This check had the effect of making the savages more wary, but they were still bold enough to make two more assaults before mid-day.

Each of these ending like the first, the Indians thereafter contented themselves with shooting all the horses, which had been tied up to some scraggy little cottonwood-trees, and then proceeded to lay siege to the party.
The first man struck was Forsyth himself.

He was hit three times in all--twice in one leg, both serious wounds, and once on the head, a slight abrasion of the scalp.

A moment later Beecher was killed and Doctor Mooers mortally wounded: and in addition to these misfortunes the scouts kept getting hit, till several were killed, and the whole number of casualties had reached twenty-one in a company of forty-seven.

Yet with all this, and despite the seeming hopelessness of the situation, the survivors kept up their pluck undiminished, and during a lull succeeding the third repulse dug into the loose soil till the entire party was pretty well protected by rifle-pits.