Personally vindicated, the enemy departed, and several companies of militia now arriving to garrison the stations for the winter, Major Boone once more turned his face to the Yadkin and sought his family. He found them at the Bryan settlement, living comfortably in a small log cabin, but until then unconscious of his return from the wilderness in which they had supposed he found his grave. FOOTNOTES: [14] Two lines of Indians were formed, five or six feet apart, on either side of a marked path. The prisoner was obliged to run between these lines, while there were showered upon him lusty blows from whatever weapons the tormentors chose to adopt--switches, sticks, clubs, and tomahawks. It required great agility, speed in running, and some aggressive strategy to arrive at the goal unharmed. Many white captives were seriously crippled in this thrilling experience, and not a few lost their lives. [15] Account is only taken, in these charges, of the twenty-seven captives. CHAPTER XII SOLDIER AND STATESMAN In Daniel Boone's "autobiography," he dismisses his year of absence from Kentucky with few words: "I went into the settlement, and nothing worthy of notice passed for some time." No doubt he hunted in some of his old haunts upon the Yadkin; and there is reason for believing that he made a trip upon business of some character to Charleston, S.C. Meanwhile, his fellow settlers of Kentucky had not been inactive. In February (1779) Clark repossessed himself of Vincennes after one of the most brilliant forced marches of the Revolution; and having there captured Governor Hamilton--the "hair-buying general," as the frontiersmen called him, because they thought he paid bounties on American scalps--had sent him a prisoner to Virginia. The long siege of Boonesborough and the other attacks of the preceding year, together with more recent assaults upon flatboats descending the Ohio, had strongly disposed the Kentuckians to retaliate on the Shawnese. Two hundred and thirty riflemen under Colonel Bowman rendezvoused in July at the mouth of the Licking, where is now the city of Covington. Nearly a third of the force were left to guard the boats in which they crossed the Ohio, the rest marching against Old Chillicothe, the chief Shawnese town on the Little Miami. They surprised the Indians, and a hotly contested battle ensued, lasting from dawn until ten o'clock in the morning; but the overpowering numbers of the savages caused Bowman to return crestfallen to Kentucky with a loss of nearly a dozen men. This was the forerunner of many defeats of Americans, both bordermen and regulars, at the hands of the fierce tribesmen of Ohio.