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Five men of the party, however, who had families in the fort, feeling uneasy for their safety, and unwilling to trust their defence to the few who remained there, returned to the fort, leaving Captain Estill's party thirty-five in number.
They had just crossed the creek, which in that part is small, and were ascending one side as Estill's party descended the other, of two approaching hills of moderate elevation. The water-course which lay between, had produced an opening in the timber and brush, conducing to mutual discovery, while both hills were well set with trees, interspersed with saplings and bushes.
It is, however, disgraceful to relate, that, at the very onset of the action, Lieutenant Miller, of Captain Estill's party, with six men under his command, "ingloriously fled" from the field, thereby placing in jeopardy the whole of their comrades, and causing the death of many brave soldiers. Hence, Estill's party numbered eighteen, and the Wyandottes twenty-five.
Estill's Station had been entered in pursuing the enemy Captain Estill himself and twenty-five men had been cut to pieces by twenty-five Wyandots. From the small Hoy's Station Captain John Holder had sallied in rescue of two captured boys, and he and his party also had been badly defeated. Hoy's Station was threatened by a siege. Help was needed.
After a short search, Captain Estill's party struck the trail of the retreating Indians. It was resolved at once to make pursuit, and no time was lost in doing so.
Sometime in March, a party of Wyandots made a descent upon Estill's station, which stood near the present site of Richmond; and having killed and scalped a young lady, and captured a Negro slave, were induced, by the exaggerated account which the latter gave of the force within, to an immediate retreat; whereby, probably, the lives of the women and children, almost the only occupants, were saved Captain Estill himself, with his garrison, and several new recruits, being at the time away, on a search for these very savages, who were known by some unmistakable signs to be in the vicinity.
The report of the misfortune which had overtaken the men of Estill's Station was speedily succeeded by another report no less alarming. A band of Indians had crept up to Hoy's Station and there had stolen two little boys. Quickly Captain Holder gathered a band of seventeen angry men and started in pursuit of the Indians.
Captain Estill at this period was covered with blood from a wound received early in the action; nine of his brave companions lay dead upon the field; and four others were so disabled by their wounds, as to be unable to continue the fight. Captain Estill's fighting men were now reduced to four. Among this number was Joseph Proctor.
At any rate, he strongly urged the necessity of reconnoitering the ground carefully before the main body crossed the river." McClung, in his "Western Adventures," doubts whether the plan of operation proposed by Colonel Boone would have been more successful than that actually adopted; suggesting that the enemy would have cut them off in detail, as at Estill's defeat.
Immediately on the receipt of the alarming intelligence of Estill's defeat, Isaac, his wife, and the family of his father-in-law, Wilson, repaired to Bryan's Station, and joined Mrs. Younker and Ella, who had meantime remained there in security.
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