These precautions taken, Boone led his party out, and was met by Duquesne and his brother officers.  The terms proposed were liberal enough, but the astute frontiersman knew very well that the Indians would never assent to them.  As the conference proceeded, the Indian chiefs drew near, and Blackfish, Boone’s adopted father, professed the utmost friendship, and suggested that the treaty should be concluded in the Indian manner, by shaking hands.

The artifice was too shallow to deceive the silliest of the garrison.  It was Blackfish’s purpose to have two savages seize each of the whites, drag them away as prisoners, and then by threats of torture compel their comrades to surrender the fort.  Boone, however, did not hesitate to assent to the proposition.  He wished to unmask his wily foes.  That done, he trusted to the strength of himself and his fellows, and the bullets of his riflemen, to bring his party in safety back to the fort.

It proved as he expected.  No sooner had they yielded their hands to the Indians than a desperate attempt was made to drag them away.  The surrounding Indians rushed to the aid of their fellows.  From behind stumps and trees, a shower of bullets was poured upon the fort.  But the alert pioneers were not taken by surprise.  From the rifles of the garrison bullets were poured back.  Boone easily shook off his assailant, and his companions did the same.  Back to the fort they fled, bullets pattering after them, while the keen marksmen of the fort sent back their sharp response.  In a few seconds the imperilled nine were behind the heavy gates, only one of their number, Boone’s brother, being wounded.  They had escaped a peril from which, for the moment, rescue seemed hopeless.

Baffled in their treachery, the assailants now made a fierce assault on the fort, upon which they kept up an incessant fire for nine days and nights, giving the beleaguered garrison scarcely a moment for rest.  Hidden behind rocks and trees, they poured in their bullets in a manner far more brisk than effectual.  The garrison but feebly responded to this incessant fusillade, feeling it necessary to husband their ammunition.  But, unlike the fire of their foes, every shot of theirs told.

During this interval the assailants began to undermine the fort, beginning their tunnel at the river-bank.  But the clay they threw out discolored the water and revealed their project, and the garrison at once began to countermine, by cutting a trench across the line of their projected passage.  The enemy, in their turn, discovered this and gave up the attempt.  Another of their efforts was to set fire to the fort by means of flaming arrows.  This proved temporarily successful, the dry timbers of the roof bursting into flames.  But one of the young men of the fort daringly sprang upon the roof, extinguished the fire, and returned unharmed, although bullets had fallen like hailstones around him.