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Michael Scoggins kindly provided this banecdote from the Draper Manuscripts:

When Col. Tarleton was on his way to the relief of Ferguson, he camped one evening in Chester District, at no great distance from the residence of Col. Lacey, and thence sent out a detail to look up some beeves for his troops. Not far from the Lacey neighborhood lived an inveterate tory named Bill Satterwhite. Hearing that the British were out looking for beeves, in order to wreak his spite on Lacey's family, and at the same time to ingratiate himself with Col. Tarleton, this tory drove off all of Mrs. Lacey's milch cows to the British camp and penned them for the night. Early the next morning he waited on Col. Tarleton, and begged him to come and look at some beeves, which he had brought him. Upon repairing to the pen, Tarleton saw at a glance that they were all milch cows. Saying not a word, the Colonel unbuckled his sword-belt, and weilding it in the right hand, he gave the astonished tory a most unmerciful flogging.

"Now," said he, "do you drive these cows right back to where you got them. The children, no doubt, are crying now for the milk of these very cows."

Satterwhite promptly obeyed the order. Tarleton's better nature, for once had gained the upper hand. As both history and tradition have covered his name with obloquy, let this one fact stand recorded to his credit.

One day, several years after the war, Mrs. Lacey was at a public gathering, when she saw Satterwhite present wearing a pair of breeches with a large patch on the seat. She approached him, seized him by the shoulders, turned him around and pointed with her finger to the patch. "Bill Satterwhite," said she, "is this the place where Tarleton flogged you with his sword-belt for driving off my old milch cows." The poor tory made no reply, but slunk away abashed from the presence of the spirited old Whig lady.

Michael comments, "Tarleton states that on October 10th, he was sent to assist Maj. Ferguson and that after crossing the Catawba, he proceeded westward towards Bullock's Creek in York County hoping to catch Sumter in his camp there. This would have taken him very close to Lacey's property on Susy Bole Creek, near the York-Chester county line, and this may be when the incident with the cows occurred."

[Source: Letter from H.S. Halbert, in The Thomas Sumter Papers, Lyman C. Draper Manuscript Collection, State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Series VV, Volume 15, pages 179-180.]