Historical Tales [calibre 5.4.1]

These precautions taken, Boone led his party out, and was met by Duquesne and his brother officers. The terms proposed were liberal enough, but the astute frontiersman knew very well that the Indians would never assent to them. As the conference proceeded, the Indian chiefs drew near, and Blackfish, Boone's adopted father, professed the utmost friendship, and suggested that the treaty should be concluded in the Indian manner, by shaking hands.

The artifice was too shallow to deceive the silliest of the garrison. It was Blackfish's purpose to have two savages seize each of the whites, drag them away as prisoners, and then by threats of torture compel their comrades to surrender the fort. Boone, however, did not hesitate to assent to the proposition. He wished to unmask his wily foes. That done, he trusted to the strength of himself and his fellows, and the bullets of his riflemen, to bring his party in safety back to the fort.

It proved as he expected. No sooner had they yielded their hands to the Indians than a desperate attempt was made to drag them away. The surrounding Indians rushed to the aid of their fellows. From behind stumps and trees, a shower of bullets was poured upon the fort. But the alert pioneers were not taken by surprise. From the rifles of the garrison bullets were poured back. Boone easily shook off his assailant, and his companions did the same. Back to the fort they fled, bullets pattering after them, while the keen marksmen of the fort sent back their sharp response. In a few seconds the imperilled nine were behind the heavy gates, only one of their number, Boone's brother, being wounded. They had escaped a peril from which, for the moment, rescue seemed hopeless.

Baffled in their treachery, the assailants now made a fierce assault on the fort, upon which they kept up an incessant fire for nine days and nights, giving the beleaguered garrison scarcely a moment for rest. Hidden behind rocks and trees, they poured in their bullets in a manner far more brisk than effectual. The garrison but feebly responded to this incessant fusillade, feeling it necessary to husband their ammunition. But, unlike the fire of their foes, every shot of theirs told.

During this interval the assailants began to undermine the fort, beginning their tunnel at the river-bank. But the clay they threw out discolored the water and revealed their project, and the garrison at once began to countermine, by cutting a trench across the line of their projected passage. The enemy, in their turn, discovered this and gave up the attempt. Another of their efforts was to set fire to the fort by means of flaming arrows. This proved temporarily successful, the dry timbers of the roof bursting into flames. But one of the young men of the fort daringly sprang upon the roof, extinguished the fire, and returned unharmed, although bullets had fallen like hailstones around him.

At length, thoroughly discouraged, the enemy raised the siege and departed, having succeeded only in killing two and wounding four of the garrison, while their dead numbered thirty-seven, and their wounded a large number. One of these dead was a negro, who had deserted from the fort and joined the Indians, and whom Boone brought down with a bullet from the remarkable distance, for the rifles of that day, of five hundred and twenty-five feet. After the enemy had gone there were "picked up," says Boone, "one hundred and twenty-five pounds' weight of bullets, besides what stuck in the logs of the fort, which certainly is a great proof of their industry," whatever may be said of their marksmanship.

The remainder of Daniel Boone's life we can give but in outline. After the repulse of the enemy he returned to the Yadkin for his family, and brought them again to his chosen land. He came back to find an Indian war raging along the whole frontier, in which he was called to play an active part, and on more than one occasion owed his life to his strength, endurance, and sagacity. This warfare continued for a number of years, the Indians being generally successful, and large numbers of soldiers falling before their savage onsets. At length the conduct of the war was intrusted to "Mad Anthony" Wayne, whose skill, rapidity, and decision soon brought it to an end, and forced the tribes to conclude a treaty of peace.

Thenceforward Kentucky was undisturbed by Indian forays, and its settlement went forward with rapidity. The intrepid Boone had by no means passed through the fire of war unharmed. He tells us, "Two darling sons and a brother have I lost by savage hands, which have also taken from me forty valuable horses and abundance of cattle. Many dark and sleepless nights have I been a companion for owls, separated from the cheerful society of men, scorched by the summers' sun, and pinched by the winter's cold, an instrument ordained to settle the wilderness."