Contents ▼▲
Front Matter At Boonesborough Beginning of the Story Boone on the Yadkin Boone Moves his Family Ready for the Journey What we Wore Driving Cattle and Sheep Camping at Nightfall The Long Halt Jimmy Boone Goes to Clinch Murder of Jimmy Boone A Time of Mourning The Faint-hearted Return A New Home Making Moccasins Tanning Leather Governor Dunmore Our Home on the Clinch Household Duties Attacked by a Wildcat Fighting the Wildcat Boone and Father Return The Wilderness Road Building the Forts Boonesborough Gathering Salt Boonesborough Precautions Our Home in the Fort Ready for Cooking Furnishing the House The Hominy Block The Supply of Water Sports Inside the Fort Wrestling and Running Religion of the Indians Indian Babies Colonel Callaway Arives News from Eastern Colonies Venturing Outside the Fort Dividing the Land Who Owned Kentucky? Ready to Build a Home Billy's Hard Lot Preparing Flax Spinning and Soap Making Broom Making More Indian Murders Indian "Signs" Woodcraft and Hunting Pelts Used as Money Petition of the Settlers Making Sugar Building Fences Capture of the Girls My Willful Thoughts Finding the Trail The Pursuit The Story Told by Jemima Elizabeth's Heroism Rescuing the Girls Alarm Among the Settlers Indians on the Warpath The First Wedding The Wedding Festivities The Brides Home The Housewarming Attacks by the Indians Besieged by the Savages In the Midst of the Fight The Assault by the Indians Failure of the Assault Watchfulness of the Indians The Sortie My Father Wounded Our Wounded

Hannah of Kentucky - James Otis




The Pursuit

Colonel Boone divided the men into two companies, for it was not certain but that those Indians who had captured the girls might have carried them away in a canoe. One party, with Colonel Callaway at the head, set off for Licking River, thinking they might come upon the Shawnees at the ford of the lower Blue Lick, while the other, led by Colonel Boone himself and including Samuel Henderson and Flanders Callaway, followed the trail that led up from the creek.

Colonel Callaway's party started two hours before daylight, for they had no trail to follow; but Colonel Boone waited until day was just beginning to break, when he and the others of his company went out of the fort, after cautioning us to keep the gates closed and barred until they should come back or had sent a messenger.

My father was given charge of the stockade, and he took his station in the watch-house nearest the river, while we women and children wandered around from one cabin to another, too sad to be able to go about our regular work.

During the next three days we were most anxious. Nearly every one in the stockade had given up hope, and all were mourning the poor girls as dead, or worse, when father, who was in the watch-house, shouted so that you might have heard him half a mile away "They're coming! They're coming, and the girls are with them!'