The night attack upon the stockade—“Not a shot, mind, till I fire, and then let them have it”—The Indians are repulsed but come again with firebrands—They set fire to a cabin—Hardy’s brave fight with the flames—“That was well done, son,—very well done”—The savages are beaten off after fierce fighting—A renegade negro snipes the settlers from a tree-top—Boone puts a bullet through his brain at long range—The Indians attempt to undermine the fort—The scheme is frustrated and they raise the siege—Boone goes after his family.

Fortunately for the brave hearts at Boonesborough, the summer nights afforded but brief cover of darkness. In fact, at the time of the siege a bright moon shone during the early hours and only for a short space before dawn was it possible for a man to approach within thirty or forty yards of the palisades without detection. Nevertheless, serious determined night attacks by the entire Indian force could hardly have failed to overwhelm the little garrison in time. During that dangerous period Boone required every man to be alert at his post. At other times of the night sentries were placed, but those off immediate duty slept with their rifles ready to the hand and within a few feet of the port-holes they were required to command. Boone never closed his eyes between suns whilst the siege lasted but passed his time on the lookout and in visiting his sentries. For rest he depended upon snatches of sleep in the daytime when favorable opportunities occurred. Very few hours sufficed to recuperate him after the hardest day.

The night succeeding the fiasco of the treaty was wearing towards its close. It was the hour preceding dawn, when all nature seems to be silently crouching for the spring into the life of a new day. Boone stood at the port-hole of the upper story of one of the blockhouses, the cool breeze from the west fanning his brow. A sigh escaped him as he thought of the many lives that had been sacrificed for the possession of “the dark and bloody ground” of Kentucky, and the many more that would be demanded. For Boone was a fighter of necessity, not from choice. Action was the very spice of life to him and he loved the stress of conflict, as every strong man must, but he found no pleasure in bloodshed. Boone killed as a measure of self-preservation and for the protection of others. Although he was moved as much as any man to sorrow and indignation at the thought of the women and children barbarously murdered or carried to a cruel captivity, he never allowed vengeful passion to sway him. And the stern, cool temper in which he met the foe made him the more terrible and dangerous antagonist. Such he looked now, his mind having passed on to the thought that, no matter what the cost, Kentucky must and should be held by the people who were willing to convert its wilderness into fair fields and rich pastures.

From time to time the tireless watcher moved from a port-hole and stepped noiselessly to another, commanding a different direction. The ordinary man could with difficulty have discerned an object upon the ground immediately below Boone’s position, but the keen eyes of the hunter, accustomed to the gloom of the forest, penetrated the darkness to at least the distance of fifty yards.

Suddenly the silence was broken by the hoot of an owl. Boone listened intently. In a few seconds the cry was repeated, as though by a bird at some distance from the first. Boone stretched forth his foot and touched the form of a sleeper upon the floor. In an instant Kenton was on his feet, and at the same moment the owl’s cry again floated over the night air to them.

“Injuns on the move, Kenton,” said Boone in low tones and without a trace of excitement in his voice. “Give Hardy a jolt. Now you two slip round the stockade in opposite directions. Have every man stand to his post as quietly as possible and wait for the signal from me. Not a shot, mind, till I fire, and then let them have it. Quick! They’re in the clearing already, if I’m not mistaken.”

When Kenton and Hardy had disappeared down the ladder, Boone took up his rifle and ran his hand over the flint-lock. Satisfied that it was ready for service, he stood it against the wall by his side and peered out of the port-hole. Hardly more than five minutes had elapsed when he imagined that he discerned a dark wall moving towards him. A minute later he was certain. The Indians were about eighty yards away and stealing forward as noiselessly as shadows. Without removing his eyes from the advancing foe, Boone slowly brought his rifle into position and dropped his right cheek upon the stock. When he judged the line of redskins to be fifty yards distant he pressed the trigger.

Boone’s signal shot had hardly sounded when seventy reports rang out almost in a volley. The Indians checked in surprise. Then with a yell they rushed forward, and again seventy trusty guns spoke with tongues of fire. Still the redskins came on, discharging their pieces as they ran. They were within a few paces of the stockade—some, indeed, had reached it—when once more the defenders fired into their ranks. Had they pushed the assault the savages might have carried the fort with their tomahawks, but they checked again and then fell back to reload.

