se cotton shirt lost no time in
grieving over the dispersal of his one hundred and fifty men. It was the
largest force he had ever assembled. His experience in the three days
in which he had acted as their commander had greatly angered him. The
frontiersman who failed to come under the spell of Brown's personality
by direct contact generally refused to obey his orders.

The crowd of free rangers which his fight with Pate had gathered proved
themselves beyond control. They raided the surrounding country without
Brown's knowledge.

They stole from friend and foe with equal impartiality. There was one
consolation in his surrender to the United States troops. He got rid of
these troublesome followers. They had already robbed him of the
spoils of his own successful raids and not one of them had shown any
inclination to bring in the enemies' goods for common use.

He began to choose the most faithful among them for a scheme of wider
scope and more tragic daring. He was not yet sure of his plan. But God
would reveal it clearly.

He spent a week at his new camp in the woods wandering alone, dreaming,
praying, weighing this new scheme from every point of view.

His mind came back again and again to the puzzle of the failure to raise
a National Blood Feud.

For a moment his indomitable Puritan soul was discouraged. He had obeyed
the command of his God. He could not have been mistaken in the voice
which spoke from Heaven:

"WITHOUT THE SHEDDING OF BLOOD THERE IS NO REMISSION OF SINS."

He had laid the Blood Offering on God's altar counting his own life as
of no account in the reckoning and from that hour he had been a fugitive
from justice, hiding in the woods. He had escaped arrest only by the
accidental assembling of a mob of a hundred and fifty disorderly fools
who had stolen his own goods before they had been dispersed.

Instead of the heroic acclaim to which the deed entitled him, his own
flesh and blood had cursed him, one of his sons had been shot and
another was lying in prison a jibbering lunatic.

Would future generations agree with the men who had met in his own town
and denounced his deed as cruel, gruesome and revolting?

His stolid mind refused to believe it. Through hours of agonizing
prayer the new plan, based squarely on the vision that sent him to
Pottawattomie, began to fix itself in his soul.

This time he would chose his disciples from the elect. Only men tried in
the fires of Action could be tru