Adventure Magazine Cover — page 100: what you’re looking at

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

68 The body was emaciated, the cheeks and eyes were sunken, the face frowsed over with nearly a week’s beard, the hair matted and intertwined with small twigs and trash. He was naked from the waist upward and from the thighs down, only the fragments of a pair of trousers clinging about his mid- dle. The hands and lower legs were simply masses of raw flesh; one leg was swollen to shapelessness, and the whole body was caked with blood and Girt. ‘‘Who are you, friend?”’ asked Durbin. The swollen tongue and cracked lips could hardly articulate the words— “Henry Crist.” With a quick intake of his breath Durbin stooped and peered into the face. “Good God in heaven!” cried he. ‘‘Henry, is it you?” Veg *? The whole party broke into exclamations of astonishment and pity. Crist was known to them all. Three weeks before he had left them, a ruddy, powerful young athlete, brimming with health and buoyant spirits; now he returned to them only the ghastly caricature of a human being. “Has anybody got any whisky or brandy?” asked Durbin. Three sturdy fellows instantly produced bottles from their pockets. “Jed, run to the branch yonder and get a little water in your hat,’’ commanded Dur- bin; and in three minutes a very little of a roughly compounded mixture of brandy and water was poured between the ex- hausted man’s lips. A bit of sparkle came into his eyes at that, and his voice grew stronger. Pomp, the negro, had in the mean time been sent back to the Lick for a blanket. When it came the tortured body was ten- derly lifted upon it, and eight rough men, grasping the edges of the blanket, walked as gently as if they were treading on thin ice and as slowly as if they were marching in a funeral cortége. And it was thus that Henry Crist came to Bullitt’s Lick. V 4 NEWS of the ‘Battle of the Ket- tles,”’ as it came to be called, had reached the Lick only an hour or two before Crist’s arrival, a messenger having ridden from Clear’s station, to which place Moore had fled after leaving Adventure the scene of the fight. The whole vicinity was being aroused. Whitaker’s, Brashear’s, Dowdall’s and other stations had been notified, and a rendezvous was appointed for the next day at the scene of the battle. The men of Bullitt’s Lick were addition- ally stirred by the few halting sentences in which Crist told of his belief that Susan was a captive in the hands of the Indians. It was typical of pioneer methods that their contingent, nearly one hundred strong, was organized immediately, snatched three or four hours’ sleep and was on the march be- fore daybreak. After telling his story Crist collapsed completely, and for many days lay un- conscious, hovering on the borderland of death. More than two weeks had passed before he was able to talk to those around him of passing events. Even then the news was given him cautiously and in small doses. He learned that the pursuing party, having assembled at the scene of the battle, had found all the bodies of the slain lying on the banks, where they had been thrown by the Indians, evidently as an exhibit of triumph for the pursuers who, they knew, would soon come. All the bodies had of course been scalped, and some had been badly torn by wild animals. The poor remains were solemnly interred in a little plot in the woods near where they fell. Durbin was able to assure Crist that there was no woman’s body found among the rest. Of the survivors of the conflict, Moore reached Clear’s station with the first news of the disaster. He alone got away unhurt. Fossett, in spite of his broken arm, escaped his pursuers, but Boyce and Floyd perished. Crepps, it appeared, had not fallen when Crist saw him shot, but had staggered away into the bushes a few rods from the river and hidden himself for a while. Seeing Crist fall, he had supposed him to be dead. After a time he made his way, slowly through the woods, and late in the evening fell, completely exhausted, in the vicinity of Long Lick. There he was found next day by a searching party, but died as he was being brought home. The little daughter for whom he had been so fondly hoping was born a few days after his death. She lived to become the wife of Charles A. Wickliffe, member of the Legislature and of Congress, Governor of MICLOOOK (C@ inn