[Illustration: ALFRED HAINES.] [Illustration: JONATHAN HAINES.] [Illustration: LIEUT. ASAHEL GRIDLEY.] ------------------------------------------------------------------------ The moonlight was only sufficient to confuse the panic-stricken troops still more, and in that heroic fight unto death which Captain Adams and his men made, he scarcely knew whether he was fighting friend or foe. In the gloaming the conflict went on, and in the darkness of the night, while the scattering forces were safely fleeing on to Dixon’s Ferry, Captain Adams and his little band fell one by one, until the last man bit the dust, and then a scene of malignant deviltry almost incredible was perpetrated.[123] Mr. Oliver W. Hall of Carlinville, Illinois, who was present on the field the following day, wrote a brief description of it as follows: “We were camped at Dixon’s Ferry at the time of Stillman’s defeat. Now Stillman had about two hundred and seventy-five well-mounted men, with baggage wagons, and he started out on his own accord, camping late in the evening on the north side of that little creek. The ford was just above, where the willows stood thick on each side of the creek. While Stillman’s men were cooking supper, three or four Indians on their ponies rode up on that high hill just north of Stillman’s camp, about sundown, and five or six of Stillman’s men caught their horses and ran them to where the Indians were in camp, in the timber, about a mile and a half from Stillman’s camp, north. The Indians killed one of our men and ran the balance of them into camp. The first that Stillman knew of any danger was when the Indians came yelling over that high hill just north of Stillman’s camp, and it was a perfect stampede with Stillman’s men. Some of them got their horses, but lots of them got away on foot, and after the Indians had killed eleven of our men they went back to Stillman’s camp and cut the spokes out of the wagons and poured out a barrel of whisky. Well, we lay on our arms the next night on the south side of the creek, for we had left our tents at Dixon’s Ferry, as we had to go back to meet the boat to get our rations. There were twenty-five hundred of us with shotguns and rifles and muskets, all flintlocks, and we were mounted, all but two or three companies. We picked up nine dead men as we came up from Dixon’s Ferry on a forced march the next morning after Stillman’s defeat. The last two that we found were Major Perkins and Captain Adams,[124] with both their heads cut off and their heads skinned all over and left by them. We found them on that descent as you go down to the creek from the high land, about half way down, and we buried nine men in one grave about two hundred yards southwest of those willows, just below the ford and on sideling ground, not as far south as the top of the hill. We buried one young man about three-quarters of a mile north of Stillman’s camp (if true, this was James Doty), where he