“Left subdivision, halt!” ordered Lieutenant Elmsley, when they had come up.
“Front!” pursued the captain, and the line was formed. “Men, throw off your packs—you must have nothing to encumber you in that sand; the drivers will carry them into the square. Ladies, you had better retire there too.”
“To a soldier's wife the field of battle were preferable on a day like this,” calmly returned Mrs. Headley, who, with Mrs. Elmsley, had ridden up with the rear. “Better to be shot down there than tomahawked near the wagons. Besides our presence will encourage the men—will it not, my lads?” A loud cheer burst from the ranks. Each man, certainly, felt greater confidence than before.
“Then forward, charge!” shouted Capt. Headley, availing himself of this moment of enthusiasm; “recollect, you fight for your wives and children; if you drive not the Indians, they perish!”
“Nay, forget not, you fight for your colors!” cried Ronayne, galloping furiously through the sand to the front, and heading the centre.
The ascent was not very steep, and as the colors, tightly girt over the shoulders of Ronayne and hanging from the flanks of his horse, first appeared crowning the crest, and then the little serried line of bayonets glittering like so many streams of light in the sun's rays, exclamations of wonder, mingled with fierce shouts, burst from the Indians, who up to this moment had, after their first volley, been wholly occupied by Captain Wells and his party of horsemen, whom they seemed more anxious to make prisoners than to fire at, and this in consideration of their horses, which they were anxious to obtain unwounded.
“Wells,” shouted Captain Headley, on whose little line the Indians now began to open their fire, “send half your people to protect my right flank. Charge, men! It is all down hill work now, and we are fairly in for it. If we are to die, let us die like men.”
Simultaneously, and without the order, the men shouted the charge as, with their commanding officer and the colors full in view before them, they dashed forward where their enemies were the thickest, and such was the effect of their unswerving courage that the latter, although in numbers sufficient to have annihilated them, were awed by their resolution; and in many instances, those who were not in the immediate line of their advance, stood leaning on their guns watching them and without firing a shot; nor was this strange, for it must be recollected that the hostile feeling to the garrison had not been shared by all the Pottowatomies, especially by the chiefs and more elderly warriors.
Before the determined advance of the gallant little band the Indians gave way, until they had retired again nearly as far as their own encampment, but the ranks were fast thinning by the distant fire of the enemy, whom it was found impossible to reach with the bayonet.
“This will never do,” thundered Capt. Headley; “halt! form square!”