Chapter XLIII

Nay, but make haste, the better foot before.--KING JOHN.

On the evening of the eleventh day, Wednesday, December 28, we left the kind friends with whom we had stayed for five days and four nights, gaining new vigor and inspired by new hope. Their last injunction was:

"Remember, you cannot be too careful. We shall pray God that you may reach your homes in safety. When you are there, do not forget us, but do send troops to open a way by which we can escape to the North."

In their simplicity, they fancied Yankees omnipotent, and that we could send them an army by merely saying the word. They bade us adieu with embraces and tears. I am sure many a fervent prayer went up from their humble hearths, that Our Father would guide us through the difficulties of our long, wearisome journey, and guard us against the perils which beset and environed it.

[Sidenote: FLANKING A REBEL CAMP.]

At ten o'clock we passed within two hundred yards of a Rebel camp. We could hear the neigh of the horses and the tramp of four or five sentinels on their rounds. We trod very softly; to our stimulated senses every sound was magnified, and every cracking twig startled us.

Leaving us in the road a few yards behind, our pilot entered the house of his friend, a young deserter from the Rebel army. Finding no one there but the family, he called us in, to rest by the log fire, while the deserter rose from bed, and donned his clothing to lead us three miles and point out a secluded path. For many months he had been "lying out;" but of late, as the Guards were less vigilant than usual, he sometimes ventured to sleep at home. His girlish wife wished him to accompany us through; but, with the infant sleeping in the cradle, which was hewn out of a great log, she formed a tie too strong for him to break. At parting, she shook each of us by the hand, saying:

"I hope you will get safely home; but there is great danger, and you must be powerful cautious."

At eleven o'clock our guide left us in the hands of a negro, who, after our chilled limbs were warmed, led us on our way. By two in the morning we had accomplished thirteen miles over the frozen hills, and reached a lonely house in a deep valley, beside a tumbling, flashing torrent.

[Sidenote: SECRETED AMONG THE HUSKS.]

The farmer, roused with difficulty from his heavy slumbers, informed us that Boothby's party, which had arrived twenty-four hours in advance of us, was sleeping in his barn. He sent us half a mile to the house of a neighbor, who fanned the dying embers on his great hearth, regaled us with the usual food, and then took us to a barn in the forest.

"Climb up on that scaffolding," said he. "Among the husks you will find two or three quilts. They belong to my son, who is lying out. To-night he is sleeping with some friends in the woods."

The cold wind blew searchingly through the open barn, but before daylight we were wrapped in "the mantle that covers all human thoughts."

XII. _Thursday, December 29._

At dark, our host, leaving us in a thicket, five hundred yards from his house, went forward to reconnoiter. Finding the coast clear, he beckoned us on to supper and ample potations of apple-brandy.

[Sidenote: WANDERING FROM THE ROAD.]

With difficulty we induced one of his neighbors to guide us. Though unfamiliar with the road, he was an excellent walker, swiftly leading us over the rough ground, which tortured our sensitive feet, and up and down sharp, rocky hills.

At two in the morning we flanked Wilkesboro, the capital of Wilkes County. To a chorus of barking dogs, we crept softly around it, within a few hundred yards of the houses. The air was full of snow, and when we reached the hills again, the biting wind was hard to breathe.

We walked about a mile through the dense woods, when Captain Wolfe, who had been all the time declaring that the North Star was on the wrong side of us, convinced our pilot that he had mistaken the road, and we retraced our steps to the right thoroughfare.

We stopped to warm for half an hour at a negro-cabin, where the blacks told us all they knew about the routes and the Rebels. Before morning we were greatly broken down, and our guide was again in doubt concerning the roads. So we entered a deep ravine in the pine-woods, built a great fire, and waited for daylight.

XIII. _Friday, December 30._

[Sidenote: CROSSING THE YADKIN RIVER.]

After dawn, we pressed forward, reluctantly compelled to pass near two or three houses.

We reached the Yadkin River just as a young, blooming woman, with a face like a ripe apple, came gliding across the stream. With a long pole, she guided the great log canoe, which contained herself, a pail of butter, and a side-saddle, indicating that she had started for the Wilkesboro market. Assisting her to the shore, we asked:

"Will you tell us where Ben Hanby lives?"

"Just beyond the hill there, across the river," she replied, with scrutinizing, suspicious eyes.

"How far is it to his house?"

"I don't know."

"More than a mile?"

"No" (doubtfully), "I reckon not."

"Is he probably at home?"

"No!" (emphatically). "He is _not_! Are you the Home Guard?"

"By no means, madam. We are Union men, and Yankees at that. We have escaped from Salisbury, and are trying to reach our homes in the North."

After another searching glance, she trusted us fully, and said:

"Ben Hanby is my husband. He is lying out. I wondered, if you were the Guard, what you could be doing without guns. From a hill near our house, the children saw you coming more than an hour ago; and my husband, taking you for the soldiers, went with his rifle to join his companions in the woods. Word has gone to every Union house in the neighborhood that the troops are out hunting deserters."

We embarked in the log canoe, and shipped a good deal of water before reaching the opposite shore. We had two sea-captains on board, and concluded that, with one sailor more, we should certainly have been hopelessly wrecked.

