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."
One wilderness settled, the hardy veteran pined for more. Population in Kentucky was getting far too thick for his ideas of comfort. His spirit craved the solitude of the unsettled forest, and in 1802 he again pulled up stakes and plunged into the depths of the Western woods. "Too much crowded," he declared; "too much crowded. I want more elbow-room."
His first abiding place was on the Great Kanawha, where he remained for several years. Then, as the vanguard of the army of immigrants pressed upon his chosen home, he struck camp again, and started westward with wife and children, driving his cattle before him, in search of a "promised land" of few men and abundant game. He settled now beyond the Mississippi, about fifty miles west of St. Louis. Here he dwelt for years, hunting, trapping, and enjoying life in his own wild way.
Years went by, and once more the emigrant army pressed upon the solitude-loving pioneer, but he was now too old for further flight. Eighty years lay upon his frosted brow, yet with little diminished activity he pursued his old mode of life, being often absent from home for weeks on hunting expeditions. Audubon, the famous ornithologist, met him in one of these forays, and thus pictures him: "The stature and general appearance of this wanderer of the Western forests," he says, "approached the gigantic. His chest was broad and prominent; his muscular powers displayed themselves in every limb; his countenance gave indication of his great courage, enterprise, and perseverance, and, whenever he spoke, the very motion of his lips brought the impression that whatever he uttered could not be otherwise than strictly true."
Mr. Irving tells a similar story of him in his eighty-fifth year. He was then visited by the Astor overland expedition to the Columbia. "He had but recently returned from a hunting and trapping expedition," says the historian, "and had brought nearly sixty beaver skins as trophies of his skill. The old man was still erect in form, strong in limb, and unflinching in spirit; and as he stood on the river bank watching the departure of an expedition destined to traverse the wilderness to the very shores of the Pacific, very probably felt a throb of his old pioneer spirit, impelling him to shoulder his rifle and join the adventurous band."
Seven years afterwards he joined another band, that of the heroes who have gone to their rest. To his last year he carried the rifle and sought the depths of the wood. At last, in 1818, with no disease but old age, he laid down his life, after a most adventurous career, in which he had won himself imperishable fame as the most daring, skilful, and successful of that pioneer band who have dared the perils of the wilderness and surpassed the savage tenants of the forest in their own chosen arts.