CHAPTER V.Boone, The Wanderer.
What thoughts filled Daniel Boone's mind as he was returning from Braddock's disastrous campaign in 1755 we may only conjecture.

Perhaps he was planning a career of soldiering, for in later years he was to distinguish himself as a frontier commander in both defense and attack.
Or it may be that his heart was full of the wondrous tales told him by the trader, John Findlay, of that Hunter's Canaan, Kentucky, where buffalo and deer roamed in thousands.

Perhaps he meant to set out ere long in search of the great adventure of his dreams, despite the terrible dangers of trail making across the zones of war into the unknown.
However that may be, Boone straightway followed neither of these possible plans on his return to the Yadkin but halted for a different adventure.

There, a rifle shot's distance from his threshold, was offered him the oldest and sweetest of all hazards to the daring.

He was twenty-two, strong and comely and a whole man; and therefore he was in no mind to refuse what life held out to him in the person of Rebecca Bryan.