Stuart was willing to risk his life on a wager that if he consented to lay down his arms, he had more concealed and that he would sleep on them that night in the brush.
The low forehead and square, projecting chin caught and held his fancy. It was the jaw and chin of the fighting animal. No man who studied that jaw would care to meet it in the dark.
But the thing that had put the Deputy out of commission as warrant officer of the Government was the old man's strange, restless eyes. Stuart caught their steel glitter with a sense of the uncanny. He had never seen a human eye that threw at an enemy a look quite so disconcerting. He had laughed at the Deputy's fear to move with fifty dragoons to back him. There was some excuse for it. Back of those piercing points of steel-blue light were one hundred and fifty armed followers. What would happen if he should turn to these men and tell them to fight the cavalry of the United States? It was an open question.
The old man walked toward his men with wiry, springing step.
The prisoners were released.
Stuart shook hands with Pate, who was a Virginian and a former student of the University.
Brown's men laid down their arms and dispersed.
True to Stuart's surmise he did not move far from his entrenched camp. He anticipated a fake surrender to the troops. He had concealed weapons for the faithful but half a mile away. With Weiner he built a new camp fire before Stuart's cavalry had moved two miles.
CHAPTER XXIII
The man with the slouched hat and coarse 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.