Boone loved the lad more than he had realized until he saw him in his present extremely perilous position. For an instant Boone hesitated, but only for an instant, before he answered the scout: “Let him be, Kenton. He’s playing a man’s part and we haven’t the right to baulk him. Not water!” he cried to the women, who now arrived with several buckets of the fluid. “Not water! We shall need every drop we have. We must make sand serve, if it will. Hurry with some empty buckets.” In the meanwhile, Hardy had sense enough not to expose himself unnecessarily but lay prone along the edge of the roof. In a few minutes half a dozen women were digging energetically in the sandy soil of the square and filling the buckets, which Boone and Kenton handed up to Hardy. The lad was now obliged to stand, and immediately his form, clearly outlined in the lurid light, became the target for a hundred rifles. A frontiersman would have brought him down in a minute, and although the Indians were poor shots, it was a miracle that he lived through the fusillade that they directed against him. At one time he felt a sudden stinging sensation in his right thigh and looked down to see if an ember had burned through his leggings. A little later, a hot iron seemed to sear his cheek, and when he put his hand to the place it came away covered with blood. In hardly more than five minutes after the buckets began to come up Hardy had the fire out, and, shouting a warning to those below, dropped upon his stomach and slid off the roof into the arms of Kenton. “That was well done, son,--very well done,” said Boone. “Now back to your post. The Injuns will draw off at daybreak, but they may come strong once again before that.” The fire which Hardy had extinguished was the only one that got well under way, and the failure in that case seemed to discourage the Indians. The attack slackened perceptibly and soon they withdrew, carrying away their dead and wounded. When the defenders checked up their casualties it was found that only two men had been killed outright. A number had received more or less severe injuries, and among these was Hardy. His clothing had been pierced in four places. His hurts were slight. They consisted of a flesh wound in the thigh and an abrased cheek, and though the former incapacitated him during the remainder of the siege, it soon healed. This attack, in which they lost heavily, thoroughly disheartened the Indians. The siege was maintained for nine days longer with almost constant fighting, but no such assault as that of the first night was again attempted. Occasionally small parties endeavored to set fires against the walls under cover of darkness, but they always found that a vigilant watch was maintained and no redskin could approach within a hundred yards of the fort except at the peril of his life.