After talking over the matter the men within the fort called together all the women, disclosed their suspicions concerning the location of a part of the enemy, but told them they felt no violence would be offered women and urged them to go in a body to bring water. The women hesitated and said that they were not bullet-proof and that savages scalped alike the male and the female. In reply the men said that the women usually carried the water, and that if the men should go, the Indians would know that their ambuscade had been discovered and would at once rush upon the whites and gain admittance to the fort; but if the women went as usual, the savages would think their hiding secure and would longer delay the attack. The women knew that water they must have, if the garrison withstood the inevitable siege; they also knew that the views of the men were correct and that the request for them to bring the water arose from no desire on the part of their husbands and brothers, sons and fathers, to shirk duty or shift danger. So when the Spartan-like mothers agreed to the plan, the younger women followed their example, and everyone, matron and maid, with pail in hand or piggin on head, marched down to the spring, while they "feared each bush" an Indian. Though vainly striving to appear calm, when returning "The way seemed long before them, And their hearts outran their footsteps"; so the nearer the gate they came, the quicker was their walk until it finally ended in a very brisk run and very few entered the fort with full vessels. Tradition says that as the last entered so hastily and spilled the water so freely the Indians broke into a laugh. But the women had "been tried and not found wanting"; they had proved themselves to be true helpmates of those sturdy men who were striving to gain a home in the western wilds. [Illustration: "The walk finally ended in a very brisk run."] Erelong the arrangements for defense were completed and thirteen men marched out to form a decoy party on the Lexington road; their orders were to fire rapidly, make all possible noise, but not to pursue the savages too far. They obeyed orders well and as soon as the guns sounded in the distance, five hundred warriors, led by Girty, rushed from the ambush near the spring, expecting to force their way over defenseless walls. The greater part of the sixty men had resolved themselves into a reception committee, expecting just such a call. So, when "their deadly balls whistled free," wild cries of terror came from Girty's ranks and "in two minutes not an Indian was to be seen," while the thirteen reëntered through the opposite gateway, very jubilant over the success of their little ruse.