The stables and outlying buildings, with the exceptions of the guard-house and the magazine, were smouldering ruins; the officers' quarters were riddled through and through; the storehouse and barracks were pock-marked and splintered with bullets; nearly all the oxen and mules belonging to the quartermaster's department were captured or killed, and seven more wounded men lay beside those who had been injured two days before. But the fight was won. Through the night the garrison lay on their arms, watching the glare of distant conflagrations off to the southeast, where the defeated Indians were burning farm-houses and stacks as they marched on to the village of New Ulm, sixteen miles away. Fort Ridgely remained undisturbed, though New Ulm, where two hundred and fifty volunteer citizens under the command of Judge Charles E. Flandreau had gathered to defend the town and the one thousand five hundred non-combatants in refuge there, was desperately attacked next day, almost wholly burned, and nearly captured by the infuriated savages. Though the Indians seemed to be gone from their vicinity, the occupants of Fort Ridgely were obliged to remain inert for several days longer, and then, at last, on the morning of the twenty-seventh, their eyes were gladdened by the sight of a large column of troops approaching from the eastward, and the little army of Colonel H. H. Sibley, hastily recruited and as yet poorly disciplined and wretchedly armed, but full of ardor, marched into the quadrangle of shattered buildings amid the cheers of the men and the tearful thanksgivings of the women. The never-to-be-forgotten siege was over. CHAPTER IV REFUGEES The arrival of Colonel Sibley's troops gave to the destitute refugees in Fort Ridgely their first opportunity of turning from the desperate struggle for immediate self-preservation in which they had been ceaselessly involved for nine days, to contemplate fully the extent of the disaster which had fallen upon them and to consider what their future course must be. To most of them the Indian outbreak and its consequent massacre and pillage had brought the total ruin of their fortunes, for in general they were poor people who had come into the West and started their homes on free Government land, in the hope of acquiring comfort and modest fortunes through years of faithful labor. But to the families which had been so fortunate as to remain intact, losing no loved members at the hands of the savages, the disaster was not irremediable. The property they had lost was not, in most cases, of very great value, save as measured by labor; and as their lands still remained to them, they could again enter into occupation as soon as settled conditions were restored, and in a short time recover their former positions. So, although a few such families lost heart and left the country, most of them remained and lived to see the time when they were very glad they had done so.