The men were daily expecting relief by the second company, when visitors of a different character appeared. While half of the men worked at the boiling, the others engaged in the double service of watching for Indians and obtaining food; of these was Boone. Toward evening of the seventh of February he was returning home from a wide circuit with his packhorse laden with buffalo-meat and some beaver-skins, for he had many traps in the neighborhood. A blinding snow-storm was in progress, which caused him to neglect his usual precautions, when suddenly he was confronted by four burly Shawnese, who sprang from an ambush. Keen of foot, he thought to outrun them, but soon had to surrender, for they shot so accurately that it was evident that they could kill him if they would. The prisoner was conducted to the Shawnese camp, a few miles distant. There he found a hundred and twenty warriors under Chief Black Fish. Two Frenchmen, in English employ, were of the party; also two American renegades from the Pittsburg region, James and George Girty. These latter, with their brother Simon, had joined the Indians and, dressed and painted like savages, were assisting the tribesmen of the Northwest in raids against their fellow-borderers of Pennsylvania and Virginia. Boone was well known by reputation to all these men of the wilderness, reds and whites alike; indeed, he noticed that among the party were his captors of eight years before, who laughed heartily at again having him in their clutches.