About the middle of the afternoon, as he was skirting Holderman’s Grove, unconscious of danger, he was awakened from a reverie by shots fired from a foe concealed in a clump of underbrush. One ball entered his shoulder and another inflicted a wound, which soon proved mortal, in the body of his beautiful mare. Realizing that no time was to be lost in garrulous appeals for sympathy and that the only possible chance for escape lay in the old-fashioned way of flight, he pricked his mare forward and for five miles maintained a safe distance ahead of his three pursuers on ponies. But the effect of the mare’s wound was now apparent. She staggered and fell dead under her rider. The three pursuers quickly came upon him and leveled their guns, while he simply raised his hands to Heaven and appealed for mercy. The appeal was heeded by two of them, but, so we are told by one of the party, who subsequently removed west, the third pulled his trigger and fired and Mr. Payne dropped dead. If two of these fiends had been so humane in lowering their weapons it is remarkable that they should all have joined in severing the head from the body, as they did. A long black beard flowed from the victim’s chin, and by this one of the party seized the head, threw it over his shoulder and together the three returned to camp. At this very moment Mr. Payne’s brother Aaron was in the volunteer ranks, and it may not be amiss to relate an incident which occurred at the battle of the Bad Axe. He, too, was a Dunkard preacher, but, being a sensible man, the murder of his brother called every honest human passion into play, one being the desire to revenge his brother’s death, though this he subsequently denied. In pursuing the retreating Indians, he, with others, came upon a squaw and a boy crouched behind a tree, but, under the belief that the pair were harmless, no attention was paid to them. As the last of the rangers passed the boy raised his gun and shot Payne from his horse, two balls entering his back near the spine. The enraged rangers wheeled and riddled both squaw and boy with bullets, an act which might be deplored in a discussion of casuistic questions, but not to be considered in a case so infamous as this. These bullets Mr. Payne carried during a very long life. General Scott, attracted to this simple man as he was lying in the hospital at Prairie du Chien, had this to say of him: