uld
not eat. I tried a piece of stale bread mother gave me, but had to give
it up. The firing rose and fell. Sometimes there were hundreds shooting
into the camp. At other times came lulls in which not a shot was fired.
Father was continually cautioning our men not to waste shots because we
were running short of ammunition.

And all the time the men went on digging the well. It was so deep that
they were hoisting the sand up in buckets. The men who hoisted were
exposed, and one of them was wounded in the shoulder. He was Peter
Bromley, who drove oxen for the Bloodgood wagon, and he was engaged to
marry Jane Bloodgood. She jumped out of the rifle pit and ran right to
him while the bullets were flying and led him back into shelter. About
midday the well caved in, and there was lively work digging out the
couple who were buried in the sand. Amos Wentworth did not come to for
an hour. After that they timbered the well with bottom boards from the
wagons and wagon tongues, and the digging went on. But all they could
get, and they were twenty feet down, was damp sand. The water would not
seep.

By this time the conditions in the rifle pit were terrible. The children
were complaining for water, and the babies, hoarse from much crying, went
on crying. Robert Carr, another wounded man, lay about ten feet from
mother and me. He was out of his head, and kept thrashing his arms about
and calling for water. And some of the women were almost as bad, and
kept raving against the Mormons and Indians. Some of the women prayed a
great deal, and the three grown Demdike sisters, with their mother, sang
gospel hymns. Other women got damp sand that was hoisted out of the
bottom of the well, and packed it against the bare bodies of the babies
to try to cool and soothe them.

The two Fairfax brothers couldn't stand it any longer, and, with pails in
their hands, crawled out under a wagon and made a dash for the spring.
Giles never got half way, when he went down. Roger made it there and
back without being hit. He brought two pails part-full, for some
splashed out when he ran. Giles crawled back, and when they helped him
into the rifle pit he was bleeding at the mouth and coughing.

Two part-pails of water could not go far among over a hundred of us, not
counting the, men. Only the babies, and the very little children, and
the wounded men, got any. I did not get a sip, although mother dipped a
bit of cloth into the seve