CHAPTER XX
THE COUNTER-STROKE
Colonel Benjamin Logan was standing in a small opening near the banks of the Licking about five miles south of its junction with the Ohio. Dawn had just come but it had been a troubled night. The country around him was beautiful, a primeval wilderness with deep fertile soil and splendid forest. His company, too, was good—several hundred stalwart men from Lexington, Boonesborough, Harrod's Station and several other settlements in the country, destined to become so famous as the Bluegrass region of Kentucky. Yet, as has been said, the night was uneasy and he saw no decrease of worry.
Colonel Logan was a man of stout nerves, seldom troubled by insomnia, but he had not slept. His scouts had told him that there were Indians in the forest ahead. One or two incautious explorers had been wounded by bullets fired from hidden places. He and the best men with him had felt that they were surrounded by an invisible enemy, and just at the time that he needed knowledge, it was hardest to achieve it. It was important for him to move on, highly important because he wanted to effect a junction for a great purpose with George Rogers Clark, a very famous border leader. Yet he could learn nothing of Clark. He did not receive any news from him, nor could he send any to him. Every scout who tried it was driven back, and after suffering agonies of doubt through that long and ominous night, the brave leader and skillful borderer had concluded that the most powerful Indian force ever sent to Kentucky was in front of him. His men had brought rumors that it was led by the renowned Wyandot chief, Timmendiquas, with Red Eagle, Black Panther, Moluntha, Captain Pipe and the renegade Girty as his lieutenants.
Colonel Logan, brave man that he was, was justified when he felt many fears. His force was not great, and, surrounded, it might be overwhelmed and cut off. For the border to lose three or four hundred of its best men would be fatal. Either he must retreat or he must effect a junction with Clark of whose location he knew nothing. A more terrible choice has seldom been presented to a man. Harrod, Kenton and other famous scouts stood with him and shared his perplexity.
"What shall we do, gentlemen?" he asked.
There was no answer save the sound of a rifle shot from the woods in front of them.
"I don't blame you for not answering," said the Colonel moodily, "because I don't know of anything you can say. Listen to those shots! We may be fighting for our lives before noon, but, by all the powers, I won't go back. We can't do it! Now in the name of all that's wonderful what is that?"
Every pair of eyes was turned toward the muddy surface of the Licking, where a white body floated easily. As they looked the body came to the bank, raised itself up in the shape of a human being and stepped ashore, leaving a trail of water on the turf. It was the figure of a youth, tall and powerful beyond his kind and bare to the waist. He came straight toward Logan.