Time seemed out of our calculations. I heard some one call, “What time is it?” An answer came, “Three o’clock.” I had thought it was about ten A.M. We had nothing to eat or drink all day and, strange to say, I was not hungry, which may have been the reason why I thought it was still early. Word was passed that Lieutenant Beecher and Scouts Wilson and Culver were killed, Colonel Forsyth wounded again, also Doctor Mooers shot in the head and others hurt whose names I do not now remember. We fought steadily all day. After dark the Indians withdrew; then nature began to assert itself. I got hungry; there was nothing to eat in the camp that I knew of, except some wild plums that I had gathered the day before, which were in my saddle-bags, still on the body of my horse. I got out of my hole, creeping on hands and knees toward where I knew the poor animal lay. As I felt my way in the darkness I touched something cold, and upon examination found that it was Wilson’s dead hand. He lay where he fell; it was a most horrible feeling. The shivers ran up and down my back, but I got to my horse at last, and tugging, I finally secured the bag and my plums. I also found in it a piece of bacon, the size of two fingers, which I reserved for a last emergency, and was still in possession of that rusty piece of fat when relief came. On my way back to my hole I passed one where Doctor Mooers lay wounded, moaning piteously. I put a plum in his mouth, and I saw it between his teeth next morning. He died on the night of the 19th. All our wounded were very cheerful, and to look at Colonel Forsyth and talk to him as he lay there helpless, no outsider would have suspected that he was crippled. We used to gather round him in his pit and hold conversation, not like men in a desperate situation, but like neighbors talking over a common cause. Colonel Forsyth was the right man in command of such a heterogeneous company. Like the least among us, he attended to his own horse when in camp, and many times have I seen him gather buffalo chips to supply the mess fuel. While he was our commander in practice he was our friend, and as such we respected him, followed and obeyed him. On about the fifth day, as the Indians began leaving us, we began to walk about and look around. About fifteen or twenty feet from my pit I noticed a few of our men calling to the rest of us. I ran to the place, and there, against the edge of the island, I saw three dead Indians. Their friends evidently could not reach them to carry them off, which explained to us the persistent fighting in this direction. When I got there the Indians were being stripped of their equipments, scalps, etc. One of them was shot in the head and his hair was clotted with blood. I took hold of one of his braids and applied my knife to the skin above the ear to secure the scalp, but my hand coming in contact with the blood, I dropped the hair in disgust.