Quallatown, a Cherokee station at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains.
Two horses were allotted to the guard, and we set out in military order,
the refugees two and two in advance, Headen and Old Man Tigue lashed
together by the wrists, and the rear brought up by the troopers on
horseback. It was the last day of the year, and although a winter
morning, the rare mountain air was as soft as spring. We struck the
banks of the Tuckasegee directly opposite to a feathery waterfall,
which, leaping over a crag of the opposite cliff, was dissipated in a
glittering sheet of spray before reaching the tops of the trees below.
As the morning advanced we fell into a more negligent order of marching.
The beautiful river, a wide, swift current, flowing smoothly between
thickly wooded banks, swept by on our left, and on the right wild,
uninhabited mountains closed in the road. The two Vincents were
strolling along far in advance. Some distance behind them were Headen
and Tigue; the remainder of us following in a general group, Sill
mounted beside one of the guards. Advancing in this order, a cry from
the front broke on the stillness of the woods, and we beheld Old Man
Tigue gesticulating wildly in the center of the road and screaming,
"He's gone! He's gone! Catch him!" Sure enough the old man was alone,
the fragment of the parted strap dangling from his outstretched wrist.
The guard, who was mounted, dashed off in pursuit, followed by the
lieutenant on foot, but both soon returned, giving over the hopeless
chase. Thoroughly frightened by the events of the morning, Headen[18]
had watched his opportunity to make good his escape, and, as we
afterward learned, joined by Knapp and Tom Handcock, he conducted a
party safely to Tennessee.
[Footnote 18: A short time ago the writer received the following letter:
"Casher's Valley, May 28, 1890. Old Manuel Headen and wife are living,
but separated. Julia Ann is living with her mother. The old lady is
blind. Old man Norton (Roderic), to whose house you were taken as
prisoner, has been dead for years. Old Tom Handcock is dead.--W.R.
HOOPER."]
At Webster, the court town of Jackson County, we were quartered for the
night in the jail, but accompanied Lieutenant Cogdill to a venison
breakfast at the parsonage with Mrs. Harris and her daughter, who had
called on us the evening before. Snow had fallen during the night, and
when we continued our march it was with the half-frozen slush crushing
in and out, at every step, through our broken shoes. Before the close
of this dreary New-Year's day we came upon the scene of one of those
wild tragedies which are still of too frequent occurrence in those
remote regions, isolated from the strong arm of the law. Our road led
down and around the mountain-side, which on our right was a barren,
rocky waste, sloping gradually up from the inner curve of the arc we
were describing. From this direction arose a low wailing sound, and a
little farther on we came in view of a dismal group of men, women, and
mules. In the center of the gathering lay the lifeless remains of a
father and his two sons; seated upon the ground, swaying and weeping
over their dead, were the mother and wives of the young men. A burial
party, armed with spades and picks, waited by their mules, while at a
respectful distance from the mourners stood a circle of neighbors and
passers-by, some gazing in silent sympathy, and others not hesitating to
express a quiet approval of the shocking tragedy. Between two families,
the Hoopers and the Watsons, a bitter feud had long existed, and from
time to time men of each clan had fallen by the rifles of the other. The
Hoopers were loyal Union men, and if the Watsons yielded any loyalty it
was to the State of North Carolina. On one occasion shortly before the
final tragedy, when one of the young Hoopers was sitting quietly in his
door, a light puff of smoke rose from the bushes and a rifle-ball plowed
through his leg. The Hoopers resolved to begin the new year by wiping
out their enemies, root and branch. Before light they had surrounded the
log cabin of the Watsons and secured all the male inmates, except one
who, wounded, escaped through a window. The latter afterward executed a
singular revenge by killing and skinning the dog of his enemies and
elevating the carcass on a pole in front of their house.
[Illustration: THE ESCAPE OF HEADEN.]