A winding forest-path led to the lonely house we sought, where we found no one at home, except three children of our fair informant and their grandmother. For more than two hours we could not allay the woman's suspicions that we were Guards. They had recently been adopting Yankee disguises, deceiving Union people, and beguiling them of damaging information.

As indignantly as General Damas inquires whether he _looks_ like a married man, we asked the cautious woman if we resembled Rebels. At last, convinced that we were veritable Yankees, she gave us breakfast, and sent one of the children with us to a sunny hillside among the pines, where we slept off the weariness and soreness caused by the night's march of sixteen miles.

[Sidenote: AMONG UNION BUSHWHACKERS.]

At evening a number of friends visited us. As they were not merely Rebel deserters, but Union bushwhackers also, we scanned them with curiosity; for we had been wont to regard bushwhackers, of either side, with vague, undefined horror.

These men were walking arsenals. Each had a trusty rifle, one or two navy revolvers, a great bowie knife, haversack, and canteen. Their manners were quiet, their faces honest, and one had a voice of rare sweetness. As he stood tossing his baby in the air, with his little daughter clinging to his skirt, he looked

----"the mildest-mannered man, That ever scuttled ship or cut
a throat."

He and his neighbors had adopted this mode of life, because determined not to fight against the old flag. They would not attempt the uncertain journey to our lines, leaving their families in the country of the enemy. Ordinarily very quiet and rational, whenever the war was spoken of, their eyes emitted that peculiar glare which I had observed, years before, in Kansas, and which seems inseparable from the hunted man. They said:

[Sidenote: TWO UNION SOLDIERS "LYING OUT."]

"When the Rebels let us alone, we let them alone; when they come out to hunt us, we hunt them! They know that we are in earnest, and that before they can kill any one of us, he will break a hole in the ice large enough to drag two or three of them along with him. At night we sleep in the bush. When we go home by day, our children stand out on picket. They and our wives bring food to us in the woods. When the Guards are coming out, some of the Union members usually inform us beforehand; then we collect twenty or thirty men, find the best ground we can, and, if they discover us, fight them. But a number of skirmishes have taught them to be very wary about attacking us."

In this dreary mode of life they seemed to find a certain fascination. While we took supper at the house of one of them, eight bushwhackers, armed to the teeth, stood outside on guard. For once, at least, enjoying what Macbeth vainly coveted, we took our meal in peace.

Two of them were United States volunteers, who had come stealthily home on furlough, from our army in Tennessee. They were the first Union soldiers we had seen at liberty for nearly two years. Their faces were very welcome, and their worn, soiled uniforms were to our eyes the reflection of heaven's own blue. Our friends urged us to remain, one of them saying:

"The snow is deep on the Blue Ridge and the Alleghanies; the Rebels can easily trace you; the guerrillas are unusually vigilant, and it is very unsafe to attempt crossing the mountains at present. I started for Knoxville three weeks ago, and, after walking fifty miles, was compelled to turn back. Stay with us until the snow is gone, and the Guards less on the alert. We will each of us take two of you under our special charge, and feed and shelter you until next May, if you desire it."

[Sidenote: TWO ESCAPING REBEL DESERTERS.]

The Blue Ridge was still twenty-five miles away, and we determined to push on to a point where we could look the danger, if danger there were, directly in the face. The bushwhackers, therefore, piloted us through the darkness and the bitter cold for seven miles. At midnight, we reached the dwelling of a Union man. He said:

"As the house is unsafe, I shall be compelled to put you in my barn. You will find two Rebel deserters sleeping there."

The barn was upon a high hill. We burrowed among the husks, at first to the infinite alarm of the deserters, who thought the Philistines were upon them. While we shivered in the darkness, they told us that they had come from Petersburg--more than five hundred miles--and been three months on the journey. They had found friends all the way, among negroes and Union men. Ragged, dirty, and penniless, they said, very quietly, that they were going to reach the Yankee lines, or die in the attempt.

Before daylight our host visited us, and finding that we suffered from the weather, placed us in a little warm storehouse, close beside the public road. To our question, whether the Guards had ever searched it, he replied:

"Oh, yes, frequently, but they never happened to find anybody."

[Sidenote: AN ENERGETIC INVALID.]

After we were snugly ensconced in quilts and corn-stalks, Davis said:

"What an appalling journey still stretches before us! I fear the lamp of my energy is nearly burned out."

I could not wonder at his despondency. For several years he had been half an invalid, suffering from a spinal affection. For weeks before leaving Salisbury, he was often compelled, of an afternoon, to lie upon his bunk of straw with blinding headache, and every nerve quivering with pain. "Junius" and myself frequently said: "Davis's courage is unbounded, but he can never live to walk to Knoxville."

The event proved us false prophets. Nightly he led our party--always the last to pause and the first to start. His lamp of energy was so far from being exhausted that, before he reached our lines, he broke down every man in the party. I expect to suffer to my dying day from the killing pace of that energetic invalid.

XIV. _Saturday, December 31._

Spent all this cold day and night sleeping in the quilts and fodder of the little store-house. At evening, Boothby's party went forward, as the next thirty-five miles were deemed specially perilous.