Before dark of the 15th, Strode, Captain J.W. Stephenson and others from the mining district reached Galena with the intelligence of Stillman’s defeat, and the possibilities of immediate and general Indian hostilities created the greatest excitement among the people. The notes of a bugle at once called the settlers and miners together on the old race course on the bottom near the river,[128] and by reason of his popularity, Captain Stephenson quickly organized a company of mounted rangers, which elected him captain. Strode, however, could not manipulate his militia, as he had confidently expected and promised. Candidates for office contested the supremacy of Strode, then a candidate for State Senator (and later elected), with suggestions that he should get out of the way. With this conflict among leaders, men did not respond as expected, and to still more complicate Reynolds’ already distressing plight, Strode’s troubles reached Dixon’s Ferry. Resolving upon asking the advice of Atkinson, he started an express for Atkinson’s camp at 3 o’clock in the morning of Saturday, May 19th, consisting of Sergeant Fred Stahl and William Durley, Vincent Smith, Redding Bennett and James Smith, who bore dispatches for Atkinson and who took John D. Winters, the mail contractor, for guide. On Sunday, 20th, Stahl returned and added to the alarm by reporting that his party had been ambuscaded by the Indians just on the edge of Buffalo Grove (now Polo, Illinois), fifty miles from Galena, about 5 o’clock of Saturday afternoon, and that Durley was instantly killed and left on the spot. Strode was in despair. He declared martial law, and had not Atkinson, on his arrival at Dixon’s, anticipated his troubles and sent relief, poor Strode might have been discomfited. As it was, Lieutenant Jefferson Davis and a small detachment was ordered to hasten to his assistance. Arrived there, Davis, with the co-operation of H. Hezekiah Gear, a man of strong personality, great force of character and of commanding influence with the sturdy miners, smoothed the ruffled tempers of the miners and softened them into an eager desire for enlistment, and the organization of the Twenty-seventh Regiment followed.