In March 1792, Ann Harrod watched her husband saddle up for a hunting trip and demanded one last thing before he rode out of Harrodsburg. She made him write out his will. She had been pressing him about it for two years, ever since the property dispute with a man named Bridges had turned into an open threat, and her fear had only grown as the day of his departure approached. James Harrod, the founder of the oldest town in Kentucky, the man who had survived Shawnee ambushes and winter hunts that would have killed lesser men, signed his will and rode into the forest.

He was never heard from again. The mystery of his disappearance has never been solved, but by the time he vanished, Harrod had already lived a life so strange and solitary that his end seemed almost a natural conclusion to it. He had entered Kentucky even before Daniel Boone. He built the first log cabin and founded the first settlement in the country that would become the state.

He fought in Lord Dunmore’s War in 1774 and through the American Revolution. He was a hunter who would disappear into the wilderness for weeks and months at a time, alone, with no one knowing where he had gone or why. And on one of those long tramps, in his fifty-eighth year, he simply did not come back. So little is known of Harrod’s early life that history does not even record where he was born or when he came west.

The chroniclers only know that he went to Kentucky before Boone, that he was probably a Virginian, that he returned to that state and came back to Kentucky in 1774. In that year, when Governor Dunmore sent Boone to warn the surveyors at the Falls of the Ohio that an Indian war had broken out, Boone found Harrod and his company already settled at the place they called Harrodstown. Harrod fought under Colonel Lewis at the Battle of Point Pleasant that same year, and the next year he settled permanently on the site of the present town of Harrodsburg. By all accounts he was a tall, brave, simple, modest man.

He had read no book but the book of nature, knew no art but woodcraft. He hated nothing on earth but an Indian and a polecat. He never said, “Boys, you do it,” but rather, “Boys, come on. ” His rifle was the longest, the heaviest, and the surest of any on the border.

His calm, frank eye never failed to mark distant game, to meet the gaze of a deadly foe, or to smile back truth to a friend. His habits of activity were so incessant and his coolness so great that he never had to wait for companions on his longest and most dangerous expeditions. Harrod would often be gone for weeks and even months together, and during these absences his industry was untiring. Every animal he killed was cured and stored Indian fashion, beyond the reach of wild beasts.

His knowledge of the Indians and their ways was such that he would continue hunting even when he knew they were in the same range. The proud hunter would not give way, but took his chances with the red foe. One such occasion nearly cost him everything. He was hunting near the Kentucky River when he perceived a group of deer feeding in a small glade.

He approached cautiously, knelt behind a tree, and raised his rifle for a shot. Just then the buck of the herd lifted its head and uttered the peculiar shrill whistle that means danger. Harrod knew too well that there was another foe present besides himself. He held his breath.

From the opposite side of the glade, a rifle cracked. The startled buck leaped into the air and fell dead. Harrod’s rifle followed so instantly that the report seemed an echo of the first. But a nobler quarry had bitten the dust.

His unerring ball had reached the heart of a Shawnee chief, who had leaned forward from his covert to fire. Harrod had known for days that an Indian hunting party was in the neighborhood. At another time, his own unwary game was nearly played upon himself. He was out on a buffalo trail leading to the Blue Licks and had wounded a tough, surly old bull that had left the herd and stood at bay in a thick wood.

The animal was fierce and dangerous, and Harrod had to approach it with care. While in the very act of firing, he caught a glimpse of a warrior taking aim at him from behind a tree. Both fired at once. Harrod dropped instantly to the ground as if killed, and lay perfectly still.

The Indian, stopping to load his rifle—an invariable habit with the tribes before leaving cover—approached warily, leaping from tree to tree, to take his scalp. Seeing the body perfectly motionless, the warrior sprang forward, knife in hand. But as he stooped to grasp the scalp lock, Harrod’s long, powerful arms locked about him like a devilfish. With the tightening coil of a boa constrictor, the warrior was crushed in that Herculean hug and writhed helpless beneath him.

