Page:History of Iowa From the Earliest Times to the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume 2.djvu/42

 killed by a Union bullet. The other lived many years, always suffering remorse for the infamous sale of the gallant Cook to the Virginia hangman. He was finally crushed to death beneath the wheels of a railroad train.

The three famished men traveled on, after a night’s rest for the first time in a month under a roof, and after a few days more felt reasonably safe to travel by daylight. Coppoc soon after took a train for Iowa, which he safely reached, worn almost to a skeleton by starvation and exposure. He appeared suddenly in his old home on the 17th of December and met a warm and tearful welcome. His brother Edwin and his comrade cook had died on a Virginia scaffold the day before. Barclay was so near death from his terrible sufferings that his Springdale friends determined to defend him in his own home from surrender to the Virginia hangman. Armed and drilled, the guard kept nightly watch over him for many weeks. F. C. Galbraith, of Springdale, thus describes the plans of his defenders:

“Springdale is in arms, and is prepared at a half-hour’s notice to give his pursuers a reception of two hundred shots. There are three of our number who always know his whereabouts, and nobody else knows anything of him. He is never seen at night where he was during the day, and there are men on watch at Davenport, Muscatine, Iowa City, West Liberty and Tipton. It is intended to baffle them in every possible way without bloodshed.”