When a prominent and courageous Union man in Harpers Ferry, a schoolmaster named Law, disappeared one night, it was feared that he had been abducted. This was confirmed when a local resident confessed years later...that this unnamed Confederate and some other members of Mobberly's gang had taken Law to a lonely spot of [Short Hill] Mountain and staked him down to the ground to die of exposure, wild beasts or whatever.-- Rough-Riding Scout, The Story of John Mobberly, Loudoun's Own Civil War Guerrilla Hero, by Richard E. Crouch, Elden Editions, 1994
And many were sure this happened more than once. When Loudoun Ranger John W. Forsythe published his memoirs in 1892, he related that Mobberly's gang seldom took prisoners, and if they did, would execute the prisoner by leaving him on the mountain pinned down by huge rocks; the evidence being that "a number of skeletons" were found in this position at the close of the war. A newspaper report from a few days after the war's end mentions the pinned-down skeletons too.
Main course yet to come. Still trying to dope out the best way to tell the story. You Will Not Be Disappointed. This is a true MoFo of a tale...
Up Next on the Mobberly Trail: Eat your brussells sprouts, kid, they're good for ya!
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