After the squad had searched Barclugh and disarmed him, they marched him out and ordered him to mount his horse and ride between them.
However, when the troopers started off their course led them to the southward. They acted queerly to Barclugh. They crossed the Croton at Pine Bridge and went toward the Hudson. In any event he was all right unless the scamps were bent on robbery. However, he did not lose his nerve. Finally, after an hour’s ride and silence, the prisoner ventured this question:
“Gentlemen, I am a prisoner in the hands of which party?”
“You are a prisoner of His Majesty King George III. No talking, sir, we are on dangerous ground.”
Barclugh’s spirits at once mounted high. As soon as he reached a British post, he would despatch a cipher message to General Clinton in New York and he knew that at once he would be escorted to secret quarters in the town.
To understand Barclugh’s perilous position in the country through which he was now passing, a few facts concerning the conditions existing in the spring of 1780 must be stated.
From the upper part of Manhattan Island or King’s Bridge to the Croton River was neutral ground, during the British occupancy of New York. The British sent out reconnoitering parties toward the American lines and the Americans would reconnoitre toward the British. Independent bands of Tories called “cow-boys” raided into this territory, and foraged upon the inhabitants who did not sign allegiance to the King. Then the American bands called “skinners” raided upon the loyalists. The real warfare of these parts consisted in these lawless bands watching each other when on raids and if the “cow-boys” had a good drove of animals, the “skinners” attempted to disperse the band and appropriate the spoils. The whole of the lower part of Westchester County was thus kept in distress during nearly all of the Revolutionary War by the ravages of these bands.
On the night in question, when Barclugh was a prisoner in the hands of his friends, the party was ascending a steep hill in silence and surrounded by dense forest, when suddenly out of the night air and darkness rang a voice within a hundred feet:
“Surrender, you devils!” and the clicking of a dozen flintlocks sounded in quick succession.
At the sound of such a number of clicks, the five British whirled on their horses and dashed down the hill and Barclugh did as the rest, but he was in the rear since he did not understand their tactics of retreat.