There came a time when the Shawnees made several attacks on the settlements while Boone was absent at the Licks with most of the men of the station, making salt. Prowling parties of Indians killed the cattle, drove off the hunting parties, and so shortened the food supply that the little garrison was reduced to great straits. At that very juncture, Harrod returned from one of his long tramps. He proposed that some of the men accompany him to one of his nearest depots of meat.

The risk was so great that none dared venture, so he started out alone. He found the game shy, and Indian signs abundant. He decided to take the first meat he could find. He soon noticed a small herd of deer moving as if startled, and he advanced very cautiously.

He saw the prints of moccasins on the trail of the deer. He progressed only a short distance when the sudden whistle of a deer, followed instantly by the cracks of two rifles, warned him that it was time for business. The Indians had seen him and treed. While he was peeping cautiously for a shot, a rifle ball from the right whizzed through the heavy mass of black hair that hung over his shoulders, stinging his neck sharply as it grazed past.

He crouched in an instant and lay still as death for some time. There were two Indians on the left and a new one on the right. Harrod then concluded to play the cap game, a stale trick enough, but one that often worked. Placing his famous wolfskin cap on the muzzle of his rifle, he made some preparatory movement among the shrubs to show that he was getting restless.

Then, slowly and hesitatingly, he raised the cap. The ring of three rifles was almost simultaneous, and before the echoes had died away, Harrod’s own rifle spoke. The death shriek of a warrior proclaimed the success of the ruse. After that came another long quiet.

The cap was elevated again, but this time only one Indian drew fire. It was enough, for it disclosed the exact position of his foes. In less than a minute, the Indian who had fired exposed part of his body while sending home his ramrod. Harrod shot him through the heart.

The other Indian commenced a retreat and got off, but not before carrying away a lump of the paleface’s lead. Harrod proceeded at his leisure to dress the two deer the Indians had killed, and that night he entered the station loaded down with meat. His cabin soon became the nucleus of the station. Hunters, surveyors, speculators, and emigrants flocked to it for shelter and protection, and Harrod’s knowledge and goodwill were at the service of all.

He would shoulder his axe and help newcomers raise a cabin. If they were out of meat, he somehow found it out and was off to the woods, and soon a fine deer, a bear, or the haunches of a buffalo would be laid at their disposal. When news came that the Indians had attacked the house of a settler five miles off and murdered the entire family but two daughters, whom they carried off as captives, Harrod’s war cry was soon heard. “Come, boys, we must catch those rascals.

We can’t spare our girls. ” Then followed the swift and tireless pursuit, the weary approach to the Indian camp, the night attack, the short fierce struggle, the rescue, and the victorious return. Harrod preferred to fight and hunt alone, for he said that companions complained of hardships and dangers when the fun was just commencing with him. When by himself, he knew exactly what he could do and what he would do.

The Indians, on account of this extraordinary love for solitary adventure, had christened him the Lone Long Knife, and dreaded his mysterious prowess greatly. Once, discovered by a young warrior right in the center of an Indian village, Harrod struck him to the earth with his huge fist and leaped for the forest, followed by a gang of Indians. But they had a man before them swifter and more tireless than themselves. By the time he reached the Miami, ten miles off, only three were still following.

Harrod swam the river without hesitation, being fired at while climbing the opposite bank. He took a tree, removed the waterproof cover of deer’s bladder from his rifle lock, and quietly waited. After hesitating a moment, the pursuers plunged in. Harrod waited until they approached the shore, and at the ominous crack of his rifle the foremost sank.

The other two paused, turned to go back, but before they could get out of range he wounded a second desperately. That one gave himself up to the current and was swept down out of sight. The third, by a series of rapid dives like those of a wary loon, baffled the white hunter’s aim and at last swam out of range. Harrod paused to rest.

An hour or so later, while wandering along the bank, he saw upon a pile of driftwood that had collected at the mouth of a small run some living object, which he at first took for a large turtle glistening in the sun as it drew its unwieldy body up on the logs to bask. He approached nearer and nearer and stopped to gaze. Imagine his surprise on seeing a stalwart Indian drag his body slowly from the water and finally seat himself upon the logs. The man had lost his gun and now endeavored to stifle with moss and leaves the bleeding from a severe bullet wound in his shoulder.

