During this comparatively peaceful fall the settlers fared well; though the men were ever on the watch for Indian war parties, while the mothers, if their children were naughty, frightened them into quiet with the threat that the Shawnees would catch them. The widows and the fatherless were cared for by the other families of the different stations. The season of want and scarcity had passed for ever; from thenceforth on there was abundance in Kentucky. The crops did not fail; not only was there plenty of corn, the one essential, but there was also wheat, as well as potatoes, melons, pumpkins, turnips, and the like. Sugar was made by tapping the maple trees; but salt was bought at a very exorbitant price at the Falls, being carried down in boats from the old Redstone Fort. Flax had been generally sown (though in the poorer settlements nettle bark still served as a substitute), and the young men and girls formed parties to pick it, often ending their labor by an hour or two's search for wild plums. The men killed all the game they wished, and so there was no lack of meat. They also surveyed the land and tended the stock--cattle, horses, and hogs, which throve and multiplied out on the range, fattening on the cane, and large white buffalo-clover. At odd times the men and boys visited their lines of traps. Furs formed almost the only currency, except a little paper money; but as there were no stores west of the mountains, this was all that was needed, and each settlement raised most things for itself, and procured the rest by barter.