the hall
stairway having carved upon it the head of an eagle bearing in its beak
an olive branch. Each story was high, and the windows were placed very
high from the ground, to prevent the Indians from shooting through them
at the occupants. The glass was brought from Virginia by pack train. He
feasted royally the hands who put up the house; and to pay for the
whiskey they drank he had to sell one of his farms.

In 1785 (the year of the above recited ravages on the upper Ohio in the
neighborhood of Wheeling), Colonel Whitley led his rangers, once and
again, against marauding Indians. In January he followed a war party,
rescued a captive white man, and took prisoner an Indian who was
afterwards killed by one of the militia--"a cowardly fellow," says
Whitley. In October a party of immigrants, led by a man named McClure,
who had just come over the Wilderness trace, were set upon at dawn by
Indians, not far from Whitley's house; two of the men were killed. Mrs.
McClure got away at first, and ran two hundred yards, taking her four
children with her; in the gloom they would all have escaped had not the
smallest child kept crying. This led the Indians to them. Three of the
children were tomahawked at once; next morning the fourth shared the
same fate. The mother was forced to cook breakfast for her captors at
the fire before which the scalps were drying. She was then placed on a
half-broken horse and led off with them. When word of the disaster was
brought to Whitley's, he was not at home, but his wife, a worthy
helpmeet, immediately sent for him, and meanwhile sent word to his
company. On his return he was able to take the trail at once with
twenty-one riflemen, as true as steel. Following hard, but with stealth
equal to their own, he overtook the Indians at sundown on the second
day, and fell on them in their camp. Most of them escaped through the
thick forest, but he killed two, rescued six prisoners, and captured
sixteen horses and much plunder.

Ten days after this another party of immigrants, led by a man named
Moore, were attacked on the Wilderness Road and nine persons killed.
Whitley raised thirty of his horse-riflemen, and, guessing from the
movements of the Indians that they were following the war trace
northward, he marched with all speed to reach it at some point ahead of
them, and succeeded. Finding they had not passed he turned and went
south, and in a thick canebrake met his foes face to face. The whites
were