The War in the Northwest 339 



horse, exhausted by the breakneck galloping hither 

 and thither over the slope, gave out ; he then led the 

 men on foot, his voice hoarse with shouting, his 

 face blackened with powder; for he was always in 

 the front of the battle and nearest the enemy. 



No sooner had Ferguson returned from his charge 

 on Campbell than he found Shelby's men swarming 

 up to the attack on the other side. Shelby himself 

 was at their head. He had refused to let his people 

 return the dropping fire of the tory skirmishers until 

 they were close up. Ferguson promptly charged 

 his new foes and drove them down the hillside; but 

 the instant he stopped, Shelby, who had been in the 

 thick of the fight, closest to the British, brought his 

 marksmen back, and they came up nearer than ever, 

 and with a deadlier fire. 57 While Ferguson's bay- 

 onet-men both regulars and militia charged to 

 and fro, the rest of the loyalists kept up a heavy fire 

 from behind the rocks on the hilltop. The battle 

 raged in every part, for the Americans had by this 

 time surrounded their foes, and they advanced rap- 

 idly under cover of the woods. They inflicted much 

 more damage than they suffered, for they were scat- 

 tered out while the royalist troops were close to- 

 gether, and, moreover, were continually taken in 

 flank. Ferguson, conspicuous from his hunting- 

 shirt, 58 rode hither and thither with reckless brav- 

 ery, his sword in his left hand for he had never 



57 Shelby MS. 



68 The "Carolina Loyalist" speaks as if the hunting-shirt 

 were put on for disguise ; he says Ferguson was recognized, 

 "although wearing a hunting-shirt." 



