Pate liberated.
Colonel S- ordered him to stand by his stirrup and lead him into camp.
Under these circumstances, the dragoons went into the
camp of Old Brown.
So rapidly and unexpectedly did the thing occur, that there was no opportunity to secure the arms and horses taken at
Black Jack.
Only fifteen of
Brown's men were in the camp at the moment they entered it;
1 but that camp,
Colonel S--, who was astonished at it, afterwards said, a small garrison could have held against a thousand men, as, from the peculiar nature of the ground, artillery could not be brought to bear on it. It is not wonderful that both
Colonel S- and the
Deputy Sheriff should come to the conclusion that the handful of Free State men they saw, with nearly twice their own number of prisoners, were only a part of
Brown's force.
They believed that a hundred riflemen must be concealed in the thickets around it; consequently the tone of these gallant officers and gentlemen grew more urbane and polite.
Colonel S asked the
Deputy Sheriff if he had not some writs of arrest.
Deputy looked carefully around him, fixed his timid, irresolute eyes on the prisoners, and the small band
Captain Brown had with him, and at the dense and mysterious looking thickets around him, and said, in a hesitating voice,
“ Well, I believe I don't see any body here against whom I have any writ.”
