Now the important thing was to communicate the will to fight. Turning to his officers, Morgan said, “On this ground I will beat Benny Tarleton or I will lay my bones.” 6 _Eleven to twelve hundred British_, Daniel Morgan had written. Ironically, as Morgan ordered another retreat from this formidable foe, the British were barricading themselves in some log houses on the north bank of the Pacolet River, expecting an imminent attack from the patriots. Their spies had told them that Morgan had 3,000 men, and Tarleton was taking no chances. After seizing this strong point, only a few miles below Morgan’s camp, he sent out a cavalry patrol. They soon reported that the Americans had “decamped.” Tarleton immediately advanced to Morgan’s abandoned campsite, where his hungry soldiers were delighted to find “plenty of provisions which they had left behind them, half cooked.” Nothing stirred Banastre Tarleton’s blood more than a retreating enemy. British soldiers, famed for their tenacity in war, have often been compared to the bulldog. But Tarleton was more like the bloodhound. A fleeing foe meant the chance of an easy victory. It was not only instinct, it was part of his training as a cavalryman. “Patrols and spies were immediately dispatched to observe the Americans,” Tarleton later recalled. The British Legion dragoons were ordered to follow Morgan until dark. Then the job was turned over to “other emissaries”—loyalists. Tarleton had about 50 with him to act as scouts and spies. Early that evening, January 16, probably around the time that Morgan was deciding to fight at Cowpens, a party of loyalists brought in a militia colonel who had wandered out of the American line of march, perhaps in search of forage for his horse. Threatened with instant hanging, the man talked. He told Tarleton that Morgan hoped to stop at Cowpens and gather more militia. But the captive said that Morgan then intended to get across the Broad River, where he thought he would be safe. The information whetted Tarleton’s appetite. It seemed obvious to him that he should “hang upon General Morgan’s rear” to cut off any militia reinforcements that might show up. If Morgan tried to cross the Broad, Tarleton would be in a position to “perplex his design,” as he put it—a stuffy way of saying he could cut him to pieces. Around midnight, other loyalist scouts brought in a rumor of more American reinforcements on their way—a “corps of mountaineers.” This sent a chill through the British, even through Tarleton. It sounded like the return of the mountain men who had helped destroy the loyalist army at Kings Mountain. It became more and more obvious to Tarleton that he should attack Morgan as soon as possible.