Near by was a wooden fort, made, no doubt, after the common
frontier pattern, of a stockade fence ten or twelve feet high, enclosing
cabins to shelter the settlers in case of alarm, and furnished at the
corners with what were called flankers, which were boxes of thick plank
large enough to hold two or more men, raised above the ground on posts, and
pierced with loopholes, so that each face of the stockade could be swept by
a flank fire. One corner of this fort at Ashuelot was, however, guarded by
a solid blockhouse, or, as it was commonly called, a "mount."
On the 23d of April a band of sixty, or, by another account, a hundred
Indians, approached the settlement before daybreak, and hid in the
neighboring thickets to cut off the men in the fort as they came out to
their morning work. One of the men, Ephraim Dorman, chanced to go out
earlier than the rest. The Indians did not fire on him, but, not to give an
alarm, tried to capture or kill him without noise. Several of them suddenly
showed themselves, on which he threw down his gun in pretended submission.
One of them came up to him with hatchet raised; but the nimble and sturdy
borderer suddenly struck him with his fist a blow in the head that knocked
him flat, then snatched up his own gun, and, as some say, the blanket of
the half-stunned savage also, sprang off, reached the fort unhurt, and gave
the alarm.
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