"Yes! There they go! There the bloody rascals go, hoof and foot! Boggs got through and he's coming back!"
With astonishing speed the enemy had decamped—were streaming for the river. The siege had been lifted. The two garrisons might take breath, and relax, while keenly alert. Were they actually saved? Had the enemy gone in earnest—or might it be a feint, an ambush?
But not an Indian was in sight when, in less than an hour more, sturdy old Captain Boggs, Colonel Andrew Swearingen and Major David Williamson trotted up the hill, leading seventy mounted men.
CHAPTER XI
THE FIVE BOY CAPTIVES (1785)
ADVENTURES OF "LITTLE FAT BEAR" AND ALL
When in 1778 the energetic Colonel George Rogers Clark marched northwest out of Virginia and descended the Ohio River, to seize the Illinois country bordering the Mississippi, on his way he camped at the Falls of the Ohio, drilled his men upon Corn Island, built a block-house and left thirteen families to form a settlement.
The little settlement crossed to the mainland on the Kentucky side, and the present city of Louisville was founded.
By 1785 it numbered about 150 persons, on Corn Island, and on the mainland, living in log cabins upon clearings amidst the forest.