Epsey abandoned her effort to catch the milk cow and began to move down the wooded lane toward the open fields and the cabin. She heard the sound of horses departing and then saw a column of rising smoke. She was terrified and ran as fast as possible, with her long skirt pulled up between her legs and clutched against her stomach. She could soon see that the cabin and outbuildings were all in flames, and she could not detect any movement around them. She glimpsed a small group of horsemen disappearing along the trail leading toward the Morrises’ cabin, and it seemed that there were at least two white men and the rest Indians. Epsey soon found the body of her son near the woodpile, horribly mutilated and scalped.

For a long time she sat on the ground, holding Henry’s lifeless body, hardly aware that she was drenched in his blood. She was overwhelmed with grief, which slowly changed to bewilderment and then anger, at the war and everyone who was responsible for the violence. She was embarrassed to realize that she had even included Ethan among those who were committing the repulsive acts.

Finally, she was able to control her grief and rise and consider her own responsibilities. Almost everything that could be of value had been taken, and the men had rifled through all the personal belongings that had been neatly piled in the yard waiting for the waggoner. First she found a blanket in which she tenderly wrapped Henry’s body. Then she used an old shovel blade and dug a grave, deep enough to avoid any possible violation by scavenging animals. After a prayerful burial and the erection of a small marker, Epsey considered her plight and decided that she must go to Wrightsborough as quickly as possible, for her own safety and to warn others about what she considered to be a war party. She walked carefully around the still-smoldering cabin and tried to identify as many different footprints as possible. She was certain that there were at least three different white men and a much larger number of Indians, whose moccasin prints were indistinguishable from one another.

Since they had taken her horse, she had no way to carry anything except on her back. Then she thought of the cow, returned to the woodland corral, soon had it roped, and brought it back to the cabin. She packed her most urgently needed things, draped them across the cow’s back, and began the six-mile walk toward town.

•  •  •

A week later, Ranger Captain James Grierson arrived at British headquarters in Augusta and went to Colonel Thomas Brown’s office to give an account of the patrol under his command. Brown confronted him before he could speak.

“I’ve had a report that you have attacked and destroyed homesteads in Wrightsborough, which you know to be a direct violation of directives from London and also my own personal orders to you.”