Before noon on Monday some forty citizens of the neighborhood had been assembled as prisoners and held, it was explained, as hostages for the safety of members of the party who might be taken.
During the early forenoon Kagi strongly urged that they should escape into the mountains; but Brown, who was influenced, as he said, by sympathy for his prisoners and their distressed families, refused to move and at last found himself surrounded by opposing forces.

Brown's men, having been assigned to different duties, were separated.

Six of them escaped; others were killed or wounded or taken prisoners.

Brown himself with six of his men and a few of his prisoners made a final stand in the engine-house.

This was early in the afternoon.