Volume 3, Frank Moore (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862), page 23
The Pet Lambs. - The Wheeling Intelligencer chronicles the arrival there on the 26th of December of thirty-four "secesh" prisoners known as Moccasin Rangers. They were caught in Wirt, Roane, and Gilmer Counties. The cold weather had driven then in for shelter. They had eaten up everything in the woods, including hoop-pole bark, and were forced to come into a civilized neighborhood to get something to eat. Some of them are lame, halt, and frosted, and there is scarcely a comfortable suit of clothes in the whole crowd. Among the number is the notorious Dan Dusky, who boasted that he had a little graveyard of his own in which he had buried a considerable number of Union men. Coming up on the boat during Christmas day, Capt. Baggs got a pitcher of whisky, and gave the "pet lambs," as he calls them, a Christmas drink all round.
Timeline of West Virginia: Civil War and Statehood: December 1861