64 The Winning of the West 



just as two levy officers ordered a charge, and fol- 

 lowed 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, cov- 

 ered himself behind a small tree, and gave back 

 shot for shot until 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 charg- 

 ing 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 com- 

 pared the reeking heads to pumpkins in a December 

 cornfield. 



As the officers fell the soldiers, who at first stood 

 up bravely enough, gradually grew disheartened. No 

 words can paint the hopelessness and horror of such 



