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?