We may think of that dignitary as smoking his pipe before his fireplace, perhaps; or making out, in his fantastic spelling, a record of his primitive court--for instance, that he had on that day given Pierre a dozen hickory thwacks, "well laid on," for starting a brawl with Antoine, and had bestowed the same upon Antoine for continuing the brawl with Pierre.

A knock at the door would bring the amiable invitation to enter, and the two young men would step across his threshold, while their followers crowded about the open door and hailed the old pathfinder.
One of the two leaders--the dark slender man with a subtle touch of the dreamer in his resolute face--was a stranger; but the other, with the more practical mien and the shock of hair that gave him the name of Red Head among the tribes, Boone had known as a lad in Kentucky.

To Daniel and this young visitor the encounter would be a simple meeting of friends, heightened in pleasure and interest somewhat, naturally, by the adventure in prospect.

But to us there is something vast in the thought of Daniel Boone, on his last frontier, grasping the hands of William Clark and Meriwether Lewis.
As for the rough and hearty mob at the door, Daniel must have known not a few of them well; though they had been children in the days when he and William Clark's brother strove for Kentucky.

It seems fitting that the soldiers with this expedition should have come from the garrison at Kaskaskia; since the taking of that fort in 1778 by George Rogers Clark had opened the western way from the boundaries of Kentucky to the Mississippi.