And all the time the men went on digging the well.  It was so deep that they were hoisting the sand up in buckets.  The men who hoisted were exposed, and one of them was wounded in the shoulder.  He was Peter Bromley, who drove oxen for the Bloodgood wagon, and he was engaged to marry Jane Bloodgood.  She jumped out of the rifle pit and ran right to him while the bullets were flying and led him back into shelter.  About midday the well caved in, and there was lively work digging out the couple who were buried in the sand.  Amos Wentworth did not come to for an hour.  After that they timbered the well with bottom boards from the wagons and wagon tongues, and the digging went on.  But all they could get, and they were twenty feet down, was damp sand.  The water would not seep.

By this time the conditions in the rifle pit were terrible.  The children were complaining for water, and the babies, hoarse from much crying, went on crying.  Robert Carr, another wounded man, lay about ten feet from mother and me.  He was out of his head, and kept thrashing his arms about and calling for water.  And some of the women were almost as bad, and kept raving against the Mormons and Indians.  Some of the women prayed a great deal, and the three grown Demdike sisters, with their mother, sang gospel hymns.  Other women got damp sand that was hoisted out of the bottom of the well, and packed it against the bare bodies of the babies to try to cool and soothe them.

The two Fairfax brothers couldn’t stand it any longer, and, with pails in their hands, crawled out under a wagon and made a dash for the spring.  Giles never got half way, when he went down.  Roger made it there and back without being hit.  He brought two pails part-full, for some splashed out when he ran.  Giles crawled back, and when they helped him into the rifle pit he was bleeding at the mouth and coughing.

Two part-pails of water could not go far among over a hundred of us, not counting the, men.  Only the babies, and the very little children, and the wounded men, got any.  I did not get a sip, although mother dipped a bit of cloth into the several spoonfuls she got for the baby and wiped my mouth out.  She did not even do that for herself, for she left me the bit of damp rag to chew.

The situation grew unspeakably worse in the afternoon.  The quiet sun blazed down through the clear windless air and made a furnace of our hole in the sand.  And all about us were the explosions of rifles and yells of the Indians.  Only once in a while did father permit a single shot from the trench, and at that only by our best marksmen, such as Laban and Timothy Grant.  But a steady stream of lead poured into our position all the time.  There were no more disastrous ricochets, however; and our men in the trench, no longer firing, lay low and escaped damage.  Only four were wounded, and only one of them very badly.