In the evenings the head chiefs, especially those of the Shawanese and Delaware nations, met with Colonel McKee and his guests. "McKee always promised that the King, their Father, would protect them & afford them every thing they wanted in case they went to war.... Advise that they ought not to make Peace upon any other terms than to make the Ohio the boundary line. After the final decision, McKee furnished the savages with arms, ammunition, scalping knives and Tomahawks even more than they could use this winter." On the twenty-eighth of July the Indians separated to reassemble "at au-Glaize twenty-four days from that time" to watch Wayne and attack him if opportunity offered.[144] Instantly a score of Indian runners were hurrying south and east to Knox and Wayne with the secret code message to prepare for war.[145] The exact date of Wayne's receipt of this message (sent from Niagara, August 23) is not recorded. It was two hours after midnight, September 24, when the express thundered into Petersburg, Kentucky, with an order to General Scott "to take the field with the Mounted Volunteers & to be at Fort Jefferson By the first of October."[146] Hobson's Choice was the scene of intense activity as September drew to a close, and by October 5 all was in readiness for the northward movement. Excluding invalids, and garrisons to be left at the four forts on the line of march, Wayne estimated his available force at twenty-six hundred regulars and three hundred and sixty mounted volunteers. "... you may rest assured," Wayne wrote Knox upon leaving Fort Washington, "that I will not commit the legion [risk an engagement] unnecessarily; and unless more powerfully supported ... I will content myself by taking a strong position advanced of [Fort] Jefferson, and by exerting every power, endeavor to protect the frontiers, and to secure the posts and army during the winter."[147]