Finding their camp deserted upon their return, Boone and Stewart
hastened on and finally overtook their companions. Here Boone was
both surprised and delighted to encounter his brother Squire,
loaded down with supplies. Having heard nothing from Boone, the
partners of the land company had surmised that he and his party
must have run short of ammunition, flour, salt, and other things
sorely needed in the wilderness; and because of their desire that
the party should remain, in order to make an exhaustive
exploration of the country, Squire Boone had been sent to him
with supplies. Findlay, Holden, Mooney, and Cooley returned to
the settlements; but Stewart, Squire Boone, and Alexander Neely,
who had accompanied Squire, threw in their lot with the intrepid
Daniel, and fared forth once more to the stirring and bracing
adventures of the Kentucky wilderness. In Daniel Boone's own
words, he expected "from the furs and peltries they had an
opportunity of taking . . . to recruit his shattered
circumstances; discharge the debts he had contracted by the
adventure; and shortly return under better auspices, to settle
the newly discovered country."

Boone and his party now stationed themselves near the mouth of
the Red River, and soon provided themselves, against the hard.
ships of the long winter, with jerk, bear's oil, buffalo tallow,
dried buffalo tongues, fresh meat, and marrow-bones as food, and
buffalo robes and bearskins as shelter from the inclement
weather. Neely had brought with him, to while away dull hours, a
copy of "Gulliver's Travels"; and in describing Neely's
successful hunt for buffalo one day, Boone in after years
amusingly deposed: "In the year 1770 I encamped on Red River with
five other men, and we had with us for our amusement the History