The delay incident to loading and distributing ammunition gave the Indians an advantage. The captain had gone back across Horse Creek to hurry the Indians, and they had killed, stripped, and mutilated him, and had fled three miles toward the river and were making warlike demonstrations, while the squaws and papooses were crossing the river, riding, or swimming beside their swimming ponies.
The rear guard had at first run toward the front, but the front guard met them halfway, and together they charged after the Indians. When near at hand, Charles Elston was sent forward to offer those who would accept it and come forward peacefully, immunity from punishment. They met his offer with a shriek of defiance and charged furiously.
The Indians numbered more than five hundred warriors, and, when at a distance of about three hundred yards, they commenced firing, and it was answered in telling effect by the military. While those in front were checked by the fire of the Gallagher rifles, both flanks of the Indians advanced as if to hem them in and cut them off.
Over the hills from the west side of Horse Creek poured dozens and hundreds of the shrieking demons, and an orderly retreat was taken to the wagons, which, in the meantime, had been drawn up in a defensive circle, and hastily constructed rifle pits made.
The Indians then ceased their firing and withdrew. Seeing that they were indisposed to press their attack while the soldiers were behind defenses, and wishing to keep them engaged and at hand until reënforcements came, the officers in charge took fifty of the best mounted men and sallied out.
When out about three miles they saw a large force of Indians coming around the hills on the west side[Pg 63] of Horse Creek with the evident intention of cutting them off. Again the military retired to their intrenchments.
About nine o’clock Captain Shuman arrived with a force from Camp Shuman or Fort Mitchell, and, thus reënforced, another attack was made upon the Indians, but it was a little late. The squaws and papooses had all succeeded in crossing the river, and the warriors had followed.
The military could not follow, for it would be impractical, and perhaps impossible to cross the river at its high stage, in the face of a superior number of Indians.
A message had been sent to Fort Laramie, and Colonel Moonlight, well known for his recent summary execution of three renegade Indians, had started from the fort with two hundred and forty well-mounted men, when he met another courier with the information that the Indians had crossed the river, whereupon he crossed at the fort and took up the pursuit.
This constitutes another story, and the finish of the battle of Horse Creek, the dead being the four named in the beginning of this article, and four others were wounded. The dead were taken to Camp Shuman, the ruins of which are still distinguishable, about three hundred feet south of the west end of the Platte River Bridge, west of this city. And out southwest thereof about a quarter of a mile they were laid to rest, and there have rested for this half a century ending the middle of June. And now, from their obliterated graves, they will be removed to join their fellows, the other early guardians of the great Overland Trail, in the cemetery set aside for their honor by the national government.