nto
the extended arms. Not a ball had touched her.

Now the cabin would hold out. It had to hold out, after a deed like
that, by a girl. Shame on it if it yielded!

The Indians, urged by the white chiefs and by the British Rangers,
raged. Twenty times they reached the stockades with bundles of hemp,
and tried to fire the pickets. The hemp was damp and refused to burn.
They tried with wood. They did not succeed. Under the hail of bullets
a portion of the rotted pickets gave way, in a corner; but by great
good fortune several peach-trees there concealed the hole.

All this day the hot attacks continued. They lessened only slightly
during the night. Toward morning a figure was espied craftily slinking
for the fort's sally gate. A rifle bullet stopped it. There were
groans and pleadings for water; a weak voice kept asking to be taken
in. Two of the men bolted out, grabbed the figure and hustled him
inside. He was a negro--claimed that he had just deserted from the
Indians.

They hand-cuffed him, and stationed Lydia Boggs, aged seventeen, over
him with a tomahawk, to kill him if he tried any tricks. She would
have done it, too.

The day dawned; the sun rose. The scene without was fearful. The
Indians were shooting the cattle; the settlement cabins were burning.
Was it to be another day of stress? Where were the reinforcements?
Had Captain Boggs really been captured? If so, he had been killed, or
else the enemy would have displayed him, to show the fort that it could
not hope for help.

The sun was an hour high, when--listen! An Indian whoop sounded, in
the distance; a long, quavering, peculiar whoop. In fort and cabin the
men cheered.

"The alarm whoop, boys! Hurrah! Their spies have sighted something!"

And--

"Yes! There they go! There the bloody rascals go, hoof and foot!
Boggs got through and he's coming back!"

With astonishing speed the enemy had decamped--were streaming for the
river. The siege had been lifted. The two garrisons might take
breath, and relax, while keenly alert. Were they actually saved? Had
the enemy gone in earnest--or might it be a feint, an ambush?

But not an Indian was in sight when, in less than an hour more, sturdy
old Captain Boggs, Colonel Andrew Swearingen and Major David Williamson
trotted up the hill, leading seventy mounted men.

CHAPTER XI

THE FIVE BOY CAPTIVES (1785)

ADVENTURES OF "LITTLE FAT BEAR" AND ALL

When in 1778 the energe