en July nights are
cold in the pine mountains, breathing a chill which goes straight to the
bones.

But it is not my intention to give in this section the ordinary
adventures of the masculine part of my family. As a matter of fact, my
mother and the girls were undergoing in Forty Fort trials which made as
nothing the happenings on our journey, which ended in safety.

My mother and her small flock were no sooner established in the crude
quarters within the pallisade than negotiations were opened between
Colonel Denison and Colonel Zebulon Butler on the American side, and
"Indian Butler" on the British side, for the capitulation of the Fort
with such arms and military stores as it contained, the lives of the
settlers to be strictly preserved. But "Indian Butler" did not seem to
feel free to promise safety for the lives of the Continental Butler and
the pathetic little fragment of the regular troops. These men always
fought so well against the Indians that whenever the Indians could get
them at their mercy there was small chances of anything but a massacre.
So every regular left before the surrender; and I fancy that Colonel
Zebulon Butler considered himself a much-abused man, for if we had left
ourselves entirely under his direction there is no doubt but what we
could have saved the valley. He had taken us out on 3rd July because our
militia officers had almost threatened him. In the end he had said,
"Very well, I can go as far as any of you." I was always on Butler's
side of the argument, but owing to the singular arrangement of
circumstances, my opinion at the age of sixteen counted upon neither the
one side nor the other.

The Fort was left in charge of Colonel Denison. He had stipulated before
the surrender that no Indians should be allowed to enter the stockade
and molest these poor families of women whose fathers and brothers were
either dead or fled over the mountains, unless their physical debility
had been such that they were able neither to get killed in the battle
nor to take the long trail to the Delaware. Of course, this excepts
those men who were with Washington.

For several days the Indians, obedient to the British officers, kept out
of the Fort, but soon they began to enter in small bands and went
sniffing and poking in every corner to find plunder. Our people had
hidden everything as well as they were able, and for a period little was
stolen. My mother told me that the first thing of importance to go