with double verandas and chimneys at either end, the finest mansion on the border.
But in March Rebecca died. Boone buried her where he could watch the mound.
The house was finished. The Colonel bought a coffin and put it under the bed to be ready. Sometimes he tried his coffin, to see how it would seem when he slept beside Rebecca.
In December came the land, a thousand arpents in his Spanish grant. "If I only cud hev told Rebecca," sobbed Daniel, kneeling at her grave. "She war a good woman, and the faithful companion of all my wanderings."
In the Spring Boone sold his land, and set out for Kentucky.
"Daniel Boone has come! Daniel Boone has come!" Old hunters, Revolutionary heroes, came for miles to see their leader who had opened Kentucky. There was a reception at Maysville. Parties were given in his honour wherever he went. Once more he embraced his old friend, Simon Kenton.
"How much do I owe ye?" he said to one and another.
Whatever amount they named, that he paid, and departed. One day the dusty old hunter re-entered his son's house on the Femme Osage with fifty cents in his pocket.
"Now I am ready and willing to die. I have paid all my debts and nobody can say, 'Boone was a dishonest man.'"
Then came the climax of his life.
"Nate, I am goin' to the Yellowstone."
While Clark was holding his peace treaties, Daniel Boone, eighty-two years old, with a dozen others set out in boats for the Upper Missouri.
Autumn came. Somewhere in the present Montana, they threw up a winter camp and were besieged by Indians. A heavy snow-storm drove the Indians off. In early Spring, coming down the Missouri on the return, again they were attacked by Indians and landed in a thicket of the opposite shore. Under cover of a storm in the night Boone ordered them into the boat, and silently in the pelting rain they e
