Several instances are recorded of the prowess and intrepidity of Alexander of Coul on this occasion. He was, excepting John MacMhurchaidh Mhic Gillechriost, the fastest runner in the Mackenzie country. On his way to Kintail, leading his men and driving the creach before them, he met three or four hundred Camerons, who sent Mackenzie a message demanding "a bounty of the booty" for passing through their territory. This Kenneth was about to grant, and ordered thirty cows and a few of the younger animals to be given, saying that it "was fit that hungry dogs should get a collop;" whereupon Alexander of Coul and his brave band of one hundred and twenty followers started aside and swore with a great oath that if the Camerons dared to take away a single head, they would, before night, pay dearly for them, and have to light for their collop; for he and his men, he said, had already nearly lost their lives driving them through a wild and narrow pass where eighteen of the enemy fell to their swords before they were able to get the cattle through; but he would now let them pass in obedience to his chief's commands. The messengers, hearing the ominous threat, notwithstanding Kenneth's personal persuasion, declined on any account to take the cattle, and marched away "empty as they came." Before starting from home on this expedition Kintail drove every one of Glengarry's followers out of their holdings in Lochalsh and Lochcarron, except a few of the "Mathewsons and the Clann Jan Uidhir," and any others who promised to submit to him and engaged to prove their sincerity by "imbrowing their bands in the enemy's blood." The Castle of Strome, however, still continued in possession of the Macdonalds. Mackenzie, after his return home, had not well dissolved his camp when Alexander MacGorrie and Ranald MacRory made an incursion to the district of Kenlochewe, and there meeting some women and children who had fled from Lochcarron with their cattle, he attacked them unexpectedly, killed several of the defenceless women, all the male children, slaughtered and took away many of the cattle, and "houghed" all they were not able to carry along with them. In the following autumn, Alexander MacGorrie made a voyage to Applecross in a great galley, contrary to the advice of all his friends, who looked upon that place as a sanctuary which all Highlanders had hitherto respected as the property of the Church. Notwithstanding that many took refuge in it in the past, he was the first man who ever pursued a fugitive to the place, "but," says our authority, "it fared no better with him or he rested, but be being informed that some Kintail men, whom he thought no sin to kill anywhere," bad taken refuge there with their cattle, he determined to kill them, but on his arrival he found only two poor fellows, tending their cows. These he murdered, slaughtered all the cows, and took away as many of them as his boat would carry.