come to an end during the summer of 1799, when they were attacked by a group of bounty hunters/vigilantes under the leadership of Captain Young calling themselves "The Exterminators". No contemporary accounts attest to river pirates occupying the cave in the first decade of the 19th century. The Harpes retreated back into Kentucky, while Mason traveled downriver and began to focus on highway robbery along the Natchez Trace. The next generation of outlaws in the region sprang either from the Sturdivant Gang, a group of counterfeiters based at Sturdivant Fort, on top of the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River at what is now Rosiclare, Illinois; or the Ford's Ferry Gang led by James Ford, based a few miles upriver from the cave at what became known as Ford's Ferry, Kentucky. Law enforcement officials led three raids against Sturdivant Fort in 1822 and 1823. Although it is not clear what happened following the raids, the gang had disappeared from the area by 1830. The Ford's Ferry Gang was broken up following the mysterious deaths or murders of James Ford's two sons, followed by his own assassination in 1833. Even after the death of Ford, outlaws remained. Isaiah L. Potts operated Potts Inn on the Ford's Ferry High Water Road in Illinois north of the cave. Travelers checked in, but sometimes failed to check out. This presumed frontier hotel was very similar to the Bloody Benders' Wayside Inn, which appeared fifty years later in Labette County, Kansas. The legend of Billy Potts, the returning son who was murdered unknowingly by his father, likely took place in the months following Ford's assassination. This tragic story of poetic justice has taken on folklorish proportions. Records show the elder Potts and his wife separated in 1834 or 1835. Eson Bigsby (the first name sometimes spelled "Eason" or "Enos" and the last name sometimes spelled "Bixby") took up counterfeiting in Hardin County in the decades following the Sturdivants. His attack on his wife Anna in an effort to find out where her first husband's money was buried dates to the early 1860s and led to the legends of Anna Bixby, her treasure and her ghost. She survived running off a cliff in the dark. She is the namesake of the Anna Bixby Women's Center in nearby Harrisburg, Illinois. Although not completely connected to the "Ancient Colony", Logan Belt and the Logan Belt Gang terrorized Hardin County