All counsel and command were
at an end. And it is thus that many of the most important events of
history have been determined.
The whole party crossed the river, keeping straight forward in the
beaten buffalo road. Advanced a little, parties flanked out from the
main body, as the irregularity and unevenness of the ground would allow.
The whole body moved on in reckless precipitation and disorder, over a
surface covered with rocks, laid bare by the trampling of buffaloes, and
the washing of the rain of ages. Their course led them in front of the
high ridge which extends for some distance to the left of the road. They
were decoyed on in the direction of one of the ravines of which we have
spoken, by the reappearance of the party of Indians they had first seen.
The termination of this ridge sloped off in a declivity covered with a
thick forest of oaks. The ravines were thick set on their banks with
small timber, or encumbered with burnt wood, and the whole area before
them had been stripped bare of all herbage by the buffaloes that had
resorted to the Licks. Clumps of soil here and there on the bare rock
supported a few trees, which gave the whole of this spot of evil omen a
most singular appearance. The advance of the party was headed by McGary,
Harland, and McBride. A party of Indians, as Boone had predicted, that
had been ambushed in the woods here met them. A warm and bloody action
immediately commenced, and the rifles on either side did fatal
execution.
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