evy officers ordered
a charge, and followed the charging party at a run. By this time the
battalions were broken, and only some thirty men followed the officers.
The Indians fled before the bayonets until they reached a ravine filled
with down timber; whereupon they halted behind the impenetrable tangle
of fallen logs. The soldiers also halted, and were speedily swept away
by the fire of the Indians, whom they could not reach; but Van Cleve,
showing his skill as a woodsman, covered himself behind a small tree,
and gave back shot for shot until all his ammunition was gone. Before
this happened his less skilful companions had been slain or driven off,
and he ran at full speed back to camp. Here he found that the artillery
had been taken and re-taken again and again. Stricken men lay in heaps
everywhere, and the charging troops were once more driving the Indians
across the creek in front of the camp. Van Cleve noticed that the dead
officers and soldiers who were lying about the guns had all been scalped
and that "the Indians had not been in a hurry, for their hair was all
skinned off." Another of the packers who took part in the fight, one
Thomas Irwin, was struck with the spectacle offered by the slaughtered
artillerymen, and with grewsome homeliness compared the reeking heads to
pumpkins in a December cornfield.

The Soldiers Lose Heart.
Panic Seizes the Army.

As the officers fell the soldiers, who at first stood up bravely enough,
gradually grew disheartened. No words can paint the hopelessness and
horror such a struggle as that in which they were engaged. They were
hemmed in by foes who showed no mercy and whose blows they could in no
way return. If they charged they could not overtake the Indians; and the
instant the charge stopped the Indians came back. If they stood they
were shot down by an unseen enemy; and there was no stronghold, no
refuge to which to flee. The Indian attack was relentless, and could
neither be avoided, parried, nor met by counter assault. For two hours
or so the troops kept up a slowly lessening resistance; but by degrees
their hearts failed. The wounded had been brought towards the middle of
the lines, where the baggage and tents were, and an ever growing
proportion of unwounded men joined them. In vain the officers tried, by
encouragement, by jeers, by blows, to drive them back to the fight. They
were unnerved. As in all cases where large bodies of men are put in
imminent peril of deat