Some time later the news of the death of Captain Wells reached his widow (the daughter of the chief Little Turtle), long before Mrs. Heald, who survived the massacre, was able to convey the message entrusted to her. One of the Indians present who witnessed the scene, though he took no part in the perpetration of that dark deed, was a friend of Wells, whom he had known in former years and whom he regarded as a brother. It was this Indian who went to Fort Wayne after the battle was over and gave Mrs. Wells the first intimation of her husband's death. After doing so he disappeared, and it was supposed that he returned to his tribe, as he was not seen again. The two younger officers. Ensign George Ronan and Surgeon Isaac Van Voorhis, had been all this time gallantly bearing their part in the unequal struggle with the savage hordes that surrounded them, and both of them had received dangerous wounds. In her account of the battle, Mrs. Helm says that, overwrought by his fighting and pain, the surgeon came up and addressed her. He had been wounded, his horse had been shot under him, and he was in a state of terror. Aware of Mrs. Helm's lifelong experience with the Indians, though she was much younger than himself, he said to her: "Do you think they will take our lives? I am badly wounded, but I think not mortally. Perhaps we might purchase our lives by promising them a large reward. Do you think there is any chance?" "Dr. Van Voorhis," said the seventeen-year-old girl, "do not let us waste the few moments that yet remain to us in such vain hopes. Our fate is inevitable. In a few moments we must appear before the bar of God. Let us make what preparation is yet in our power." "Oh, I cannot die!" he exclaimed. "I am not fit to die. If I had but a short time to prepare! Death is awful!" Mrs. Helm pointed to Ensign Ronan, who, though even then mortally wounded, was down on one knee and was still fighting with desperate courage. "Look at that man," she said. "At least he dies like a soldier." "Yes," replied the surgeon, "but he has no terrors of the future--he is an unbeliever!" The wounded surgeon's fear, thus shown under these trying circumstances, was entirely natural. He was then only twenty-two years of age and had entered the service on the frontier but the year before. The bravest men have often passed through a similar experience in moments of danger. An unbeliever, in his view, would not concern himself with the hereafter; but he considered that he himself was unfit to appear before the bar of God. What more natural than that this young man's heart should fail him in that supreme moment? There was no opportunity, however, even had he been able, to show his mettle by a renewed effort to stem the tide of disaster, for almost immediately afterwards he was tomahawked by one of the Indians, and was seen dead on the ground when Mrs. Helm passed that way a little time later as the captive of the chief Black Partridge, on their way to the river.