The tale as to the "fourteen bullet-holes in
his blanket" has often been held up to ridicule; but it is probably
true, for the blankets being rolled up, one ball alone might have cut
through many folds in its flight, and another have perforated his
canteen. At all events, he and his companion were in a most miserable
plight, all night in danger of being discovered. In the morning
(according to the official report by Captain Rogers) "they made the best
retreat they were able. Hearing the enemy close to their heels, they
made a tack and luckily escaped safe to our party."
"How he escaped a wound is passing strange," says one of Putnam's
biographers [Mr. J.T. Headley]; "but he was one of those men who seem
eternally seeking death without being able to find it. There are some
persons in the world who appear to bear a charmed life, which no amount
of daring or exposure can endanger. Foremost in the charge, and the last
to retreat, they are never found with the dead. Fate seems to delight to
place them in the most desperate straits, on purpose to make their
deliverance appear the more miraculous.
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