UNTERS (1874)
When the Comanche Medicine Failed

XXI WHITE MEN AT BAY AGAIN (1874)
The "Fight of the Privates"

XXII BUFFALO BILL AND YELLOW HAND (1876)
A Plains-Day Duel

XXIII THE "SIBLEY SCOUT" (1876)
A Famous Army Tale

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Custer's Last Stand . . . . . . . . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

The Great Leap of Major McColloch

At the Siege of Boonesborough

Simon Kenton in Trouble

Lewis Wetzel Leads on the Run

Captain Brady of Pennsylvania

The "Fight of the Privates"

Buffalo Bill, Chief of Scouts

BOYS' BOOK OF FRONTIER FIGHTERS

CHAPTER I

THE CAPTURE OF OLD CHIEF ANNAWAN (1676)

BOLD CAPTAIN CHURCH IN THE LION's DEN

Captain Benjamin Church, born in Plymouth Colony of old Massachusetts,
was a rousing Indian fighter. He earned his title when in 1675 the
Pokanoket League of nine Indian tribes, under King Phillip the
Wampanoag, took up the hatchet against the whites. Then he was called
from his farm in Rhode Island Colony, to lead a company into the field.
So he bade his family good-by, and set forth.

He was at this time aged thirty-six, and built like a bear--short in
the legs, broad in the body, and very active. He knew all the Indian
ways, and had ridden back and forth through the Pokanoket country,
between his Aquidneck home on Rhode Island, and Plymouth and Boston on
the Massachusetts coast. In his Indian fighting he never turned his
face from a trail. The famous Kit Carson of the West was no bolder.

King Phillip's War lasted a year and two months, from June of 1675,
into August of 1676.[1] Captain Church soon became the Indians' most
hardy foeman.

He was constantly trailing the King Phillip warriors to their
"kenneling places," routing them out and killing them, or taking
prisoners, whom he spared for scouts.

At the terrible battle of Sunke-Squaw, when in dead of winter the
colonist soldiery stormed the Indian fort in southern Rhode Island, he
was struck by three balls at once. One entered his thigh and split
upon the thigh-bone; one gashed his waist; and one pierced his pocket
and ruined a pair of mittens--which was looked upon as a real disaster,
in such cold weather.

It was while his wounds were still bandaged, and he was yet unable to
mount a horse, that the bold Captain Church had a fierce hand-to-hand
tussle with a stout Netop, which gave him great renown.

Now the Netops were of the allie