Their operations should be carefully studied by all who wish to learn the possibilities of mounted riflemen.

Yet they were impatient of discipline or of regular service, and they really had no one commander.

The different militia officers combined to perform some definite piece of work, but, like their troops, they were incapable of long-continued campaigns; and there were frequent and bitter quarrels between the several commanders, as well as between the bodies of men they led.
It seems certain that the mountaineers were, as a rule, more formidable fighters than the lowland militia, beside or against whom they battled; and they formed the main strength of the attacking party that left the camp at the Cherokee ford before sunset on the 17th.

Ferguson's army was encamped southwest of them, at Fair Forest Shoals; they marched round him, and went straight on, leaving him in their rear.

Sometimes they rode through open forest, more often they followed the dim wood roads; their horses pacing or cantering steadily through the night.