After a brief stay at Quallatown we set out for Asheville, leaving
behind our old and friendly guard. Besides the soldiers who now had us
in charge, a Cherokee Indian was allotted to each prisoner, with
instructions to keep his man constantly in view. To travel with an armed
Indian, sullen and silent, trotting at your heels like a dog, with very
explicit instructions to blow out your brains at the first attempt to
escape, is neither cheerful nor ornamental, and we were a sorry-looking
party plodding silently along the road. Detachments of prisoners were
frequently passed over this route, and regular stopping-places were
established for the nights. It was growing dusk when we arrived at the
first cantonment, which was the wing of a great barren farm-house owned
by Colonel Bryson. The place was already occupied by a party of
refugees, and we were directed to a barn in the field beyond. We had
brought with us uncooked rations, and while two of the soldiers went
into the house for cooking utensils, the rest of the party, including
the Indians, were leaning in a line upon the door-yard fence; Sill and
Lamson were at the end of the line, where the fence cornered with a
hedge. Presently the two soldiers reappeared, one of them with an iron
pot in which to cook our meat, and the other swinging in his hand a
burning brand. In the wake of these guides we followed down to the barn,
and had already started a fire when word came from the house that for
fear of rain we had best return to the corn-barn. It was not until we
were again in the road that I noticed the absence of Sill and Lamson. I
hastened to Smith and confided the good news. The fugitives were missed
almost simultaneously by the guards, who first beat up the vicinity of
the barn, and then, after securing the remainder of us in a corn-crib,
sent out the Indians in pursuit. Faithful dogs, as these Cherokees had
shown themselves during the day, they proved but poor hunters when the
game was in the bush, and soon returned, giving over the chase. Half an
hour later they were all back in camp, baking their hoe-cake in genuine
aboriginal fashion, flattened on the surface of a board and inclined to
the heat of the fire.[19]
[Footnote 19: Sill and Lamson reached Loudon, Tennessee, in February. A
few days after their escape from the Indian guard they arrived at the
house of "Shooting John Brown," who confided them to the care of the
young Hoopers and a party of their outlying companions. From a rocky
cliff overlooking the valley of the Tuckasegee they could look down on
the river roads dotted with the sheriff's posse in pursuit of the
Hoopers. So near were they that they could distinguish a relative of the
Watsons leading the sheriff's party. One of the Hooper boys, with
characteristic recklessness and to the consternation of the others,
stood boldly out on a great rock in plain sight of his pursuers (if they
had chanced to look up), half resolved to try his rifle at the last of
the Watsons.]
That I was eager to follow goes without saying, but our keepers had
learned our slippery character. All the way to Asheville, day and night,
we were watched with sleepless vigilance. There we gave our parole,
Smith and I, and secured thereby comfortable quarters in the court-house
with freedom to stroll about the town. Old Man Tigue and the Vincents
were committed to the county jail. We were there a week, part of my
spare time being employed in helping a Confederate company officer make
out a correct pay-roll.
When our diminished ranks had been recruited by four more officers from
Columbia, who had been captured near the frozen summit of the Great
Smoky Mountains, we were started on a journey of sixty miles to
Greenville in South Carolina. The night before our arrival we were
quartered at a large farm-house. The prisoners, together with the
privates of the guard, were allotted a comfortable room, which
contained, however, but a single bed. The officer in charge had retired
to enjoy the hospitality of the family. A flock of enormous white
pullets were roosting in the yard. Procuring an iron kettle from the
servants, who looked with grinning approval upon all forms of chicken
stealing, we sallied forth to the capture. Twisting the precious necks
of half a dozen, we left them to die in the grass while we pierced the
side of a sweet-potato mound. Loaded with our booty we retreated to the
house undiscovered, and spent the night in cooking in one pot instead of
sleeping in one bed. The fowls were skinned instead of plucked, and,
vandals that we were, dressed on the backs of the picture-frames taken
down from the walls.
