The boats made their way upward to a point in the river near where the city of Cincinnati was to be founded a few years later. As they passed this locality they saw a small party of Indians in a canoe crossing the river not far ahead of them. These were the first of the Ohio Indians they had seen, and the sight of them roused the frontier blood of the hardy boatmen. Too many cabins on the border had been burned and their inmates mercilessly slain for a frontiersman to see an Indian without a burning inclination to kill him. The colonel was in the same spirit with his men, and the boats were at once turned towards shore in pursuit of the savages. At the point they had reached the Licking River empties into the Ohio. Rowing into its mouth the men landed and, led by the colonel, climbed up the bank to look for the foe. They found far more than they had counted on. The canoe-load of savages was but a decoy to lure them ashore, and as they ascended the river-bank a hot fire was opened on them by a large body of Indians hidden in the undergrowth. A trap had been laid for them and they had fallen into it. The sudden and deadly volley threw the party into confusion, though after a minute they returned the fire and rushed upon the ambushed foe, Colonel Rogers at their head. Following him with cheers and yells, the men were soon engaged in a fierce hand-to-hand conflict, the sound of blows, shots, and war-cries filling the air, as the whites and red men fought obstinately for victory. But the Indians far outnumbered their opponents, and when at length the brave Rogers was seen to stagger and fall all hope left his followers. It was impossible to regain the boats which they had imprudently left, and they broke and fled into the forest, pursued by their savage foes. Many days later the survivors of the bloody contest, thirteen in all, came straggling wearily into a white settlement on the Kanawha River in Virginia. Of the remainder of their party and their gallant leader nothing was ever heard again. One of the men reported that he had stayed with the wounded colonel during the night after the battle, where he "remained in the woods, in extreme pain and utterly past recovery." In the morning he was obliged to leave him to save his own life, and that was the last known on earth of Colonel Rogers. As for the ammunition for which he had been sent, and which he had been decoyed by an Indian trick into abandoning, it fell into the hands of the savages, and was probably used in the later war in the service of those against whom it was intended to be employed. Such is the fortune of war. _HOW COLONEL CLARK WON THE NORTHWEST._