Then occurred one of those strange lulls that commonly happen in fights and even in battles. No movement was detectable on either side and comparative silence prevailed. Suddenly Kenton’s voice was heard serenely singing the lines of a popular ballad of the time:

“That fellow will sing going to his own funeral,” muttered Boone, but he was pleased to hear the cheery laugh that ran round the stockade in response to Kenton’s song.

Anon the chiefs were heard exhorting their tribesmen to renewed efforts, and soon it was seen that they had kindled a fire. This was far enough back to be out of effective range from the fort. As soon as the flames sprang up, a long line of the redskins filed past the fire and each one of them ignited a resin-soaked torch. The defenders instantly divined the purport of this movement, and realized that they were about to be subjected to one of the most dreaded forms of attack. When employed determinedly, fire was the most effective auxiliary the Indians could enlist. Even though they failed to burn a breach in the defences, they gained the advantage of drawing a number of riflemen from the firing line to the task of fighting the flames.

The garrison had enjoyed but a brief respite when the Indians were again upon them. Just as the first gray tints of dawn appeared in the sky, and before Kenton had finished the third verse of his lyric, the ranks of dusky warriors began to advance in a wide crescent formation calculated to envelop three sides of the stockade. Interspersed through their line were some thirty or forty torch-bearers, who immediately became the marks of the riflemen. Many of the savages carried bundles of sticks and grass to be laid against the walls of the cabins and blockhouses and lighted. Boone was now in the square, where he could best direct operations against this new form of attack.

When they had come within one hundred yards of the palisades the Indians rushed forward with the most unearthly yells and whoops. The efforts of the defenders were chiefly directed towards preventing the men bearing torches and combustibles from approaching near enough to lay the latter or to throw the former on the roofs of the buildings. At the same time the horde of howling redskins had to be held back. Fierce fighting followed along every side of the stockade. Every man strove and strained for dear life. The women worked hard, loading spare rifles, of which there were fortunately a considerable number in hand. Here and there an Indian gained the top of the palisade, when a hand-to-hand struggle with tomahawks ensued. The din of musketry, the cries of the combatants, the howling of dogs, and the bellowing of cattle, created a veritable pandemonium.

Presently it was discovered that the roof of one of the cabins had ignited and was burning fiercely. Kenton and Hardy were the first at the spot.

“Give me a boost up, Hardy,” cried Kenton, standing with his face to the building and arms uplifted. Instead, Hardy took a flying leap upon his friend’s back and grasped the eaves of the cabin.

“Come off that!” shouted Kenton, trying to seize Hardy by the leg, but the youngster wriggled out of reach and gained a footing on the roof.

“How’s that for impudence, Captain?” said Kenton to Boone, who was now beside him. “Order him down, won’t you?”

“I’m all right, Dad! Hurry up the buckets!” shouted Hardy.

Boone loved the lad more than he had realized until he saw him in his present extremely perilous position. For an instant Boone hesitated, but only for an instant, before he answered the scout:

“Let him be, Kenton. He’s playing a man’s part and we haven’t the right to baulk him. Not water!” he cried to the women, who now arrived with several buckets of the fluid. “Not water! We shall need every drop we have. We must make sand serve, if it will. Hurry with some empty buckets.”

In the meanwhile, Hardy had sense enough not to expose himself unnecessarily but lay prone along the edge of the roof. In a few minutes half a dozen women were digging energetically in the sandy soil of the square and filling the buckets, which Boone and Kenton handed up to Hardy. The lad was now obliged to stand, and immediately his form, clearly outlined in the lurid light, became the target for a hundred rifles. A frontiersman would have brought him down in a minute, and although the Indians were poor shots, it was a miracle that he lived through the fusillade that they directed against him. At one time he felt a sudden stinging sensation in his right thigh and looked down to see if an ember had burned through his leggings. A little later, a hot iron seemed to sear his cheek, and when he put his hand to the place it came away covered with blood.

In hardly more than five minutes after the buckets began to come up Hardy had the fire out, and, shouting a warning to those below, dropped upon his stomach and slid off the roof into the arms of Kenton.

“That was well done, son,—very well done,” said Boone. “Now back to your post. The Injuns will draw off at daybreak, but they may come strong once again before that.”