At Greenville we were lodged in the county jail to await the
reconstruction of railway-bridges, when we were to be transported to
Columbia. The jail was a stone structure, two stories in height, with
halls through the center on both floors and square rooms on each side.
The lock was turned on our little party of six in one of these upper
rooms, having two grated windows looking down on the walk. Through the
door which opened on the hall a square hole was cut as high as one's
face and large enough to admit the passage of a plate. Aside from the
rigor of our confinement we were treated with marked kindness. We had
scarcely walked about our dungeon before the jailer's daughters were at
the door with their autograph albums. In a few days we were playing
draughts and reading Bulwer, while the girls, without, were preparing
our food and knitting for us warm new stockings. Notwithstanding all
these attentions, we were ungratefully discontented. At the end of the
first week we were joined by seven enlisted men, Ohio boys, who like
ourselves had been found at large in the mountains. From one of these
new arrivals we procured a case-knife and a gun screw-driver. Down on
the hearth before the fire the screw-driver was placed on the thick edge
of the knife and belabored with a beef bone until a few inches of its
back were converted into a rude saw. The grate in the window was formed
of cast-iron bars, passing perpendicularly through wrought-iron plates,
bedded in the stone jambs. If one of these perpendicular bars, an inch
and a half square, could be cut through, the plates might be easily bent
so as to permit the egress of a man. With this end in view we cautiously
began operations. Outside of the bars a piece of carpet had been
stretched to keep out the raw wind, and behind this we worked with
safety. An hour's toil produced but a few feathery filings on the
horizontal plate, but many hands make light work, and steadily the cut
grew deeper. We recalled the adventures of Claude Duval, Dick Turpin,
and Sixteen-string Jack, and sawed away. During the available hours of
three days and throughout one entire night the blade of steel was
worrying, rasping, eating the iron bar. At last the grosser yielded to
the temper and persistence of the finer metal. It was Saturday night
when the toilsome cut was completed, and preparations were already under
way for a speedy departure. The jail had always been regarded as too
secure to require a military guard, although soldiers were quartered in
the town; besides, the night was so cold that a crust had formed on the
snow, and both citizens and soldiers, unused to such extreme weather
would be likely to remain indoors. For greater secrecy of movement, we
divided into small parties, aiming to traverse different roads. I was to
go with my former companion, Captain Smith. Lots were cast to determine
the order of our going. First exit was allotted to four of the Ohio
soldiers. Made fast to the grating outside were a bit of rope and strip
of blanket, along which to descend. Our room was immediately over that
of the jailer and his sleeping family, and beneath our opening was a
window, which each man must pass in his descent. At eleven o'clock the
exodus began. The first man was passed through the bars amid a
suppressed buzz of whispered cautions. His boots were handed after him
in a haversack. The rest of us, pressing our faces to the frosty
grating, listened breathlessly for the success of the movement we could
no longer see. Suddenly there was a crash, and in the midst of
mutterings of anger we snatched in the rag ladder and restored the piece
of carpeting to its place outside the bars. Our pioneer had hurt his
hand against the rough stones, and, floundering in mid-air, had dashed
his leg through sash and glass of the window below. We could see nothing
of his further movements, but soon discovered the jailer standing in the
door, looking up and down the street, seemingly in the dark as to where
the crash came from. At last, wearied and worried and disappointed, we
lay down in our blankets upon the hard floor.
[Illustration: GREENVILLE JAIL.]
At daylight we were awakened by the voice of Miss Emma at the hole in
the door. "Who got out last night?" "Welty." "Well, you was fools you
didn't all go; pap wouldn't 'a' stopped you. If you'll keep the break
concealed until night we'll let you all out." The secret of the extreme
kindness of our keepers was explained. The jailer, a loyalist, retained
his position as a civil detail, thus protecting himself and sons from
conscription. Welty had been taken in the night before, his bruises had
been anointed, and he had been provisioned for the journey.
