They came within a short distance of the shore, calling to the men to swim to them. One answered he could not swim and they ran along the shore abreast of the boat, all the while drawing near the willows. When the men reached a wash-out they dropped into it out of sight. At the same time the Indians dashed out in their canoes and the battle began.
The men at the sweeps were killed at the first volley; the boat drifted yet nearer the shore and the canoes were almost upon it.
The horses and cattle frightened by the firing and by the noise began to struggle and plunge and to crowd and push towards the off-shore or port side of the boat; which was tilted until the water flowed in and the overloaded boat sank in seven feet of water.
Some of the crew and passengers struggled in the water, the children were drowned in the cabin. Those yet on deck stood shoulder deep in the water but their rifles were useless; and the Indians coming very close, tomahawked and scalped the survivors.
John saw Captain Fairfax strike with his rifle barrel an Indian sitting in the bow of a canoe. Several Indians [pg 235] with the muzzles of their rifles within a foot of his face fired; he sank into the water, but reaching down they recovered his body and scalped him. Then he saw a young woman swimming from the sunken boat out into the river towards the swift running current, hoping thus to escape. She swam well, and for a while he thought she would escape; but one of the Indians pointed her out to those in his canoe and they gave chase. When almost near enough to strike, she dived and rose again twenty feet down the stream; but the canoe was also riding with the current and each time she rose it was near. She dived again and when she came up the Indian in the bow who had first seen her, caught her by the hair and hauled her into the canoe.
John saw her face. He had felt all the while it was Dorothy. The Indians were strangers to him and he grew sick with fear for her. They were from the headwaters of the Big Miami. For the first time in his life he was possessed with an overwhelming desire to kill.
The Indians again landed at the willows; removed from their canoes several of their dead and wounded and four captives, two men and two women. The men were bleeding from wounds and nearly drowned. A little later two canoes came ashore, leading by their halters three horses and two cows.
They bound the two half drowned men to stakes and built great fires about them. They killed the two cows and roasted the men and their meat in the same fires.
A few small pieces of drift and an upturned canoe marked the site of the battle; otherwise the bosom of the river was as placid as before. * * * And the vision faded.
John, as deeply moved as if he had been tied to a stake and helplessly witnessed it all, knew that the vision he [pg 236] had seen had just occurred as pictured, though he was more than two hundred miles from the mouth of the Big Miami.