(as George acknowledged under oath) before Smith
had offered to [87] shoot. Smith then presented his gun at
another of the assailants, who was holding Johnson with one
hand, while with the other he held a pistol, which he was
preparing to discharge. Two shots were fired, one by Smith's
gun, the other by the pistol, so quick as to be just
distinguishable, and Johnson fell. Smith was then taken and
carried to Bedford, where John Holmes (who had met him on the
road, and hastened to Bedford with the intelligence) held an
inquest over the dead body of Johnson. One of the assailants
being the only witness examined, it was found that "Johnson had
been murdered by Smith," who was thereupon committed for trial.
But jealousy arising in the breasts of many, that the inquest
was not so fair as it should have been, William Deny, (the
coroner of Bedford county) thought proper to re-examine the
matter; and summoning a jury of unexceptionable men, out of
three townships--men whose candour, probity, and honesty are
unquestionable, and having raised the corpse, held a solemn
inquest over it for three days.

"In the course of their scrutiny, they found the shirt of
Johnson, around the bullet hole, blackened by the powder of the
charge with which he had been killed. One of the assailants
being examined, swore to the respective spots of ground on
which they stood at the time of firing, which being measured,
was found to be 28 feet distance from each other. The
experiment was then made of shooting at the shirt an equal
distance both with and against the wind, to ascertain if the
powder produced the stain; but it did not. Upon the whole the
jury, after the most accurate examination and mature
deliberation, brought in their verdict that one of the
assailants must necessarily have done the murder."

Captain Smith was a brave and enterprising man. In 1766, he, in
company with Joshua Horton, Uriah Stone, William Baker and
James Smith, by the way of Holstein, explored the country south
of Kentucky at a time when it was entirely uninhabited; and the
country between the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, to their
entrance into the Ohio. Stone's river, a branch of the
Cumberland and emptying into