While she and the other women, unconscious of danger, were "coaxing the snowy fluid from the yielding udders of the kine," suddenly the war-whoop sounded through the woods, and a band of yelling savages rushed out upon them. Quick as thought the women turned and darted for the gate of the fort; but the savages were close upon them in a neck-and-neck race, and Kate, more remote than the rest, was cut off from the entrance. Seeing her danger, Sevier and a dozen others opened the gate and were about to rush out upon the savages, hundreds of whom were now in front of the fort; but Robertson held them back, saying they could not rescue her, and to go out would insure their own destruction. At a glance Kate took in the situation. She could have no help from her friends, and the tomahawk and scalping-knife were close behind her. Instantly she turned, and, fleeter than a deer, made for a point in the stockade some distance from the entrance. The palisades were eight feet high, but with one bound she reached the top, and with another was over the wall, falling into the arms of Sevier, who for the first time called her his "bonnie Kate," his "brave girl for a foot-race." The other women reached the entrance of the fort in safety. Then the baffled savages opened fire, and for a full hour it rained bullets upon the little enclosure. But the missiles fell harmless: not a man was wounded. Driven by the light charges the Indians were accustomed to use, the bullets simply bounded off from the thick logs and did no damage. But it was not so with the fire of the besieged. The order was, "Wait till you see the whites of your enemies' eyes, and then make sure of your man." And so every one of those forty rifles did terrible execution. For twenty days the Indians hung about the fort, returning again and again to the attack; but not a man who kept within the walls was even wounded. It was not so with a man and a boy who, emboldened by a few days' absence of the Indians, ventured outside to go down to the river. The man was scalped on the spot; the boy was taken prisoner, and subjected to a worse fate in one of the Indian villages. His name was Moore, and he was a younger brother of the lieutenant who fought so bravely in the battle near Fort Patrick Henry.