The fire which Hardy had extinguished was the only one that got well under way, and the failure in that case seemed to discourage the Indians. The attack slackened perceptibly and soon they withdrew, carrying away their dead and wounded. When the defenders checked up their casualties it was found that only two men had been killed outright. A number had received more or less severe injuries, and among these was Hardy. His clothing had been pierced in four places. His hurts were slight. They consisted of a flesh wound in the thigh and an abrased cheek, and though the former incapacitated him during the remainder of the siege, it soon healed.

This attack, in which they lost heavily, thoroughly disheartened the Indians. The siege was maintained for nine days longer with almost constant fighting, but no such assault as that of the first night was again attempted. Occasionally small parties endeavored to set fires against the walls under cover of darkness, but they always found that a vigilant watch was maintained and no redskin could approach within a hundred yards of the fort except at the peril of his life.

During the day, the besiegers kept up a constant fire against the stockade, but did little damage. They wasted an enormous amount of ammunition, for after their departure the garrison gathered up over two thousand pounds of musket-balls in the vicinity, not to mention the number that were embedded in the walls of the stockade. The settlers, on the other hand, husbanded their resources and fired only when there was a good chance of doing execution. Men stood to the port-holes constantly, and an Indian could not show himself in the clearing during daylight but he immediately became the target of some sharpshooter.

A negro had escaped from the fort during the parley that preceded the attack which has been described, carrying with him a rifle and ammunition. This man took up his station in a tree, at a distance which he considered safe to himself but which rendered his fire practically harmless. He spent several days in shooting at the occupants of the stockade, but little attention was paid to him until one of his nearly spent bullets hit a woman on the hip, causing a painful contusion. Then some of the men tried to dislodge him. They had expended half a dozen or more charges without effect when Boone sauntered up to them.

“I’m afraid you’re using up a lot of good powder and shot needlessly, Aiken,” Boone said to one just about to aim.

“We’re trying to get the range, Captain,” replied the man.

“Well, let me see if I can get it for you.”

The head of the negro was presently seen as he peered out from between two forking branches of the tree. Boone’s eye ran over the ground in a calculation of the distance. Then he rested his rifle on a post and took a long, steady aim. There was a whip-like crack, and the body of the negro came hurtling to the ground. Afterwards it was found with a ball in the skull, the shot having been made at one hundred and seventy-five yards. The Indians who buried, or carried away, their own dead, would not touch the body of the negro.

The siege had continued for five or six days when Boone, from his lookout in the upper story of a blockhouse, noticed one morning that the water below the fort was muddy whilst that above ran clear as usual. The bank was high and nothing could be seen to account for the strange condition. Boone watched for several hours, during which time the phenomenon continued, and came to the conclusion that the Indians, directed by their white allies, were endeavoring to enter the fort by mining.

Having calculated with sufficient precision the direction of the tunnel under construction by the besiegers, Boone began counter-operations. He set men to work digging an underground passage from within the stockade. The earth that was excavated, he ordered to be thrown over the palisade as an intimation to the attackers of what he was about. This had the desired effect. The Indians realized that they were baulked, and on the following day abandoned their project.

On the twentieth day of August the discomfited chiefs, Blackfish and De Quindre, withdrew their forces and took the route to the Indian country. They left with a very wholesome opinion of the prowess of the backwoodsmen, and of the people of Boonesborough in particular. In fact, that place was never again directly attacked by the Indians, who seemed to accept the idea that it was impregnable.

The settlers were now justified in the belief that they would be left in peace for some months at least. Small bodies of marauding redskins might molest isolated individuals and families, but after such a crushing defeat as they had experienced the chiefs would not be willing to plant the war-post again for some time. Gladly the backwoodsmen, who detested confinement, went out to their clearings. There they found things in a sorry state. The Indians had burned the cabins, killed the cattle, and destroyed the growing crops. But these incidents the hardy frontiersmen accepted as part of the necessary conditions of their adventurous lives, and they set cheerfully about repairing the damage.

Shortly after the siege the trial by court-martial, from which Boone emerged so triumphantly, took place. At its conclusion he set out alone upon the long journey to the Yadkin, with a view to bringing his family back to Kentucky. We may imagine the joy of the wife and children upon being reunited to the beloved one whom they had mourned as dead.