A dozen rifles were leveled at him. An iron
muzzle pushed at his breast, but the powder flashed in the pan.
He swerved and struck at the rifleman with his broken hilt. But
the other guns aimed at him spoke; and Ferguson's body jerked
from the saddle pierced by eight bullets. Men seized the bridle
of the frenzied horse, plunging on with his dead master dragging
from the stirrup.
The battle had lasted less than an hour. After Ferguson fell, De
Peyster advanced with a white flag and surrendered his sword to
Campbell. Other white flags waved along the hilltop. But the
killing did not yet cease. It is said that many of the
mountaineers did not know the significance of the white flag.
Sevier's sixteen-year-old son, having heard that his father had
fallen, kept on furiously loading and firing until presently he
saw Sevier ride in among the troops and command them to stop
shooting men who had surrendered and thrown down their arms.
The victors made a bonfire of the enemy's baggage wagons and
supplies. Then they killed some of his beeves and cooked them;
they had had neither food nor sleep for eighteen hours. They dug
shallow trenches for the dead and scattered the loose earth over
them. Ferguson's body, stripped of its uniform and boots and
wrapped in a beef hide, was thrown into one of these ditches by
the men detailed to the burial work, while the officers divided
his personal effects among themselves.
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