In early September 1861, after a Union victory at Boone Court House left the region under contested Federal and Unionist militia control, Union General Cox sent troops back into the Coal River Valley, where a wagon train defended by about 500 men from the First Kentucky Infantry Regiment and a section of light artillery moved south from Brownstown and joined the Peytona Home Guard near Short Creek. Under Captain David Y. Johns, the force ravaged Boone and Raleigh counties, sacked homesteads, threatened Raleigh Court House, and carried off prisoners, livestock, wagons, corn, and other goods. In response, General Wise sent six companies of cavalry under Colonel James Lucius Davis, who rode rapidly from Raleigh Court House toward the raiders. After learning at Jarrolds Valley that the Federals had pillaged Pack’s plantation and camped nearby, Davis discovered they had already withdrawn and began a hard pursuit, dividing his force and sending companies ahead along Coal River Road. On the evening of September 12, 1861, Confederate cavalry overtook the Union force as it camped on the Big Coal River near the mouth of Joe’s Creek. Although badly outnumbered, the leading Confederate horsemen attacked at once, charging into the camp with drawn swords and fire from horseback. The surprised Union infantry briefly tried to hold in an orchard and open field, but within about fifteen minutes their line broke and the retreat became a rout. In a running fight of about three hours, the Confederates pressed the fleeing Federals for three miles down the Big Coal River Valley to the mouth of Toney’s Branch, where they completely overtook the remainder and drove them into the mountains. A final charge on Peytona was repulsed by retreating Federal troops and a squad of Peytona Home Guard, and the exhausted Confederates did not continue farther. Union losses are given variously as from five killed to as many as fifty killed and wounded, and about a company was captured and later sent to Libby Prison in Richmond. The Confederates suffered no casualties or captures and took the entire train, fifty to sixty horses and mules, wagons, stolen goods from Big Coal River Valley residents, and the freed political prisoners including the Pack family and slaves. The fight became one of the war’s early dramatic cavalry actions, drew attention in the South, avenged the burning of Boone Court House, and embarrassed General Cox and the Federal troops at Charleston.