The station's Achilles' heel was its spring, located outside the stockade. Now lurking Indians controlled the access to water, and without water in parched August, the settlers had no hope of withstanding a siege. After a parley, the leaders at Bryan's reluctantly approached the women of the station with a grave proposal. Within minutes the women determined to stake their lives on a desperately risky ruse. Without delay, they gathered within the stockade and said a brief prayer. Then, as they did every morning, by twos and threes they strolled outside the fence, carrying their pails to the spring, then filled them with water and sauntered back into the stockade. Behind a bluff of chattering insouciance the women hid their dread. As they had hoped and prayed, the Indians held their fire and continued to wait for the men to emerge. The women had brought Bryan's Station a fighting chance to survive.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Military History magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

A short time later, Girty's patience wore thin, and he ordered an assault–but true to type, he employed a cunning ruse. At his signal, a few loudly whooping warriors designated as decoys raced toward one wall of the stockade. Meanwhile, he held his main force under cover but deployed to assault the opposite wall. When the decoys fled at the first sound of gunfire from the wall, the militiamen–dubbed 'Long Knives' by the Indians–sallied to pursue them. Girty assumed that his plan was working and that the entire garrison was chasing the decoys. Now he threw his main force against the presumably undefended opposite wall. But the seasoned Long Knives had been wise to his ruse and had stealthily moved some 30 riflemen to the wall facing the main attack. When the massed braves charged blindly into range, the Long Knives poured rifle balls into them. As the stunned warriors turned tail, the women of Bryan's Station passed loaded rifles to the sharpshooters, then reloaded the empties and handed them back. Until the braves passed beyond range, the militiamen continued to mow them down.

A quick tally told Girty that the stockade's defense numbered 44 riflemen. Hours later, 16 pioneer reinforcements galloped into Bryan's through a hail of Indian musket balls. Now 60 rifles guarded the stockade. Girty was disappointed but not nonplussed. Again he resorted to craft. From a safe distance, he yelled to the garrison that artillery would reach him that night, after which he would smash the palisades. Surrender now and live, or die later was his offer to the garrison. No artillery was actually en route, yet Girty's threat seemed real enough to the beleaguered settlers. The defenders bitterly remembered how British cannons had smashed the walls of nearby Ruddle's Station two years earlier. Yet they also recalled how the Indian allies of the British had massacred the settlers as soon as they had laid down their arms on the promise that their lives would be spared. That stark truth gave the lie to Girty's promise to spare the garrison at Bryan's.

After a nervous silence, a young militiaman, Aaron Reynolds, took it upon himself to call Girty's bluff. With a volley of fluent profanity, Reynolds declared that the garrison would fight.

Bryan's Station was proving tougher than Girty had reckoned. Could still more reinforcements be approaching? A change of plans seemed in order. Girty directed the warriors to destroy the crops around the stockade, burn outlying buildings and slaughter the livestock. That done, he led the warriors slowly off to the northeast.

The next day, substantial reinforcements reached Bryan's. Their commanding officers were Colonel Stephen Trigg and Major Hugh McGary, both of Harrodsburg, at the head of the Lincoln County militia, together with Colonel John Todd of Lexington and Lt. Col. Daniel Boone, leading Long Knives from Fayette County.

The 50 men immediately under Boone came from around Boonesborough and from Boone's Station, near the frontier legend's homestead on Marble Creek. Suggesting the clanlike makeup of units common in frontier armies, Boone's command included three nephews, three cousins and Israel, his 23-year-old son. Israel happened to be sick when the men mustered to ride to Bryan's, and a family tradition has it that young Boone dragged himself from bed and accompanied the army only after his father had sternly reminded him of his duty.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to