No one was hit by the firing. Blanchard had a watch and two pocketbooks, one that contained $3 and one holding $40. When the bushwhackers asked for his valuables, he craftily turned over the watch and the pocketbook with $3 inside, keeping the balance of his money concealed.

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Other guerrillas had captured eight more men from the 130th Indiana: Irvin Baker and Christopher Mainess, Company A; Albert Brown, James L. Buchanan, John Welch and Robert Hill, Company D; and William Cates and Leander Reynolds, Company G. This last group brought the total number of Yankee prisoners to 20, now reduced to 19 by the murder of King. Although slightly wounded in the side, Lieutenant Brownlee Cross commanded the Tennesseans, who had assembled their prisoners in the ravine.

The weather had turned dark and stormy by the time two old civilians rode up, chuckled at the collection of blue-coated youngsters (most were still teenagers) and said, ‘You have got some of the Yankee sons of bitches, we see; we suppose you know what to do with them.’ The guerrillas said they did, counted off their captives and divided them into small squads of four men each. The Tennesseans then marched one squad over a hill and into a smaller ravine, where they ordered the prisoners to halt and turn around.

Sergeant Blanchard, who was one of this group, caught the meaning of those orders and cried out, ‘For God’s sake, don’t shoot us so!’ He had scarcely uttered his plea when the killers opened fire. One bullet tore through Blanchard’s memorandum book, entered the right side of his chest, glanced off some ribs and lodged near his spine. A second bullet shattered the top button of his coat and lodged in his left breast. The sergeant collapsed into unconsciousness. His three comrades died instantly.

The remaining prisoners heard these shots and grew alarmed. Caston confessed aloud that he was beginning to feel uneasy, and one Southerner remarked that he had good reason to feel that way. Caston responded, ‘You took those men out to shoot them?’ His captor laughed and said, ‘We did and we intend to serve you the same way.’

The guerrillas started to march away a second squad of Yankees, this one composed of Crouse, Grandstaff, Hendry and another man they did not know. The stranger made a break for freedom, but he was struck down by seven bullets. There seemed to be no escape from the determined butchers. Caston, a cousin of Hendry, replaced the murdered runaway.Private Crouse explained what happened to his squad when it reached the killing ravine:

Imagine, if you can, how we felt then! We offered to do anything for them; we prayed and begged of them to spare our lives; but all in vain. We might as well have prayed to blocks of wood or stone. They laughed at us and mocked us in our woe and misery, and told us we ought to have thought of the probability of getting into just such trouble before we left our homes. One young man did most of the shooting; he was a young fellow about seventeen years old, and he did his work as cheerfully as a butcher would in shooting a lot of hogs. He used a navy revolver. We stood by a tree, surrounded by the bodies of those already dead, while he loaded the weapon. Night was just falling. The day was rainy and cold. When he was ready, he ordered us to turn our backs. Three of us obeyed, but Caston said he had humbled himself to them all he was going to; then one of the villains behind shot him.

The young executioner shot Hendry. Then came my turn. I had often wondered, when reading of military executions, of hangings, of death by the guillotine, how the condemned felt when they knew that only a moment intervened between them and eternity. How I felt is beyond my power of telling. Suffice it to say, however, that it came to me very forcibly that I had done my utmost duty to my country as a soldier. Yet above all things was the thought of home and mother. I would have prayed, but no time was given for that. I immediately repeated a stanza from an old, familiar song, which all soldiers know. The chorus runs: Farewell, mother, you may never press me to your heart again, But you’ll not forget me, mother, if I’m numbered with the slain.

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