[Footnote: Virginia State Papers, I., 451.] Nevertheless small straggling bands of young braves occasionally came down through the woods; and though they did not attack any fort or any large body of men, they were ever on the watch to steal horses, burn lonely cabins, and waylay travellers between the stations.

They shot the solitary settlers who had gone out to till their clearings by stealth, or ambushed the boys who were driving in the milk cows or visiting their lines of traps.

It was well for the victim if he was killed at once; otherwise he was bound with hickory withes and driven to the distant Indian towns, there to be tortured with hideous cruelty and burned to death at the stake.

[Footnote: McAfee MSS.

The last was an incident that happened to a young man named McCoun on March 8, 1781.] Boon himself suffered at the hands of one of these parties.