kenton] Kenton, so great in all the qualifications of the pioneer, was not schooled in the arts of civilization. His ignorance, coupled with his great confidence in men, which amounted almost to credulity, caused him to lose most of his valuable lands; but at last the legislature of Kentucky made some reparation to the old, heroic soldier whose deeds and daring will ever furnish ennobling themes for song and story. FOOTNOTE: [1] The name given the white men by the Indians on account of the long knives they carried in their belts. BOONE'S TRACE Though Kentucky was not the home, but merely the hunting grounds, of most of the Indians, yet there were varied and conflicting claims. While the Six Nations sold their title to this vast area to the British, and the Shawnees at last relinquished their rights, still the Cherokees pressed their claim until Henderson's company, composed of nine men of education and ability from North Carolina, purchased from them, in 1775, at the Watauga River, about seventeen million acres of land for ten thousand pounds ($50,000). This company hoped to found a colony and sell land to immigrants. They named this region Transylvania--"beyond the woods." Later, this purchase was declared by both Virginia and North Carolina to be null and void, and the plan was abandoned. Before this, however, Daniel Boone had been sent to open up a trace or road from the Holston River to the mouth of Otter Creek on the Kentucky River, where later Boonesborough was built and the first legislature in Kentucky was held. This road was to be for the travel of men and pack horses, the pioneer's train. Hastening forward with his brother, Squire Boone, Colonel Richard Calloway, and several others--thirty in all--Daniel Boone began to "blaze the way" in the wilderness for the countless thousands who were to come after them. Beginning at Watauga, the trace led to the Cumberland Gap, where it joined the "Warrior's Path," which it followed for about fifty miles northward; from this place it followed a buffalo trace to the northwest until it reached the Kentucky River.