Being the larger settlement, Harrodsburg was more often attacked than Boonesborough, although simultaneous sieges were sometimes in progress, thus preventing the little garrisons from helping each other. At both stations the women soon became the equal of the men, fearlessly taking turns at the port-holes, from which little puffs of white smoke would follow the sharp rifle-cracks whenever a savage head revealed itself from behind bush or tree. When not on duty as marksmen, women were melting their pewter plates into bullets, loading the rifles and handing them to the men, caring for the wounded, and cooking whatever food might be obtainable. During a siege food was gained only by stealth and at great peril. Some brave volunteer would escape into the woods by night, and after a day spent in hunting, far away from hostile camps, return, if possible under cover of darkness, with what game he could find. It was a time to make heroes or cowards of either men or women--there was no middle course. Amid this spasmodic hurly-burly there was no lack of marrying and giving in marriage. One day in early August, 1776, Betsey Calloway, the eldest of the captive girls, was married at Boonesborough to Samuel Henderson, one of the rescuing party--the first wedding in Kentucky. Daniel Boone, as justice of the peace, tied the knot. A diarist of the time has this record of a similar Harrodsburg event: "July 9, 1777.--Lieutenant Linn married--great merriment." At each garrison, whenever not under actual siege, half of the men were acting as guards and scouts while the others cultivated small patches of corn within sight of the walls. But even this precaution sometimes failed of its purpose. For instance, one day in May two hundred Indians suddenly surrounded the corn-field at Boonesborough, and there was a lively skirmish before the planters could reach the fort. Thus the summer wore away. In August Colonel Bowman arrived with a hundred militiamen from the Virginia frontier. A little later forty-eight horsemen came from the Yadkin country to Boone's relief, making so brave a display as they emerged from the tangled woods and in open order filed through the gates of the palisade, that some Shawnese watching the procession from a neighboring hill fled into Ohio with the startling report that two hundred Long Knife warriors had arrived from Virginia. In October other Virginians came, to the extent of a hundred expert riflemen; and late in the autumn the valiant Logan brought in from the Holston as much powder and lead as four packhorses could carry, guarded by a dozen sharpshooters, thus insuring a better prospect for food.