Adventure Magazine Cover — page 101: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

The Battle of the Kettles Kentucky and Postmaster-General in the cabinet of President Tyler. Moore’s action in taking flight when he, Crepps and Crist went ashore was much debated in the neighborhood. It could not be denied that there had been many occa- sions during the Indian warfare on the frontier when it was regarded not only as excusable but as perfectly ethical and ad- visable for an individual to save himself as best he could, regardless of the rest of the party, especially when their case was ad- mittedly hopeless. Men’s lives were too valuable then to be sacrificed to mere heroics. But in the present instance there were not a few who argued that Moore should not have forsaken his two comrades who were fighting not only for their own lives but for that of a woman—and a woman mentally bereft, at that. As for Crist, never during the remainder of his life was he heard to utter a word of blame for Moore because of his action. Many of his friends regarded it as sig- nificant, however, that he always avoided the subject. He and Moore never met again; in fact, Moore rather seemed to take pains to avoid such a meeting. Desiring to convert the flatboat into a barge of state for themselves, the Indians had dumped all the kettles into the river; but they shrewdly went a mile downstream to do it and sank them in the middle of the channel, hoping that they would not. be found. There they were discovered, how- ever, by a passing boatman a few days later, when the river had fallen and the water cleared, and were fished up by a party from the Lick. The consignees generously paid Crist in full, as if he had delivered the mer- chandise at its destination; and so his loss was not as complete as he had at first be- heved it to be. The expedition of the Kentuckians never caught up with the Indians. The latter floated out into the Ohio on their boat, and a hunter reported having seen them drifting down that stream in fine style, with a whole fleet of canoes tied on behind and everybody, both in the canoes and on the flagship, ap- parently enjoying himself hugely. But they dared not remain long on the big river, which was becoming more and more a highway for the pale faces; so they pres- ently dodged into the mouth of Blue River, on the Indiana side, and after proceeding several miles up that stream abandoned the 99 boat. later. It was naturally difficult to follow the course of a party who had traveled by water and had therefore left no trail. After the Indians had swept out into the Ohio, the pursuing force was never there- after able to trace that particular band as an organized body. Crist believed them to be Wyandottes—one of the tribes of the Iroquois confederacy—and they probably were, for he was an expert in such lore. So the pursuing expedition, baffled in its search for clues and anxious to get back to young crops and ‘its salt-boiling, presently returned, empty-handed. Crist was harried by remorse at the thought that he must have blundered somehow in coming away from the conflict alive and letting a beau- tiful and innocent girl fall into the hands of the savages; but his friends did not fail to assure him of their belief that he had done all that a man could do in such a situation. His physical being had received too severe a shock to permit a quick recovery. The bullet was extracted from among the broken bones of his heel, but the doctor— who had come all the way from Lexington— was quite positive that because of the neg- lect of the wound the limb would have to come off, while Crist was equally certain that it would not. He was determined to have two whole legs on which to range the woods again, and, though it was a close shave, yet he had his way. But it was a year before he was a man again and able to attend to any affairs; and he walked all the rest of his life with a slight limp. He married a sturdy frontier girl two or three years later and set up a home in what is now Nelson County, Kentucky. He continued to engage in merchandising, for which he had a decided capability, but never failed to take the field whenever men were needed for the defense of the settlements. Often and often, as he sat by the winter firesides with his wife and neighbors, he would speak of the terrible battle of that May morning on Salt River, and wonder what had become of beautiful Susan Lehane, who had borne the name of Susan Murkett for less than three days, and who had vanished apparently forever in the great, mysterious forests north of the Ohio. Years passed. First General Harmar and It was found there, sunk, a year MICLOOOK C© in