to force the besieged into surrendering. He then received news that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Loyalists from North and South Carolina were en route to Georgia with the clear intention of joining the British in Augusta. Pickens chose to give up the siege of Carr's Fort and withdrew his forces in the night on February 12.(n36) He made a decision to intercept the new threat despite the fact that, in doing so, he gave up a certain victory in hopes of finding and defeating an enemy much larger in numbers than his own command. Pickens also abandoned any advantage he might have held if the approaching enemy force passed near Carr's Fort en route to sympathizers at the nearby Wrightsborough settlement. Dooly had a deposition taken by justice of the peace Stephen Heard wherein a William Millen had described meeting a Loyalist leader identified as James Boyd, when the latter had recently been at Wrightsborough seeking guides to South Carolina. Boyd had carried a proclamation from the British commander now in Augusta that called for Americans to join the king's army.(n37) Dooly must have understood that the Redcoats at Augusta expected the arrival of Boyd with a significant force of Loyalists from the Carolinas, guided in the last of their journey by the horsemen under Hamilton and Campbell. He also knew that to follow Pickens in returning to South Carolina to intercept the otherwise largely unknown enemy risked a great deal. Complications Men of the two state militias had already joined and clashed with the oncoming Loyalist force with disastrous results at Vann's Creek, Georgia, on February 10. Pickens's and Dooly's combined Whig command tried to pursue the Loyalists in South Carolina and then, into Wilkes County, before rendezvousing with the survivors of the Vann's Creek battle. The militiamen found themselves back at Carr's Fort two nights after having left it and after two days of long marches. Boyd and his ad hoc regiment of North and South Carolina Loyalists camped at a cowpen or small farm in a meadow atop a steep hill in a bend of swampy Kettle Creek, less than a mile from Carr's Fort and hardly much further from Wrightsborough, on Sunday morning February 14. Pickens then ordered a complicated attack through thick canebrakes, creeks, and woods with his combined force of only three hundred and forty men. The some six hundred Loyalists who held a