Yet the stubborn, doomed army held its ground until the retreat was ordered. The wounded Braddock, who pleaded, it is said, to be left upon the ground, and even begged for Croghan's pistol with which to finish what a French bullet had begun, was placed in a cart and afterwards in a wagon and brought off the field.[45] No sooner was retreat ordered than it became an utter rout. Some fifty Indians pursued the army into the river, but none crossed it. Here and there efforts were made to stem the tide but to no purpose. The army fled back to Dunbar, who had now crawled along to Laurel Hill and was encamped at a great spring at the foot of what is now Dunbar's Knob, half a mile north of Jumonville's hiding place and grave. Dunbar's situation was already deplorable, even Washington having prophesied that, though he had crossed the worst of the mountain road, he could never reach Fort Duquesne. But as Braddock's demoralized army threw itself upon him, Dunbar's condition was indescribably wretched. A large portion of the survivors of the battle and of Dunbar's own command, lost to all order, hurried on toward Fort Cumberland. Dunbar himself, now senior officer in command, ordered his cannons spiked and his ammunition destroyed and, with such horses as could be of service, began to retreat across the mountains. For this he was, and has often been, roundly condemned; yet, since we have Washington's plain testimony that he could never have hauled his wagons and cannon over the thirty comparatively easy miles to Fort Duquesne, who can fairly blame him for not attempting to haul them over the sixty difficult miles to Fort Cumberland? To fortify himself, so far removed from hopes of sustenance and succor, was equally impossible. There was nothing Dunbar could do but retreat.