Having dealt thus with the officers, Jackson selected at leisure a test of strength with the men. The conduct of the Fayetteville company of the Twenty-eighth regiment of west Tennessee light infantry gave him ground for displeasure. Not only had they refused to obey the call for six months’ service and insisted on serving for three months or not at all, but they had halted on their march, and had sent their commanding officer to bargain with Jackson for his express adhesion to their terms. Learning that Jackson made difficulties, they marched home without waiting for an official reply. Jackson ordered the whole body to be arrested as deserters, accompanying his order by an offer of pardon to such as returned to duty on their own understanding of the term of service. The company was again mustered, and arrived at Fort Strother not long after the arrival of the Thirty-ninth United States Infantry. A few weeks later an unfortunate private of the same company, named Woods, refused to obey the officer of the day, and threatened to shoot any man who arrested him. Jackson instantly called a court-martial, tried and sentenced Woods, and March 14 caused him to be shot. The execution was a harsh measure; but Jackson gave to it a peculiar character by issuing a general order in which he misstated facts that made Wood’s case exceptional,[365] in order to let the company understand that their comrade was suffering the penalty which they all deserved. Without giving his army time to brood over this severity, Jackson ordered a general movement, and within forty-eight hours after Woods’s execution, all were well on their way toward the enemy. Jackson had with him about five thousand men, four fifths of whom expected their discharge in a month. He left them not a day’s repose. Two lines of advance were open to him in approaching the fork of the Coosa and Tallapoosa, which was always the objective point. He might descend the Coosa, or cross to the Tallapoosa by the way he had taken in January. He descended the Coosa thirty miles, and then struck a sudden blow at the Tallapoosa towns. The Ocfuskee Indians, elated by their success in January, collected their whole force, with that of some neighboring towns, in a bend of the Tallapoosa, where they built a sort of fortress by constructing across the neck of the Horse-shoe a breastwork composed of five large logs, one above the other, with two ranges of port-holes.[366] The interior was covered with trees and fallen timber along the river side, and caves were dug in the bank. Seven or eight hundred Indian warriors together with many women and children were within the enclosure of eighty or a hundred acres.