After having seen the awful deaths of their fellow-whites, the men who accompanied John had their desire for adventure changed to a feeling of fear, which they tried to hide under the excuse that it would be impossible to proceed after the Indians without rations and tents. The situation was a trying one for John. In vain did he appeal to the men to help him rescue his sisters. Not one would volunteer to go with him, and after burying all the dead in one grave in front of the little cottage, John and his squadron hastily returned to Ottawa. In hopes of rescuing his sisters, John again recruited a force and obtained the necessaries to follow up the Indians. Early on the second day after the massacre, with about forty men and two days’ rations, without any commissary, John led his little army to the Davis Settlement and along the Indian trail until he lost it on the great prairie. He concluded that the Indians had taken the “Kishwaukee Trail” to where the Kishwaukee flows into the Rock River, and he followed that route until he arrived at his objective point without attaining his chief aim. Disappointed in not even getting any information of his sisters and in not finding further track of the Indians, and his rations having run out, John was again obliged to return with his troops to Ottawa for a fresh supply, when once more he started on a fruitless search for his sisters. [Illustration: COL. HENRY GRATIOT.] CHAPTER VII. MILITARY MOVEMENTS. When a remnant of Stillman’s men returned to Dixon after an exciting ride of twenty-four miles from Stillman’s Run, they reported that they had been attacked by thousands of Indians and that all the rest of the army had been massacred. The exaggerated report set a few of the men who had not been with Stillman, keen to fight; but it instilled into most of them a sense of home-sickness, and many of them requested to be excused from duty. Gen. Taylor immediately reported the situation to Gen. Atkinson, at Ottawa, and the latter ordered Generals Whiteside and Harney, who were in command of some United States regulars, to pursue the Indians. When the troops arrived at Stillman’s Run they found the bodies of thirteen soldiers and most of the deserted commissary which had included a barrel of whiskey that Black Hawk emptied on the ground. Black Hawk destroyed the wagons and everything else that could not be carried away, excepting a few boats that belonged to the Indians which were left on the river bank.