Two chance visitors to the Hurd cabin spread the alarm about the coming attack. Charlie Hatch was living with his sister Almira Everett and her family at the south end of the settlement. Coming to borrow the Hurds' oxen, he instead found John Voigt's body and the looted cabin. Running back to tell the others, he saw the mob of Dakota around the Koch homestead. Meanwhile, the Meyers cabin at the north end of the settlement had so far been bypassed by the war party. Mrs. Meyers was quite sick with pneumonia, so 10-year-old Arthur had been sent to the Hurds to ask for some bread. When he returned with the news of the violence done there, Mr. Meyers went to warn the Kochs. Instead he found Andreas dead and heard the Dakota men nearby, so rushed back and hustled his family of six into their wagon to flee.