We spent the day repairing our clothing and preparing for the road. My
long-heeled cowhides, "wife's shoes," for which I had exchanged a
uniform waistcoat with a cotton-wooled old darky on the banks of the
Saluda, were about parting soles from uppers, and I kept the twain
together by winding my feet with stout cords. At supper an extra ration
was given us. As soon as it was dark the old jailer appeared among us
and gave us a minute description of the different roads leading west
into the mountains, warning us of certain dangers. At eleven o'clock
Miss Emma came with the great keys, and we followed her, in single file,
down the stairs and out into the back yard of the jail. From the broken
gratings in front, the bit of rope and strip of blanket were left
dangling in the wind.
We made short work of leave-taking, Captain Smith and I separating
immediately from the rest, and pushing hurriedly out of the sleeping
town, by back streets, into the bitter cold of the country roads. We
stopped once to warm at the pits of some negro charcoal-burners, and
before day dawned had traveled sixteen miles. We found a sheltered nook
on the side of the mountain open to the sun, where we made a bed of dry
leaves and remained for the day. At night we set out again, due west by
the stars, but before we had gone far my companion, who claimed to know
something of the country, insisted upon going to the left, and within a
mile turned into another left-hand road. I protested, claiming that this
course was leading us back. While we were yet contending, we came to a
bridgeless creek whose dark waters barred our progress, and at the same
moment, as if induced by the thought of the fording, the captain was
seized with rheumatic pains in his knees, so that he walked with
difficulty. We had just passed a house where lights were still showing,
and to this we decided to return, hoping at least to find shelter for
Smith. Leaving him at the gate, I went to a side porch and knocked at
the door, which was opened by a woman who proved to be friendly to our
cause, her husband being in the rebel army much against his will. We
were soon seated to the right and left of her fireplace. Blazing
pine-knots brilliantly lighted the room, and a number of beds lined the
walls. A trundle-bed before the fire was occupied by a very old woman,
who was feebly moaning with rheumatism. Our hostess shouted into the old
lady's ear, "Granny, them's Yankees." "Be they!" said she, peering at us
with her poor old eyes. "Be ye sellin' tablecloths?" When it was
explained that we were just from the war, she demanded, in an absent
way, to know if we were Britishers. We slept in one of the comfortable
beds, and, as a measure of prudence, passed the day in the woods,
leaving at nightfall with well-filled haversacks. Captain Smith was
again the victim of his rheumatism, and directing me to his friends at
Caesar's Head, where I was to wait for him until Monday (it then being
Tuesday), he returned to the house, little thinking that we were
separating forever.
I traveled very rapidly all night, hoping to make the whole distance,
but day was breaking when I reached the head waters of the Saluda.
Following up the stream, I found a dam on which I crossed, and although
the sun was rising and the voices of children mingled with the lowing of
cattle in the frosty air, I ran across the fields and gained a secure
hiding-place on the side of the mountain. It was a long, solitary day,
and glad was I when it grew sufficiently dark to turn the little
settlement and get into the main road up the mountain. It was six zigzag
miles to the top, the road turning on log abutments, well anchored with
stones, and not a habitation on the way until I should reach Bishop's
house, on the crest of the divide. Half-way up I paused before a big
summer hotel, looming up in the woods like the ghost of a deserted
factory, its broken windows and rotting gateways redoubling the solitude
of the bleak mountain-side. Shortly before reaching Bishop's, "wife's
shoes" became quite unmanageable. One had climbed up my leg half-way to
the knee, and I knocked at the door with the wreck of the other in my
hand. My visit had been preceded but a day by a squad of partizan
raiders, who had carried away the bedding and driven off the cattle of
my new friends, and for this reason the most generous hospitality could
offer no better couch than the hard floor. Stretched thereon in close
proximity to the dying fire, the cold air coming up through the wide
cracks between the hewn planks seemed to be cutting me in sections as
with icy saws, so that I was forced to establish myself lengthwise on a
broad puncheon at the side of the room and under the table.
