At last shouts from those stationed farthest up the stream echoed down the valley and told the rest that what they had come out to see was at hand.
Several pirogues drifted into view on the river, now brightening in the sunshine.

In the vessels were men and their families; bales and bundles and pieces of household furnishings, heaped to the gunwale; a few cattle and horses standing patiently.

But it was for one man above all that the eager eyes of the settlers were watching, and him they saw clearly as his boat swung by--a tall figure, erect and powerful, his keen friendly blue eyes undimmed and his ruddy face unlined by time, though sixty-five winters had frosted his black hair.
For a decade these settlers had known Daniel Boone, as storekeeper, as surveyor, as guide and soldier.

They had eaten of the game he killed and lavishly distributed.

And they too--like the folk of Clinch Valley in the year of Dunmore's War--had petitioned Virginia to bestow military rank upon their protector.