On these trips he was not only often reduced to the last extremity by hunger, fatigue, and exposure, but was in hourly peril of his life from the Indians he was hunting.

Once he was captured; but when about to be bound to the stake for burning, he suddenly flung an Indian boy into the fire, and in the confusion burst through the warriors, and actually made his escape, though the whole pack of yelling savages followed at his heels with rifle and tomahawk.

He raised a small company of scouts or rangers, and was one of the very few captains able to reduce the unruly frontiersmen to order.

In consequence his company on several occasions fairly whipped superior numbers of Indians in the woods; a feat that no regulars could perform, and to which the backwoodsmen themselves were generally unequal, even though an overmatch for their foes singly, because of their disregard of discipline.
[Footnote: In the open plain the comparative prowess of these forest Indians, of the backwoodsmen, and of trained regulars was exactly the reverse of what it was in the woods.] So, with foray and reprisal, and fierce private war, with all the border in a flame, the year 1781 came to an end.

At its close there were in Kentucky seven hundred and sixty able-bodied militia, fit for an offensive campaign.