Hope reanimated him. Regardless of lacerated feet and blood, he pressed forward with renovated vigor until he arrived within about a mile of the river, when he found that his pursuer was gaining rapidly upon him. He could hear his breathing and the sound of his footsteps, and expected every moment to feel the sharp javelin piercing his back. In his desperation he suddenly stopped, turned round and stretching out both of his arms, rushed, in his utter defencelessness, upon the armed warrior. The savage, startled by this unexpected movement and by the bloody appearance of his victim, stumbled and fell, breaking his spear as he attempted to throw it. Colter instantly snatched up the pointed part, and pinned his foe, quivering with convulsions to the earth. Again he plunged forward on the race for life. The Indians, as they came up, stopped for a moment around the body of their slain comrade, and then, with hideous yells, resumed the pursuit. The stream was fringed with a dense growth of cotton-wood trees. Colter rushed through them, thus concealed from observation, and seeing near by a large raft of drift timber, he plunged into the water, dived under the raft and fortunately succeeded in getting his head above the water between the logs, where smaller wood covered him to the depth of several feet. Scarcely had he attained this hiding place ere the Indians like so many fiends came rushing down to the river's bank. They searched the cotton-wood thickets, and traversed the raft in all directions. They frequently came so near the hiding place of Colter that he could see them through the chinks. He was terribly afraid that they would set fire to the raft. Night came on, and the Indians disappeared. Colter, in the darkness, dived from under the raft, swam down the river to a considerable distance, and then landed and traveled all night, following the course of the stream. "Although happy in having escaped from the Indians, his situation was still dreadful. He was completely naked under a burning sun. The soles of his feet were filled with the thorns of the prickly pear. He was hungry and had no means of killing game, although he saw abundance around him; and was at a great distance from the nearest settlement. After some days of sore travel, during which he had no other sustenance than the root known by naturalists under the name of _psoralea esculenta_, he at length arrived in safety at Lisa Fort, on the Big Horn, a branch of the Yellow Stone river." CHAPTER VIII. _Captivity and Flight._ Heroism of Thomas Higgins and of Mrs. Pursley.--Affairs at Boonesborough.--Continued Alarms.--Need of Salt.--Its Manufacture.--Indian Schemes.--Capture of Boone and twenty-seven men.--Dilemma of the British at Detroit.--Blackfish adopts Colonel Boone.--Adoption Ceremony.--Indian Designs.--Escape of Boone.--Attacks the Savages.--The Fort Threatened.