Every one acquainted with the race, has remarked their intense keenness of vision. Their eyes, for acuteness, and capability of discerning distant objects, resemble those of the eagle or the lynx; and their cat-like tread among the grass and leaves, seems so light as scarcely to shake off the dew drops. Thus they advance on their expedition rapidly and in profound silence, unless some one of the party should relate that he has had an unpropitious dream When this happens, an immediate arrest is put upon the expedition, and the whole party face about, and return without any sense of shame or mortification. A whole party is thus often arrested by a single person; and their return is applauded by the tribe, as a respectful docility to the divine impulse, as they deem it, from the Great Spirit. These dreams are universally reverenced, as the warnings of the guardian spirits of the tribe. There is in that country a sparrow, of an uncommon species, and not often seen. This bird is called in the Shawnese dialect by a name importing "kind messenger," which they deem always a true omen, whenever it appears, of bad news. They are exceedingly intimidated whenever this bird sings near them; and were it to perch and sing over their war-camp, the whole party would instantly disperse in consternation and dismay.
Every chief has his warrior, Etissu, or waiter, to attend on him and his party. This confidential personage has charge of every thing that is eaten or drank during the expedition. He parcels it out by rules of rigid abstemiousness. Though each warrior carries on his back all his travelling conveniences, and his food among the rest, yet, however keen the appetite sharpened by hunger, however burning the thirst, no one dares relieve his hunger or thirst, until his rations are dispensed to him by the Etissu.
Boone had occasion to have all these rites most painfully impressed on his memory; for he was obliged to conform to them with the rest. One single thought occupied his mind—to seize the right occasion to escape.
It was sometime before it offered. At length a deer came in sight. He had a portion of his unfinished breakfast in his hand. He expressed a desire to pursue the deer. The party consented. As soon as he was out of sight, he instantly turned his course towards Boonesborough. Aware that he should be pursued by enemies as keen on the scent as bloodhounds, he put forth his whole amount of backwoods skill, in doubling in his track, walking in the water, and availing himself of every imaginable expedient to throw them off his trail. His unfinished fragment of his breakfast was his only food, except roots and berries, during this escape for his life, through unknown forests and pathless swamps, and across numerous rivers, spreading in an extent of more than two hundred miles. Every forest sound must have struck his ear, as a harbinger of the approaching Indians.
No spirit but such an one as his, could have sustained the apprehension and fatigue. No mind but one guided by the intuition of instinctive sagacity, could have so enabled him to conceal his trail, and find his way. But he evaded their pursuit. He discovered his way. He found in roots, in barks, and berries, together with what a single shot of his rifle afforded, wherewith to sustain the cravings of nature. Travelling night and day, in an incredible short space of time he was in the arms of his friends at Boonesborough, experiencing a reception, after such a long and hopeless absence, as words would in vain attempt to portray.
CHAPTER X.
Six hundred Indians attack Boonesborough—Boone and Captain Smith go out to treat with the enemy under a flag of truce, and are extricated from a treacherous attempt to detain them as prisoners—Defence of the fort—The Indians defeated—Boone goes to North Carolina to bring bark his family.
It will naturally be supposed that foes less wary and intelligent, than those from whom Boone had escaped, after they had abandoned the hope of recapturing him, would calculate to find Boonesborough in readiness for their reception.
Boonesborough, though the most populous and important station in Kentucky, had been left by the abstraction of so many of the select inhabitants in the captivity of the Blue Licks, by the absence of Colonel Clarke in Illinois, and by the actual decay of the pickets, almost defenceless. Not long before the return of Boone, this important post had been put under the care of Major Smith, an active and intelligent officer. He repaired thither, and put the station, with great labor and fatigue, in a competent state of defence. Learning from the return of some of the prisoners, captured at the Blue Licks, the great blow which the Shawnese meditated against this station, he deemed it advisable to anticipate their movements, and to fit out an expedition to meet them on their own ground.—Leaving twenty young men to defend the place, he marched with thirty chosen men towards the Shawnese towns.
At the Blue Licks, a place of evil omen to Kentucky, eleven of the men, anxious for the safety of the families they had left behind and deeming their force too small for the object contemplated, abandoned the enterprise and retreated to the fort. The remaining nineteen, not discouraged by the desertion of their companions, heroically persevered. They crossed the Ohio to the present site of Cincinnati, on rafts. They then painted their faces, and in other respects assumed the guise and garb of savages, and marched upon the Indian towns.