and Virginia. The men were all but out of bounds, so
furious were they at not being loosed at the Shawnees.

Then began the talk that Dunmore brought on the war to keep our
backwoodsmen busy in event the colonies rebelled against England; also,
that he closed it prematurely so that the Indians might continue a menace
to the border and thus keep the frontier men at home.

I was as hot as any against His Lordship for the way the campaign ended.
We demanded blood for blood in those days; and never had the Virginia
riflemen a better chance for inflicting lasting punishment on their
ancient foes. And we were quick to blame His Lordship for a variety of
unwholesome motives.

But with political rancor long since buried we can survey that campaign
more calmly and realize that as a result of the battle the northwest
Indians kept quiet for the first two years of the Revolutionary War, and
that during this period Kentucky was settled and the vast continent west
of the Alleghanies was saved to the Union.

If the battle of Bushy Run took the heart out of the tribes confederated
under Pontiac's masterly leadership, then Dunmore's War permitted us to
begin life as a republic without having the Alleghanies for our western
boundary. Nor can I hold in these latter days that His Lordship was
insincere in waging the war; for England was against it from the first.

I believed he pushed the war as vigorously and shrewdly as he knew how;
and I believe his was the better judgment in securing the best peace-terms
possible instead of heaping defeat on defeat until the allied tribes had
nothing left to bargain for. So I give His Lordship credit for making a
good bargain with the Indians, and a bargain which aided the colonists
during the struggle almost upon them. But I was very happy when Colonel
Andrew Lewis drove him from Virginia.

CHAPTER XIII

PEACE COMES TO THE CLEARING

Early winter, and the wind was crisp and cold as I rode into Howard's
Creek. Smoke rose from the cabins. I limped toward the Davis cabin, a
strange shyness holding me back. Some one inside was singing:

"Ye daughters and sons of Virginia, incline
Your ears to a story of woe;
I sing of a time when your fathers and mine
Fought for us on the Ohio.
In seventeen hundred and seventy-four,
The month of October, we know,
An army of Indians, two thousand or mo