“Give him escort, dis,” said the latter in reply, as he glanced his eye quickly upon the group, and with seeming intelligence.
“What! those men!” returned Captain Headley, with a shadow of remonstrance in his tone.
“Yes, all good Pottowatomie—all brave warrior—no give him dis,” and he pointed to those who had accompanied them from the field, “all too much tired with fight already—dis men stay here all day. No fight.”
Although by no means persuaded by the reasoning of Winnebeg, that men who had been plundering and drinking what they could find, during the whole of the morning, were the most proper persons to guard prisoners from the violence of excited enemies, Capt. Headley felt that it would be imprudent to urge any further opposition. For a single moment, it occurred to him that the chief had offered this escort with a hostile motive, but it was a thought which, involuntarily forced upon his mind, was as instantly discarded as unworthy of the chief, and, whatever might have been his latent misgivings, he no longer opposed an objection.
The preparations were soon made; the litter, and materials for digging found, and the little party, who had taken off their uniforms to avoid particular remark, and to be more free in their movements, sallied forth. On passing near the gate, and in a direction opposite to that by which they had just entered, they beheld the body of Doctor Von Voltenberg, within a few paces of the pathway by which they now advanced, which was the route taken by the Indians with the three-pounder. He was stripped to the skin, scalped, and with a profusion of large green flies and ants of the prairie settled on and seemingly disputing possession of the dark and coagulated blood that was already incrusted on the festering wound. The body was fast becoming bloated and discolored under the rays of an August sun, but no one could mistake the black and the peculiarly cut whisker, and the good natured and smiling expression of face which even in death had not wholly deserted him.
They had now reached the point where the Indians stood when the first grenades were thrown in among them by the followers of Ronayne. From this could be commanded a full view of the theatre of contest as far as the crest of the sandhill, being a full musket-shot from the spot where he had last fallen. The intermediate space, as has already been remarked, was thickly strewn with dead bodies amounting in all to upwards of a hundred, and the place chosen for interment by Lieutenant Elmsley was the small copse of underwood, from which the flank movement had been made upon Ronayne by the fresh band of Indians upon whom he had directed the fire of the three-pounder.
While occupied in digging a grave of about twenty feet square, their strangely attired looking escort amused themselves with examining the dead uniformed bodies that lay strewed thickly around, and it was remarked that they showed no such curiosity in regard to their own people who were indiscriminately mixed up with them. Gradually they approached the crest of the hill, and Lieutenant Elmsley, who was distrustful of their intentions, and kept a close eye upon their movements, saw the youth, already noticed, suddenly bound with uplifted tomahawk towards the spot where poor Ronayne was known to lie, and, after addressing a few words to his companions, stoop over his body, with what intention he could not make out, but he presumed to dispatch and to scalp him, for the cry uttered by the Virginian and heard even at that distance, was piteous to hear. Desiring the men to go on with their work, and collect the bodies as soon as it was completed, he hurried rapidly to the scene of this new action, and as he advanced saw another and a much stronger party of Indians approaching the same spot. Rapidly their escort closed in upon the officer over whom the young warrior was kneeling, and stooping down, drew from their victim another moan of inexpressible anguish. All then rose, and, grouped together, moved away parallel with the said ridge until they were finally lost behind a sudden elevation that continued the hill in an obtuse angle towards the forest.
Startled by the appearance of these fresh comers, Lieut. Elmsley paused for a moment in his advance, but feeling that any appearance of mistrust might act unfavorably upon the band, he renewed his course, expecting at every moment to reach the mangled body of his friend. The Indians approached the same point at the same time, and he saw at once that the majority were composed of those who had accompanied Winnebeg when he came to offer terms to Captain Headley. Trusting, therefore, that there was no violence to be apprehended from those who were aware of the fact of the surrender, towards himself or party, he proceeded to search for his friend; but, to his surprise, his body was not to be seen. He could not be mistaken as to the spot where it had lain, close to Sergeant Nixon; but, though the latter was nearly in the same position in which he had fallen, the knife which he had used upon the throat of the Chippewa, and the imprint of his body upon the sand, deeply moistened with the blood of both, was the only indication of Ronayne's having been there. It was evident that he had been carried off by the strange party who had formed their escort, and that the cries of agony uttered by him had been produced by the torture of moving his broken limb. What the motive for this new outrage could have been, it was difficult to conjecture, unless it was to secure at their leisure, and before the other party of Indians came up to dispute possession of the spoils with them—not only his scalp, but the blood-stained colors which he bore—perhaps to sell the latter as a trophy to the British.
Without condescending to bestow the slightest notice upon the officer, the Indians approached the bodies, and leisurely proceeded to strip them of their clothing. Their leader, uttering a yell of delight and surprise as he came near it, sprang upon the sergeant and secured the scalp, which Pee-to-tum had failed to take. This piece of good fortune led the others to hope for something similar, and they accordingly dispersed themselves rapidly over the scene of combat, examining every head and stripping everybody. All this was done without Lieut. Elmsley having the slightest power to interfere, for he knew that any attempt at remonstrance would only be to provoke a similar fate, and thus the party passed on, stripping every soldier to the skin.
While he lingered hesitatingly near the spot whence his friend had been so singularly removed, waiting for the plunderers of the dead to depart before he should rejoin his men, his ears were suddenly assailed by a piercing shriek from the further extremity of the underwood in which the latter were digging, and which extended about two hundred yards on the left of the plain below. At once he knew the cry, and comprehended its cause; and rushing down the sandhill without thought of the new danger to which he might be exposed, turned the corner of the small wood, and stopping abruptly at a point where he could see without being noticed himself, beheld A sight as distressing as, a few moments before, it had been unexpected.