died in the Revolutionary War. Sevier had given a great barbecue,
where oxen and deer were roasted whole, while horseraces were
run, and the backwoodsmen tried their skill as marksmen and
wrestlers. In the midst of the feasting Shelby appeared, hot with
hard riding, to tell of the approach of Ferguson and the British.
Immediately the feasting was stopped, and the feasters made ready
for war. Sevier and Shelby sent word to Campbell to rouse the men
of his own district and come without delay, and they sent
messengers to and fro in their own neighborhood to summon the
settlers from their log huts on the stump-dotted clearings and
the hunters from their smoky cabins in the deep woods.

The meeting-place was at the Sycamore Shoals. On the appointed
day the backwoodsmen gathered sixteen hundred strong, each man
carrying a long rifle, and mounted on a tough, shaggy horse. They
were a wild and fierce people, accustomed to the chase and to
warfare with the Indians. Their hunting-shirts of buckskin or
homespun were girded in by bead-worked belts, and the trappings
of their horses were stained red and yellow. At the gathering
there was a black-frocked Presbyterian preacher, and before they
started he addressed the tall riflemen in words of burning zeal,
urging them to stand stoutly in the battle, and to smite with the
sword of the Lord and of Gideon. Then the army started, the
backwoods colonels riding in front. Two or three days later, word
was brought to Ferguson that the Back-water men had come over the
mountains; that the Indian-fighters of the frontier, leaving
unguarded their homes on the Western Waters, had crossed by
wooded and precipitous defiles to the help of the beaten men of
the plains. Ferguson at once fell back, sending out messengers
for help. When he came to King's Mountain, a wooded, hog-back