There had been no women in that other picture,
only the white men who were going forward to open the way and the
red men who were retreating. But in this picture there were
women--wives and children, mothers, sisters, and sweethearts. All
the women of the settlement were there at this daybreak muster to
cheer on their way the men who were going out to battle that they
might keep the way of liberty open not for men only but for women
and children also. And the battle to which the men were now going
forth must be fought against Back Country men of their own stripe
under a leader who, in other circumstances, might well have been
one of themselves--a primitive spirit of hardy mountain stock,
who, having once taken his stand, would not barter and would not
retreat.
"With the Sword of the Lord and of Gideon!" cried their pastor,
the Reverend Samuel Doak, with upraised hands, as the
mountaineers swung into their saddles. And it is said that all
the women took up his words and cried again and again, "With the
sword of the Lord and of our Gideons!" To the shouts of their
women, as bugles on the wind of dawn, the buckskin-shirted army
dashed out upon the mountain trail.
The warriors' equipment included rifles and ammunition,
tomahawks, knives, shot pouches, a knapsack, and a blanket for
each man.
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