ted soldier and Indian fighter,
Captain Van Swearingen who was called "Indian Van."

Captain Swearingen did not favor the match.

"It will only make Dru a widow," he said. "I do not wish her to mate
with a man who is always on the trail."

They were married, just the same; and to state the truth, the young
wife did suffer "untold miseries" while waiting for her daring Sam to
return from his long forays. He was lame, from the wound in his leg;
and partially deaf from his plunge beneath the pond; but he hated to
leave the Injun trail.

Finally he was worn out, and consented to spend a few years at home, in
West Liberty, West Virginia. Here he died, aged about forty-four, or
in 1800, an old man before his time, but with his years crammed to
over-flowing with brave memories.

CHAPTER VIII

THE FLIGHT OF THREE SOLDIERS (1782)

ON THE TRAIL WITH THE CRAWFORD MEN

Following the last attack, in 1778, upon Boonesborough, Colonel John
Bowman of Harrod's Station had led a revenge expedition into the Ohio
country. At Little Chillicothe, where Daniel Boone had been son to
Chief Black Fish, he had fought the Shawnees and their allies the
Wyandots and others; and although he had been driven back his men had
killed old Black Fish. That was a blow to the enemy.

More important than this, beginning in 1778 the great Long Knife chief,
General George Rogers Clark, had "captured" the Illinois country clear
to the Mississippi River at Kaskaskia below St. Louis; had marched
northward one hundred and fifty miles, laid siege to the British
garrison of St. Vincents (Vincennes, Indiana), and taken prisoner no
less a personage than the noted Lieutenant-Governor Henry Hamilton of
Detroit; and in 1780 had destroyed the Shawnee towns of Pickaway and
Little Chillicothe also.

These events and others stirred the Northern Confederacy to action
afresh. They saw the Ohio Valley being cut in two. They had given up
Boonesborough; but there were many other forts and stations and
settlements and they sent their parties against the Americans of
western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and the outskirts of Kentucky
along the Ohio.

The principal Wyandot town of Upper Sandusky (where Simon Kenton had
been rescued by Pierre Drouillard the British Indian agent), in central
north Ohio, seemed to be the rallying place for the bloody forays.
General Washington could spare no regular troops yet, to campaign on
the Indian trail; so in order to "