Harrod knew that it was the second Indian he had shot. Here was a trial and a test of the man. The foe was wounded and helpless. To shoot the poor wretch he could not now.

To leave him there to die would be still more cruel. His big heart melted. Stealthily making a wide circuit, he crept silently upon the warrior from behind. A large tree stood close to the drift.

Gaining it, Harrod laid down his gun, then suddenly stepped into full view and raised his empty hands to show that he was unarmed. The astounded warrior grunted and made a sudden movement as if to plunge into the water again. Harrod raised his hand to his heart and spoke a few words in the Shawnee tongue. The young Indian paused, looked for a moment earnestly into his late opponent’s face, and bowed his head in token of submission.

Harrod examined his wound, helped him to the bank, tore his own shirt, and bound up the wound with healing, cooling herbs. Then, to crown all his benevolent efforts, finding the Indian unable to walk, he heaved him across his own broad shoulders and carried him to a nearby cave that he used as one of his deposits of game. The entrance was small and covered with brambles and vines, but as one entered it opened out into a chamber with a smooth floor and beautiful, fantastically shaped stalactites hanging from the rocky roof. At the farther extremity, a clear, pure stream of sparkling water poured into a smooth round basin worn into the solid limestone, and found its exit through a dark hole in the wall.

The Indian watched with wide eyes as he was gently laid upon the floor. In that strange, secluded hiding place, so the story goes, Harrod watched over and waited on his wounded foe. His interest in the young warrior grew as he tended him. He brought him meat and cooling fruits, washed and dressed his wounds, and carefully, tenderly nursed him back to health and strength.

When the young Indian was well enough to journey, Harrod gave him a supply of provisions and, pointing toward the north, bade him return to his people and tell them how the hated Long Knife treated his wounded foe. Nothing was ever heard directly from that warrior again. But Boone, who was about this time taken prisoner by the Shawnees while with the salt makers, always attributed the kind treatment he and his men received to the good offices of this grateful Indian. Harrod’s popularity was by then very great.

He was a true leader, soon elected colonel, married a Kentucky girl, and was universally idolized. Yet he modestly shrank from all honors. Not all the comforts of a happy home or the endearments of a growing family could win him away from his absorbing passion for long solitary hunting rambles. By the time of his disappearance, he had become a fairly wealthy farmer, but he had grown increasingly detached from society.

He and his wife had one daughter, born in 1785. On his final hunting trip in 1792, he set out with two other men. One was Michael Stoner. The other was Bridges, the same man with whom Harrod had disputed over property two years earlier and who Ann Harrod feared wanted her husband dead.

She had been so concerned that she forced Harrod to write out his will before he left. According to Stoner, Harrod and Bridges set out one morning from the camp in the direction Harrod had chosen. Stoner heard a gunshot from that direction. Bridges returned to camp alone and said that he had seen signs of Indians near where Harrod had gone.

Stoner wanted to go look for him, but Bridges said it was too dangerous because of the Indians. Stoner agreed, and they returned to Harrodsburg. Afterward, Bridges went to Lexington and sold some furs and silver buttons marked with an H. The man who bought them sent them to Ann Harrod, and she identified them as her husband’s.

Some of Harrod’s friends then went to the place where he was last seen, near what is now Beattyville, Kentucky. They found bones in a cave. They claimed the bones were wearing Harrod’s shirt, and that the buttons had been cut away. When they returned, they found that Bridges had left town.

Many regarded that as proof that he had killed Harrod. But other explanations circulated. He may have been killed by Indians. He may have fallen ill and died in the forest.

He may have abandoned his family and gone to live with a sister in another state. Or, as another theory held, he had been married in Pennsylvania before coming to Kentucky and returned to live with his first family. These theories were gathered in a 1989 book by James Clotter, History Mysteries: The Cases of James Harrod, Tecumseh, Honest Dick Tate, and William Goebel. None ever knew how he met his end—whether by some moving accident, by flood or field, by some casualty of the hunt, or in some deadly and desperate conflict with a swarthy foe.

But all who knew him, from their knowledge of his unquailing intrepidity, felt absolutely certain that in whatever shape death came to him, he met it bravely and unflinchingly.