You have listed the references which I was having reference to. The thing that gives credit to this is that there appears to be a massive organization of new artillery batteries in Arkansas in August 1862. The question is where did these guns for those batteries come from? Was Curtis mearly overestimating the number of guns?

Gorham Battery of 5 guns was evidently assigned to Parsons Brigade and therefore would not have been apart of that organizatiion effort. Van Dorn had stripped the State of all usable guns when he left Arkansas.

Albert Pike in Oklahoma released one Battery of 6 Parrot Rifles which he was not able to use because of the lack of equipment to be sent to Arkansas and these weapons were captured in Harts Battery at Arkansas Post. Pike returned Dawson's 19th Arkansas back to the state without any arms at all. So those guns did not come from Oklahoma.

There is some references to the people at the Little Rock arsenal digging up decommissioned obsolete guns which had been disposed of by burying them on the grounds, but that does not account for the number of guns needed to arm these new batteries. It is thought that these 25 guns that Curtis was chasing had been obtained from the cast off guns of the Army of Northern Virginia, when they had been armed with better weapons from those captured during the 7 Days Battles around Richmond in late June of 1862.

You will notice that the guns that made up Hindman artillery at the Battle of Praise Grove, which was some of those batteries formed in late summer of 1862, were obsolete guns not really usable in the eastern theaters.

Of Course all of these movements were supposed to be secret because of the dangers of having to cross the Mississippi River to get them to Arkansas. This was all an effort to keep Arkansas in the war as Governor Rector had threatened to seceed from the Confederacy, And recall the Arkansas regiments home, if the Confederacy was not going to defend the State.

Therefore I give credit to Gen Curtis' estimation because of the Confederate artillery with Gen'l Hindman at Praire Grove. Quite simply where else did those guns come from?