Stillman hesitated for some time before advancing, for he knew that the desertion of Captain Melton was a great loss to him. While he stood in doubt, the men who had killed two Indians came back at a gallop and announced that the Indians were just across Sycamore creek and in some force. All was now confusion in the white camp. Some who had dismounted sprung into the saddle, and with wild shouts the disorderly band rushed on, headed by the men who had just come in. Black-Hawk had not supposed that Stillman intended to attack him, and the greater portion of his force were on the other side of the village; in all, the great chief had only forty men under his command when Stillman’s men came up at the gallop, strung out across the plain, man, by man, according to the speed of their horses, and in this manner crossed the creek. Black-Hawk had not hoped that they would thus give themselves a prey to him, and his ambuscade was quickly formed. When half the party had crossed the creek and were massed in disorder upon the bank and the rest were struggling up, some crossing the creek, and others yet upon the plain beyond, the war-whoop of the Sacs announced the onset, and from every side the warriors poured in upon the foe. One withering volley was poured in, which strewed the earth with dead and dying forms, and at the same moment the charge was made and the knife and hatchet was doing its silent but deadly work before the doomed men had time to lift a hand. To show the utter foolishness with which the advance was made, it is enough to say that the warlike major was never in the fight at all, so quickly was the force which had crossed the creek disposed of by the furious attack of Black-Hawk. The cry was, “Satan take the hindmost.” Hardly waiting for Stillman’s order to retreat, they broke and fled in every direction, each man for himself, lashing their horses to get out of the fearful imbroglio into which their own foolhardy conduct had forced them. Thus, in one desperate charge forty Indians had put two hundred and seventy white men to flight! It is no discredit to the West, for the men of Stillman’s force, under a different leader, would have laughed at the efforts of the Sac force. They came into Dixon’s Ferry as they had left Sycamore creek, one at a time, and the loss gradually dwindled from seventy to about one-fourth of the number. The alarm went forth through the land, and the little force of Sac warriors were magnified into an army. The work had been done, however, and a scene of blood and death was about to be enacted upon the border.