kinsfolk of the Covenanters, fundamentally democratic, Presbyterian Irish interpreting their own Bibles, believing in schools, born leaders, dominating their communities and impressing their character on the nation yet unborn.
It was August when, in hunting shirts and leggings, they marched into rendezvous at Staunton, with long knives in their leathern belts and rusty old firelocks above their shoulders. In September they camped at Lewisburg. Flour and ammunition were packed on horses. Three weeks of toil and travail through wilderness, swamp, and morass, and they were at the mouth of the Great Kanawha.
But where was Dunmore? With his thousand men he was to march over the Braddock Road to meet them there on the Ohio. Rumour now said he was marching alone on the Shawnee towns.
"And so expose himself!" ejaculated Lewis.
But just then a runner brought word from Lord Dunmore, "Join me at the Shawnee towns."
"What does it mean?" queried Lewis of his colonels, Charles Lewis of Augusta, Fleming of Bottetourt, Shelby and Field of Culpepper. "It looks like a trap. Not in vain have I grown gray in border forays. There's some mistake. It will leave the whole western portion of Virginia unprotected."
Brief was the discussion. Before they could cross the Ohio, guns sounded a sharp surprise. Andrew Lewis and his men found themselves penned at Point Pleasant without a hope of retreat. Behind them lay the Ohio and the Kanawha, in front the woods, thick with Delawares, Iroquois, Wyandots, Shawnees, flinging themselves upon the entrapped army.
Daylight was just quivering in the treetops when the battle of Point Pleasant began. At the first savage onset Fleming, Charles Lewis, and Field lay dead. It was surprise, ambuscade, slaughter.
Grim old Andrew Lewis lit his pipe and studied the field while his riflemen and sharp-shooters braced themselves behind the white-armed sycamores. There was a
