Petterbridge's house stood in a small sheltered valley into which the
sun had not yet made its way, when I drew rein at the rail fence at the
side of his house. As I was not known by the family, and might have had
trouble getting what I wanted from any of them, I was particularly glad
when the old man himself appeared at the back door. In reply to his
"What ere' want, stranger?" I dismounted and convinced him who I was. As
there was only the family at home, it was safe for me to stop.
Here I got breakfast, a pocketfull of bread and meat to carry with me, a
fresh horse, a pair of butternut trousers, and the news that several
houses supposed to belong to Unionists had been burnt by Rebels during
the night. Petterbridge also said that quite a body of Confederate
troops had passed down the valley a mile back the day before, and gave
me the agreeable bit of information that the country ahead was worse, if
possible, than what I had just come through, being alive with raiders
and bushwhackers as well as overrun with stragglers anxious to get to
the front.
Devotedly hoping that I might miss all these ill-regulated gentlemen, I
left Petterbridge's and pushed on. The horse I had taken was only a fair
traveler, but then he was not too valuable to abandon to the enemy.
A number of times I met and was accosted by single stragglers and
skulkers. They were a pitiful looking set of men, ragged as Lazarus,
generally barefoot, and gaunt almost to emaciation. I always stopped at
the least effort on their part to enter into conversation, and asked
earnestly after a lost cow or a fictitious companion, varying the
inquiry as I thought my interlocutor took me for one of the
mountaineers indigenous to that region, or for one of themselves.
I never willingly ran against them, but it was impossible to avoid them
entirely, for they were making for the Potomac, and I was practically
following its course and going across their line of march. There was
really little to fear from them. They could not know that I was a Union
spy, and they were not a suspicious set of men anyway.
It was the bushwhackers and raiders I was most in danger from, and more
from the bushwhackers than the raiders. The latter, like the stragglers,
kept on and near the roads, and there was always enough of them together
to make me aware of their presence by their noise, so with due caution I
would not be likely to encounter them. More than a dozen times I drew up
into thickets and ravines to let a party of them pass, and several other
times saw squads in the distance. From the bushwhackers I had no
protection. Singularly enough I did not actually encounter any,
although I discerned a good many by the aid of my imagination and had
plenty of evidence of their actual near presence. The whole country was
an extremely pretty one to bushwhack in. I tried to let the fact slip my
mind, but I had an unpleasant, ticklish sensation in my back the whole
time and longed for an eye in the rear of my head to keep a lookout in
the direction from which I particularly anticipated a bullet.
I will here say I was in the bloodiest and most hopeless battles of the
war, and I have had a pretty steady diet of Indian fighting since the
war, having been surrounded by half-frozen Indians of various tribes in
Montana and Dakota, and chased and been chased by red hot Apaches in
Arizona and New Mexico, but never have I undergone such nerve-trying
work as was that trip I made as a Union spy, the account of which I am
telling.
There was never at any time more danger than I met afterward, but there
was no let up. Every nerve was strung to its highest tension and kept
there, every sense was held alert. There was never present the
enlivening enthusiasm of battle, which warms a man's blood to deeds of
heroism; there was no emulation to keep up one's courage; there was
always the demoralizing necessity of keeping out of the way of danger;
there was ever present the fretting fact that self-preservation only
could insure success. No man is anxious to be killed. No matter how
strongly he is imbued with a sense of duty and honor and of love for his
country, he is pretty certain to feel that her good will be better
secured if he is on the boards to look after it, than it would be if he
had laid down his life at her shrine. He prefers to live, but at the
same time he does not want his personal safety to be a matter of
perpetual concern.
I was not a coward, but I felt decidedly averse to being shot. I had
started out to do something and I wanted to do it; I had already
concluded that there was no "right time" for a spy to be killed. He does
not want to be shot until he has found out what he seeks to know, and
then not until he has told it.
It was about three o'clock when I finally stumbled on an oat stack in an
odd little clearing, far out from sight of the owner's windows.
I let my horse take his dinner, while I kept guard and ate a sandwich.
In order to let him make as good a meal as possible I delayed as long as
my impatience would let me and then nearly made him break his neck and
mine too, by trying to canter him down a place about as steep as
Jordalemet and nearly as slick, in order to make up for lost time.
The country which had been comparatively level and well settled for some
distance back through the valley, became rough again as I neared the
mountains, and I had to make my way more slowly and cautiously.
I seemed to have run out of the stream of Rebels. I determined to
question the first person I met. Before long I saw a weak minded looking
man driving a few sheep along a narrow path, and coming from the
opposite direction.
"Howdy, stranger?" I began.
"Howdy?" he returned.
"You're pretty fortunate to get through with them sheep, without their
being turned into mutton."
"Met nobody to turn 'em; ain't nobody up that way."
From this I judged that the country ahead was free of both Rebels and
Yankees as far back as he had come. He eyed me suspiciously while
talking, but was evidently telling the truth as far as he knew it. He
seemed in a great hurry to get away from me with his sheep, and after
asking him for minute directions for a road that turned to the right
about four miles ahead and which I did not intend to take, we separated.
After parting from him I shortly turned to my left, having decided that
as soon as I came to it, which I knew would be in a little time, I would
avail myself of a road leading over the mountains.
Riding slowly along through the dense forest, wondering if I dared treat
myself to a smoke, I turned full on a group of four men, in dirty
butternut, camped in a laurel brake. They were chivalrous Southerners
without doubt, but built on the plan of "He who fights and runs away."
They evidently thought they had been discovered by Yankees and that the
proper time to run had arrived. One man, who was lifting a bucket of
coffee from the coals, ejaculated "hell," and taking the bucket with
him, fled, followed by the others.
To my startled gaze they seemed to disappear in a dozen different
directions at the same time. I would have been extremely grateful to the
leader if he had left the coffee behind.
Knowing that a short stop made by me might be lengthened out
indefinitely if any of the fugitives chanced to return, I departed
without much delay. As soon as I reached the road I turned into it and
had a comparatively easy time for the next few miles.