A detachment of twenty-nine men immediately started in pursuit of the murderers, with another small detail to bury poor Appel, whose mutilated body was expected to be found as a matter of course. High creeks, muddy roads and other difficulties gave the Indians many advantages in their escape[165] to the Pecatonica, which they reached and crossed a considerable time before the whites reached it. “After crossing the Pecatonica, in the open ground, I dismounted my command, linked my horses, left four men in charge of them, and sent four men in different directions to watch the movements of the Indians if they should attempt to swim the Pecatonica; the men were placed on high points that would give a view of the enemy should they attempt to retreat. I formed my men on foot at open order and at trailed arms, and we proceeded through the swamps to some timber and undergrowth, where I expected to find the enemy. When I found their trail, I knew they were close at hand. They had got close to the edge of a lake, where the bank was about six feet high, which was a complete breastwork for them. They commenced the fire, when three of my men fell, two dangerously wounded, one severely, but not dangerously. I instantly ordered a charge on them made by eighteen men, which was promptly obeyed. The Indians being under the bank, our guns were brought within ten or fifteen feet of them before we could fire on them. Their party consisted of thirteen men. Eleven were killed on the spot, and the remaining two were killed in crossing the lake, so that they were left without one to carry the news to their friends.”[166] As a matter of fact, there were seventeen in the party of Indians; eleven were found dead, two were killed in crossing the river or swampy widening of it and were scalped by the Winnebagoes, Colonel Hamilton, when he came up, found the body of another, and late the succeeding winter a French trapper found three more in the swamp close by, beneath brushwood, under which they had crawled when wounded.[167] Thus with the loss of the three whites in the first fire, but eighteen whites remained to charge the seventeen Indians behind formidable breastworks.