impregnable; they fled in complete panic, _sauve qui peut_, through
their camp, across prairie and rivers and swamps, to Dixon, twelve
miles away, where by midnight they began to arrive. The first arrival
reported that two thousand savages had swept down on Stillman's camp
and slaughtered all but himself. Before the next night all but eleven
of the band had arrived.

Stillman's defeat, as this disgraceful affair is called, put all
notion of peace out of Black Hawk's mind, and he started out in
earnest on the warpath. Governor Reynolds, excited by the reports of
the first arrivals from the Stillman stampede, made out that night,
"by candle-light," a call for more volunteers, and by the morning of
the 15th had messengers out and his army in pursuit of Black Hawk. But
it was like pursuing a shadow. The Indians purposely confused their
trail. Sometimes it was a broad path, then it suddenly radiated to all
points. The whites broke their bands, and pursued the savages here and
there, never overtaking them, though now and then coming suddenly on
some terrible evidences of their presence--a frontier home deserted
and burned, slaughtered cattle, scalps suspended where the army could
not fail to see them.

This fruitless warfare exasperated the volunteers; they threatened
to leave, and their officers had great difficulty in making them obey
orders. On reaching a point in the Rock River, beyond which lay the
Indian country, a company under Colonel Zachary Taylor refused to
cross, and held a public indignation meeting, urging that they had
volunteered to defend the State, and had the right, as independent
American citizens, to refuse to go out of its borders. Taylor heard
them to the end, and then said: "I feel that all gentlemen here are
my equals; in reality, I am persuaded that many of them will, in a