hat the train had been
carrying upwards of a million dollars, the pay for Sheridan's army.
Even allowing for exaggeration, the fact that they had overlooked this
treasure was a bitter pill for the Mosbyites. According to local
tradition, however, the fortune was not lost completely; there were
stories of a Berryville family who had been quite poor before the war
but who blossomed into unexplained affluence afterward.

Less than a week later, on August 19, Mosby was in the valley again
with 250 men, dividing his force into several parties after crossing
the river at Castleman's Ford. Richards, with "B" Company, set off
toward Charlestown. Mosby himself took "A" toward Harper's Ferry on an
uneventful trip during which the only enemies he encountered were a
couple of stragglers caught pillaging a springhouse. It was Chapman,
with "C" and "D," who saw the action on this occasion.

Going to the vicinity of Berryville, he came to a burning farmhouse,
and learned that it had been fired only a few minutes before by some
of Custer's cavalry. Leaving a couple of men to help the family
control the fire and salvage their possessions, he pressed on rapidly.
Here was the thing every Mosby man had been hoping for--a chance to
catch house burners at work. They passed a second blazing house and
barn, dropping off a couple more men to help fight fire, and caught up
with the incendiaries, a company of Custer's men, just as they were
setting fire to a third house. Some of these, knowing the quality of
mercy they might expect from Mosby men, made off immediately at a
gallop. About ninety of them, however, tried to form ranks and put up
a fight. The fight speedily became a massacre. Charging with shouts of
"No quarters!", Chapman's men drove them into a maze of stone fences
and killed about a third of them before the rest were able to
extricate themselves.

This didn't stop the house burnings, by any means. The devastation of
the Shenandoah Valley had been decided upon as a matter of strategy,
and Sheridan was going through with it. The men who were ordered to do
the actual work did not have their morale improved any by the
knowledge that Mosby's Rangers were refusing quarter to incendiary
details, however, and, coming as it did on the heels of the wagon
train affair of the 13th, Sheridan was convinced that something
drastic would have to be done about Mosby. Accordingly, he set up a
special company, under a Captain William Blazer, each m