Promptly at the end of three days of fasting Boone knew that the
war party would set forth no matter what the weather. It was a bad
omen otherwise. In single file, at spaced intervals, the painted
warriors would move from the town, firing their rifles slowly one
after the other... -from Chapter XIV This semifictionalized
biography of the legendary frontiersman, first published in 1921,
rings with desperate dialogue ("We'll be caught if we stay
here... the Indians are not far behind us") and gung-ho
wilderness adventure. From Boone's childhood along the banks of
the Delaware River-full of escapades "any normal and healthy
boy would have revelled in"-to his cantankerous old age, in
which he chafed to go further west to escape the encroachment of
civilization into his beloved Kentucky, this is a highly
entertaining life of the man who was never lost, but was
"bewildered once for three days." American writer STEWART
EDWARD WHITE (1873-1946) wrote of his own wilderness adventures in
The Claim Jumpers (1901) and The Blazed Trail (1902). His
historical novels include Gold (1913), The Gray Dawn (1915), and
The Rose Dawn (1920).
