By then, the three columns following had separated and lost sight of each other. The left-hand column was Boone’s. As he pushed forward, a brave leapt from cover to get a clear shot a him. Boone snapped off a round, and the warrior fell. At this point, Boone later recounted, he experienced a surge of confidence. The feeling was only momentary. Just then Hugh McGary galloped up, having been left miraculously untouched by the volleys that had cut down the van. He brought a stunning report: The columns under Todd and Trigg had been routed. They were racing back toward the ford and their horses.

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Boone looked back and saw that warriors had moved into the militiamen’s rear to seize the mounts and cut off escape. They already lined the riverbank. In a frantic effort to break through to safety, the thinned units of Trigg and Todd crashed into them. As he watched the melee–a desperate contest between tomahawk-wielding Indians and militiamen swinging clubbed rifles–Boone realized that the battle was hopelessly lost. Forty men were already down, and more were falling.

Without the initiative of militiaman Benjamin Netherland, still more Long Knives would have died. Even in defeat, Netherland stood his ground. After fighting through the braves and crossing the Licking River, he could have continued his flight. Instead, he organized a dozen or so riflemen who had likewise reached the south bank. Their determined defense felled enough warriors to break up the huggermugger on the opposite shore and enable some of their companions to cross to safety.

Netherland’s timely show of fortitude mitigated the disaster, but at that juncture nothing could have reversed it. By now, warriors were heavily pressing Boone’s own column, and men all around him were beginning to fall. The prudent thing was to get them out of harm’s way. He sent them into dense woods to the left, with orders to recross the Licking downstream, beyond range of the warriors’ muskets. To cover their escape, Boone stayed behind, with Israel beside him. Daniel ordered his son to run for it, but out of love, Israel disobeyed. ‘Father, I won’t leave you,’ he insisted. A moment later, a musket ball caught him in the neck. He groaned and fell, then started convulsing, blood gushing from his mouth. Daniel stooped over him and watched the light fade from his eyes. He must have recalled that his son was at the Blue Licks only at his insistence. Later, Boone would call Israel’s death the hardest blow he ever felt.

Too busy for remorse, Daniel Boone followed his unit leftward into the woods and cautiously made his way back to the river. Once safely across, he rejoined his men–what was left of them. As it happened, the Indians, after scalping the dead (together with the wounded and prisoners, whom they then finished off by slow degrees), grew sated with blood and triumph, and made no effort to run down the survivors. All the same, the surviving officers led a helter-skelter retreat back south. On the march they met Logan’s force advancing toward them and reported their bad news. Logan pushed on as far as the Licking River. By now the Indians had cleared out, and his pursuit fizzled there. He feared a second ambush at the Blue Licks.

Among the Long Knives who reached home was young Squire Boone, son of Daniel’s brother Samuel. Squire, who had been shot in the hip and would be permanently lame, was luckier than his brother Thomas, who lay dead at the Blue Licks. Among the other dead were Colonels Todd and Trigg, together with 14 fellow officers. Death might have redeemed, or partly redeemed, Major McGary. But he came out of the Blue Licks unscathed and unchastened and would live to perpetrate still more mischief. Although a mighty Indian fighter, he was the bane of the Long Knives. Chiefly through his rash attempt to counter earlier charges of timidity, 77 men had died at the Blue Licks. In all, August 19, 1782, was the bloodiest day the militiamen ever endured. Indian casualties, on the other hand, were light.

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