His first thoughts on returning were of Major Dunlap who was "detached from Ninety-Six into the country, on a foraging party; Pickens detached Clarke [Colonel Elijah Clarke who commanded the Georgia Refugees] and M'Call, with a suitable force, to attack him."[17] Their orders were to leave the Loyalists alone except that "if they found any that needed killing not to spare them."[18] Clarke and McCall caught up with Dunlap at Beattie's Mill on Little River. The rebels trapped Dunlap between them at which time he "retired into the mill and some out-houses, but which were too open for defense against riflemen; recollecting, however, his outrageous conduct to the families and friends of those by whom he was attacked, he resisted for several hours, until 34 of his men were killed and wounded; himself among the latter; when a flag was hung out and they surrendered. Dunlap died the ensuing night." The Patriot historian Hugh McCall, who also happened to be the son of James McCall, then adds that "the British account of this affair, stated that Dunlap was murdered by the guard after he had surrendered; but such was not the fact, however much he deserved such treatment."[19] But Captain Dunlap's story did not actually end there. Either Hugh McCall was ignorant of the full story or, as may be seen in other passages from his work, McCall shied away from recording the more inconvenient truths. After his surrender at the mill, Major Dunlap and the other prisoners were sent "back to a little town in N. C. called Gilbert, where Dunlap was confined for some time, in an upper room, where one of our men (as was said) privately shot him dead with a pistol."[20] In his report on the incident to General Greene, Pickens described the murderers as "a set of men chiefly known"[21] before naming one as an "Overmountain Man named Cobb." Pickens said he put up a substantial reward for Cobb's capture, an action which Greene praised as a "just and prudent measure to bring the criminals to justice."[22] Pickens also sent word to the British commander at Ninety Six that all the American officers looked with "horror and detestation" on the murder.