The wily savages now prepared to ambuscade the party which they knew would soon appear from Schenectady. For this purpose they laid a sensational trap in a field, somewhat off from the path and in a defile near the creek, which was surrounded with forest and bush. Taking the dead body of Mr. Toll, they set it up against a fence and tied a live crow in front of the corpse. This curious sight of a wild crow flying up and down before an apparently living man they knew would at once excite the attention, especially of the impulsive and unwary young men who, as they supposed, would be the first on the field. The sequel proves they were not disappointed. Lieutenant Darling and his Connecticut men marched out, cautiously searching for the enemy, but seeing no trace of any. At Mr. Simon Groot’s unoccupied house they found Adrian Van Slyck, who with a few men had arrived and learned from the negro boy Ryckert, that his master, Mr. Toll, had been shot. Though nearly paralyzed with fear, he offered to point out the place where he fell. The negro was furnished with a horse, and acted as pilot to the advance party of about forty men. Soon after they had gone, Ackes Van Slyck arrived and remained with his men near the house. Pretty soon the strange phenomenon of a crow playing near a man arrested their attention, and they at once marched into the trap to see the curious sight. Very soon they discovered that the man was a corpse, and the crow was tied to it with a string. At this moment when nearly all were in the defile along the creek, and off their guard, the crash of the enemy’s guns enlightened them as to the situation. They found themselves in a ravine or hollow curved like a horseshoe, and nearly surrounded on both sides by woods, from which puffs of white smoke and flashes of fire were issuing from unseen enemies. Eight or ten of the whites were at once stretched dead on the clay ground, and then the yelling savages leaped out of cover with knife and hatchet. The militiamen soon broke and ran, but the Schenectady men bravely stood their ground. It took a moment to deliver their fire, and then with musket clubbed or thrown aside, the fighting became, for a few minutes, a series of desperate encounters between white and red man, in which it happened more than once that both buried their knives in each other. After the battle the bodies of Glen, De Graaf, and other noted Indian fighters were found alongside their dead enemies with whom they had wrested in deadly struggle. In this hand-to-hand fight twelve of the party of whites were killed, and five made prisoners; Lieutenant Darling’s company losing seven men, who were shot dead, and six missing.