dozen others opened the gate and were about to rush out upon the savages, hundreds of whom were now in front of the fort; but Robertson held them back, saying they could not rescue her, and to go out would insure their own destruction.  At a glance Kate took in the situation.  She could have no help from her friends, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife were close behind her.  Instantly she turned, and, fleeter than a deer, made for a point in the stockade some distance from the entrance.  The palisades were eight feet high, but with one bound she reached the top, and with another was over the wall, falling into the arms of Sevier, who for the first time called her his “bonnie Kate,” his “brave girl for a foot-race.”  The other women reached the entrance of the fort in safety.

Then the baffled savages opened fire, and for a full hour it rained bullets upon the little enclosure.  But the missiles fell harmless:  not a man was wounded.  Driven by the light charges the Indians were accustomed to use, the bullets simply bounded off from the thick logs and did no damage.  But it was not so with the fire of the besieged.  The order was, “Wait till you see the whites of your enemies’ eyes, and then make sure of your man.”  And so every one of those forty rifles did terrible execution.

For twenty days the Indians hung about the fort, returning again and again to the attack; but not a man who kept within the walls was even wounded.  It was not so with a man and a boy who, emboldened by a few days’ absence of the Indians, ventured outside to go down to the river.  The man was scalped on the spot; the boy was taken prisoner, and subjected to a worse fate in one of the Indian villages.  His name was Moore, and he was a younger brother of the lieutenant who fought so bravely in the battle near Fort Patrick Henry.

At last, baffled and dispirited, the Indians fell back to the Tellico.  They had lost about sixty killed and a larger number wounded, and they had inflicted next to no damage upon the white settlers.  They were enraged beyond bounds and thirsting for vengeance.  Only two prisoners were in their power; but on them they resolved to wreak their extremest tortures.  Young Moore was taken to the village of his captor, high up in the mountains, and there burned at a stake.  A like fate was determined upon for good Mrs. Bean, the kindly woman whose hospitable door had ever been open to all, white man or Indian.  Oconostota would not have her die; but Dragging-Canoe insisted that she should be offered up as a sacrifice to the manes of his fallen warriors; and the head-king was not powerful enough to prevent it.

She was taken to the summit of one of the burial-mounds,—­those relics of a forgotten race which are so numerous along the banks of the Tellico.  She was tied to a stake, the fagots were heaped about her, and the fire was about to be lighted, when suddenly Nancy Ward appeared among the crowd of savages and ordered a stay of the execution.  Dragging-Canoe was a powerful brave, but not powerful enough to combat the will of this woman.  Mrs. Bean was not only liberated, but sent back with an honorable escort to her husband.