Return to First Page-----ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 50 (Summer 1994), p. 159
The next day Miller arrived, partially drunk, according to Willis. He had several friends with him. All carried six-guns. Innocently, Miller asked what the agent wanted him for. Exasperated, Willis asked for the twenty-four dollars that Miller had agreed to pay the girl's father weeks earlier. "I don't owe the d-- --d freedman a cent and won't pay a cent unless I am made to pay it!" Miller shouted loudly for the benefit of the gathering crowd. "You and all the d-- --d Yankee soldiers can't make me pay it ! I have come prepared for you this morning," Miller growled threateningly, "and if you undertake to arrest me you will get your d-- --d head shot off!"
Willis and his civilian clerk stood on the walk in front of his office facing Miller and his four friends, whose hands began drifting menacingly toward gun butts. "You had better let it out," Miller said. After a pause to survey the situation, Willis complied. He and his clerk slowly pushed through the horsemen and the crowd. Amid cheers and laughter Miller and his men went into a local store to celebrate. Meanwhile Willis went over to the building used as a barracks by his supporting troop contingent and rounded up seven tough-looking, well-armed infantrymen. He waited patiently until Miller came out of the store. He was alone. Quickly the soldiers advanced on the stunned farmed who stared and gaped at them. Willis and his corporal shouted for Miller to surrender.
- Regaining his wits, Miller ducked back into the store. He drew his
revolver and opened fire. One of his friends joined him in a fusillade.
Willis and his squad were in the middle of the street less than fifty feet
away, but no one was hit. "Open fire!" Willis shouted. The heavy
infantry rifles boomed and bullets splintered the door frame that protected
Miller, hitting his friend in the side. It was too much for the would-be
gunmen. Miller and the rest of his gang fled out the back "as fast
as deer," said Willis later---too fast to catch. So Willis confiscated
Miller's fine riding horse from the hitching rack out front and waited.
The next morning Mrs. Miller came in and paid the twenty-four dollars plus
the damages to the store. Willis gave her the horse (1).
- _______________________
- 1. 2nd Lt. Hiram F. Willis to Acting Assistant Adjutant General Headquarters, Arkansas Bureau of
- Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (AAAG-AFB), March 20, 1967,
Letters Sent, Field Office Records, Arkansas (FORA) --- Paraclifta/Rocky
Comfort, Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands
(BRFAL), Record Group (RG) 105, National Archives (NA), Washington, D.
C.; hereinafter cited as FORA, Letters Sent. The case is summarized in
Register of Complaints, vol. 176, 74, ibid.; hereinafter cited as
FORA, Register of Complaints. These and other records from Paraclifta and
Rocky Comfort have been reproduced in the microfilm collection of the same
title made by the Arkansas State History Commission, Little Rock, Roll
16, Entries 404-410. For local chronicles of the area covered in this essay,
see Betty McCommas, The History of Sevier County and Her People (Dallas,
Texas, 1980); and Bill Beasley, Little River County (Ashdown, Ark.,
1975).
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