“Coward!”
One of the fellows in the outer line, not brave enough himself to join the volunteers who had come in to beat us out, was not disposed to believe in the surrender, and had his gun levelled on Bob in spite of the handkerchief which was waving as a flag of truce.
Sheriff Glispin, of Watonwan county, who was taking Bob's pistol from him, was also shouting to the fellow:
“Don't shoot him or I'll shoot you.”
All of us but Bob had gone down at the first fire. Pitts, shot through the heart, lay dead. Jim, including the wound in the shoulder he received at Northfield, had been shot five times, the most serious being the shot which shattered his upper jaw and lay imbedded beneath the brain, and a shot that buried itself underneath his spine, and which gave him trouble to the day of his death. Including those received in and on the way from Northfield I had eleven wounds.
A bullet had pierced Bob's right lung, but he was the only one left on his feet. His right arm useless, and his pistol empty, he had no choice.
“I surrender,” he had shouted. “They're all down but me. Come on. I'll not shoot.”
And Sheriff Glispin's order not to shoot was the beginning of the protectorate that Minnesota people established over us.
We were taken into Madelia that day and our wounds dressed, and I greeted my old landlord, Col. Vought, who had been one of the seven to go in to get us. We were taken to his hotel and a guard posted.
Then came the talk of mob vengeance we had heard so often in Missouri. It was said a mob would be out that night to lynch us. Sheriff Glispin swore we would never be mobbed as long as we were his prisoners.