going on in the river and on its shore.  Many had reached the river in a state of faintness and exhaustion, and the Indians were still cutting them down.  Inspired with the feeling of a commander, he cried out in a loud and authoritative voice, “Halt!  Fire on the Indians.  Protect the men in the river.”  The call was obeyed.  Ten or twelve men instantly turned, fired on the enemy, and checked their pursuit for a moment, thus enabling some of the exhausted and wounded fugitives to evade the tomahawk, already uplifted to destroy them.  The brave and benevolent Reynolds, whose reply to Girty has been reported, relinquished his own horse to Colonel Robert Patterson, who was infirm from former wounds, and was retreating on foot.  He thus enabled that veteran to escape.  While thus signalizing his disinterested intrepidity, he fell himself into the hands of the Indians.  The party that took him consisted of three.  Two whites passed him on their retreat.  Two of the Indians pursued, leaving him under the guard of the third.  His captor stooped to tie his moccasin, and he sprang away from him and escaped.  It is supposed that one-fourth of the men engaged in this action were commissioned officers.  The whole number engaged was one hundred and seventy-six.  Of these, sixty were slain, and eight made prisoners.  Among the most distinguished names of those who fell, were those of Colonels Todd and Trigg, Majors Harland and Bulger, Captains Gordon and McBride, and a son of Colonel Boone.  The loss of the savages has never been ascertained.  It could not have equalled that of the assailants, though some supposed it greater.  This sanguinary affair took place August 19, 1782.

Colonel Logan, on arriving at Bryant’s station, with a force of three hundred men, found the troops had already marched.  He made a rapid advance in hopes to join them before they should have met with the Indians.  He came up with the survivors, on their retreat from their ill-fated contest, not far from Bryant’s station.  He determined to pursue his march to the battle ground to bury the dead, if he could not avenge their fall.  He was joined by many friends of the killed and missing, from Lexington and Bryant’s station.  They reached the battle ground on the 25th.  It presented a heartrending spectacle.  Where so lately had arisen the shouts of the robust and intrepid woodsmen, and the sharp yell of the savages, as they closed in the murderous contest, the silence of the wide forest was now unbroken, except by birds of prey, as they screamed and sailed over the carnage.  The heat was so excessive, and the bodies were so changed by it and the hideous gashes and mangling of the Indian tomahawk and knife, that friends could no longer recognize their dearest relatives.  They performed the sad rights of sepulture as they might, upon the rocky ground.