Horsestealing became a recognized feature of Black Hawk’s campaign very soon after Stillman’s defeat, which he pushed with unusual vigor. He would snatch a band of horses, and if the luckless owner attempted a pursuit for their recovery he was invariably ambushed. On the night of June 8th[169] the Indians stole fourteen horses just outside the stockade of Apple River fort (now Elizabeth, Illinois), and on the afternoon and night of the 17th ten more were stolen.[170] The number was so large and the loss so great that unusual measures were adopted to attempt their recovery. As nothing but a military escort was considered equal to the search, Capt. J.W. Stephenson, with twelve of his men from Galena and nine from the Apple River fort, started on the trail early on the morning of the 18th, and overtook the thieves about twelve miles east of Kellogg’s Grove, on Yellow River, southeast of Waddam’s Grove, in Stephenson County. A hot pursuit followed for several miles. The Indians, seven in number, finally reaching a dense thicket, plunged into it for protection. The thicket, a short distance northeast of Waddam’s Grove, was so dense that it was impossible to discover their location from the open country surrounding it, and thus secreted the Indians remained, awaiting the attack of the whites. Stephenson was impatient to dislodge them by assault. Dismounting his men, he at first attempted to sweep the thicket and draw the enemy’s fire, but the wily Indians refused to shoot or otherwise indicate their position. Discarding strategy as an evidence of cowardice, Captain Stephenson detailed a guard for the horses, and with his remaining men made an impetuous charge upon the hidden reds, drawing their fire and returning it, but with the loss of one to the whites as they were retiring to the prairie to reload. Rather than accept the loss and carefully continue the assault by safer and surer methods, Captain Stephenson twice more charged the fatal thicket, losing one man with each effort, while the Indians lost but one man, who was stabbed in the neck by Thomas Sublet. Both sides had exhausted their loads in the charge and the fight became general and at close range; so close, indeed, that one could scarcely distinguish friend from foe, and rather than continue against odds entirely conjectural, the whites withdrew again to the prairie to consult–a precaution they should have exercised in the first instance. Captain Stephenson himself was wounded so seriously that he was no longer able to continue in command. Of the whites, Stephen P. Howard, Charles Eames[171] and Michael Lovell had been killed, while the Indians had lost but the one man, and he had not been killed by the guns. Further assaults were considered useless, and, if continued, would have been wilful; therefore, leaving the dead where they fell, the men returned to Galena for assistance to return and bury the three dead soldiers and the Indian, reaching that point on the 19th.