lse could to evade
and repel it. The wild turkey was always much hunted by the settlers;
and one of the common Indian tricks was to imitate the turkey call and
shoot the hunter when thus tolled to his foe's ambush; but it was only
less common for a skilled Indian fighter to detect the ruse and himself
creep up and slay the would-be slayer. More than once, when a cabin was
attacked in the absence or after the death of the men, some brawny
frontierswoman, accustomed to danger and violent physical exertion, and
favored by peculiar circumstances, herself beat off the assailants.

Prowess of Frontier Women.

In one such case, two or three families were living together in a
block-house. One spring day, when there were in the house but two men
and one woman, a Mrs. Bozarth, the children who had been playing in the
yard suddenly screamed that Indians were coming. One of the men sprang
to the door only to fall back with a bullet in his breast, and in
another moment an Indian leaped over the threshold and attacked the
remaining man before he could grasp a weapon. Holding his antagonist the
latter called out to Mrs. Bozarth to hand him a knife; but instead she
snatched up an axe and killed the savage on the spot. But that instant
another leaped into the doorway, and firing, killed the white man who
had been struggling with his companion; but the woman instantly turned
on him, as he stood with his smoking gun, and ripped open his body with
a stroke of her axe. Yelling for help he sank on the threshold, and his
comrades rushed to his rescue; the woman, with her bloody weapon, cleft
open the skull of the first, and the others fell back, so that she was
able to shut and bar the door. Then the savages moved off, but they had
already killed the children in the yard.

A similar incident took place in Kentucky, where the cabin of a man
named John Merrill was attacked at night. He was shot in several places,
and one arm and one thigh broken, as he stood by the open door, and fell
calling out to his wife to close it. This she did; but the Indians
chopped a hole in the stout planks with their tomahawks, and tried to
crawl through. The woman, however, stood to one side and struck at the
head of each as it appeared, maiming or killing the first two or three.
Enraged at being thus baffled by a woman, two of the Indians clambered
on the roof of the cabin, and prepared to drop down the wide chimney;
for at night the fire in such a cabin was