asperated by murder and retaliation.

As soon as it was clear morning light, the Indian camp was in motion. As
a business preliminary to their march, Boone and Calloway were led out
and bound to a tree, and the warriors were selected who were to despatch
them with their tomahawks. The place of their execution was selected at
such a distance from their camp, as that the daughters might not be able
to witness it. The two prisoners were already at the spot, awaiting the
fatal blow, when a discharge of rifles, cutting down two of the savages
at the first shot, arrested their proceedings. Another and another
discharge followed. The Indians were as yet partially supplied with fire
arms, and had not lost any of their original dread of the effects of
this artificial thunder, and the invisible death of the balls. They were
ignorant, moreover, of the number of their assailants, and naturally
apprehended it to be greater than it was. They raised a yell of
confusion, and dispersed in every direction, leaving their dead behind,
and the captives to their deliverers. The next moment the children were
in the arms of their parents; and the whole party, in the unutterable
joy of conquest and deliverance, were on their way homewards.

[Illustration]

It need hardly be added that the brave associates of the expedition who
had been left in camp, having waited the signal for the return of Boone
and Calloway, until their patience and forbearance was exhausted, aware
that something serious must have prevented their return, reconnoitered
the movement of the Indians as they moved from their camp to despatch
their two prisoners, and fired upon them at the moment they were about
to put their sentence into execution.

About this time a new element began to exasperate and extend the ravages
of Indian warfare, along the whole line of the frontier settlements. The
war of Independence had already begun to rage. The influence and
resources of Great Britain extended along the immense chain of our
frontier, from the north-eastern part of Vermont and New York, all the
way to the Mississippi. Nor did this nation, to her everlasting infamy,
hesitate to engage these infuriate allies of the wilderness, whose known
rule of warfare was indiscriminate vengeance; without reference to the
age or sex of the foe, as auxiliaries in the war.

As this biographical sketch of the life of Boone is inseparably
interwoven with this border scene of massacres, plunderings,