The Bryants settled here and formed Bryant's Station. Last year William himself had been killed, not far from the settlement, while he and a party were scouting. The Indians had lured him within reach, by tinkling a horse bell that they had taken. But he and a companion managed to reach home; there he died.
The killing of William Bryant, brother-in-law to Daniel Boone, and a general leader, was a sad blow to the settlement.
Forty log cabins formed Bryant's Station. They were placed in two lines facing inward, and connected by a stout picket fence or palisade. This beautiful morning of August 16 everybody was astir unusually early. An alarm call had issued from the region of the Kentucky River, twenty miles in the south. The Boonesborough country was again being invaded. Estill's Station had been entered—in pursuing the enemy Captain Estill himself and twenty-five men had been cut to pieces by twenty-five Wyandots. From the small Hoy's Station Captain John Holder had sallied in rescue of two captured boys, and he and his party also had been badly defeated.
Hoy's Station was threatened by a siege. Help was needed. The men of Bryant's Station had prepared to march out at daylight this morning to its relief. Captain John Craig commanded.
Bryant's Station did not know that it was surrounded, itself. How could it know? There was nothing to show that death couched amidst the trees and brush close at hand. The night had been unbroken; peace seemed to smile in the sparkle of the early morning dew. But cracking never a twig, with the stealth of creeping panthers the Indian army had arrived and had been posted.
Captain Caldwell divided his force. He stationed one hundred warriors in hiding about rifle-shot from the gate in the northwest end of the fort; told them to shoot and yell and draw the Long Knives out. The three hundred others he stationed in ambush within half rifle-shot of the spring opposite the other end, the southeast end, in readiness for a charge when the Long Knives should have been decoyed.
While Bryant's Station did not know what had happened outside, the Captain Caldwell men did not know what was happening, inside. Had they only waited, they would have seen all the soldier garrison march away, leaving the women and children and a few grandfathers—and the fort would have been seized without trouble except to the defenceless families.
But even when the army had arrived, in the night, the fort seemed to be on the alert: there were lights in the cabins, there were voices, there was bustle to and fro. And before sun-up the drum had beat the assembly, the soldiers were being put under arms—
Captain Caldwell, the Girtys, the chiefs, and all, were disappointed. They thought themselves expected. That was a piece of great fortune for Bryant's Station. Soon several cabin doors, fronting outside, were cautiously opened, and figures stepped into the clear, as if on hasty errands. The fort gates, at one end, were being unbarred. It was time to try the decoy trick—and with a burst of shrill whoops the Indians posted for a feint fired their guns.
The figures ran, the doors were slammed, the gates closed. The attack had taken Bryant's Station all by surprise, and it wellnigh worked. The men rushed to the pickets, to peer. They saw a score of Indians, at safe distance, capering and gesturing and yelling insults, daring them to come out.