In this family "the gray mare was the better horse," and poor Bishop, an
inoffensive man, and a cripple withal, was wedded to a regular Xantippe.
It was evident that unpleasant thoughts were dominant in the woman's
mind as she proceeded sullenly and vigorously with preparations for
breakfast. The bitter bread of charity was being prepared with a
vengeance for the unwelcome guest. Premonitions of the coming storm
flashed now and then in lightning cuffs on the ears of the children, or
crashed venomously among the pottery in the fireplace. At last the
repast was spread, the table still standing against the wall, as is the
custom among mountain housewives. The good-natured husband now advanced
cheerfully to lend a hand in removing it into the middle of the room. It
was when one of the table-legs overturned the swill-pail that the long
pent-up storm burst in a torrent of invective. The prospect of spending
several days here was a very gloomy outlook, and the relief was great
when it was proposed to pay a visit to Neighbor Case, whose house was in
the nearest valley, and with whose sons Captain Smith had lain in
concealment for some weeks on a former visit to the mountains. I was
curious to see his sons, who were famous outliers. From safe cover they
delighted to pick off a recruiting officer or a tax-in-kind collector,
or tumble out of their saddles the last drivers of a wagon-train. These
lively young men had been in unusual demand of late, and their
hiding-place was not known even to the faithful, so I was condemned to
the society of an outlier of a less picturesque variety. Pink Bishop was
a blacksmith, and just the man to forge me a set of shoes from the
leather Neighbor Case had already provided. The little still-shed,
concealed from the road only by a low hill, was considered an unsafe
harbor, on account of a fresh fall of snow with its sensibility to
tell-tale impressions. So, we set up our shoe-factory in a deserted
cabin, well back on the mountain and just astride of that imaginary line
which divides the Carolinas. From the fireplace we dug away the
corn-stalks, heaping the displaced bundles against broken windows and
windy cracks, and otherwise secured our retreat against frost and
enemies. Then ensued three days of primitive shoemaking. As may be
inferred, the shoes made no pretension to style. I sewed the short seams
at the sides, and split the pegs from a section of seasoned maple.
Rudely constructed as these shoes were, they bore their wearer
triumphantly into the promised land.
[Illustration: PINK BISHOP AT THE STILL.]
I restrained my eagerness to be going until Monday night, the time
agreed upon, when, my disabled companion not putting in an appearance, I
set out for my old friend's in Casher's Valley. I got safety over a long
wooden bridge within half a mile of a garrisoned town. I left the road,
and turned, as I believed, away from the town; but I was absolutely lost
in the darkness of a snow-storm, and forced to seek counsel as well as
shelter. In this plight I pressed on toward a light glimmering faintly
through the blinding snow. It led me into the shelter of the porch to a
small brown house, cut deeply beneath the low eaves, and protected at
the sides by flanking bedrooms. My knock was answered by a girlish
voice, and from the ensuing parley, through the closed door, I learned
that she was the daughter of a Baptist exhorter, and that she was alone
in the house, her brother being away at the village, and her father, who
preached the day before at some distance, not being expected home until
the next morning. Reassured by my civil-toned inquiries about the road,
she unfastened the door and came out to the porch, where she proceeded
to instruct me how to go on, which was just the thing I least desired to
do. By this time I had discovered the political complexion of the
family, and, making myself known, was instantly invited in, with the
assurance that her father would be gravely displeased if she permitted
me to go on before he returned. I had interrupted my little benefactress
in the act of writing a letter, on a sheet of foolscap which lay on an
old-fashioned stand in one corner of the room, beside the ink-bottle and
the candlestick. In the diagonal corner stood a tall bookcase, the
crowded volumes nestling lovingly behind the glass doors--the only
collection of the sort that I saw at any time in the mountains. A
feather-bed was spread upon the floor, the head raised by means of a
turned-down chair, and here I was reposing comfortably when the brother
arrived. It was late in the forenoon when the minister reached home, his
rickety wagon creaking through the snow, and drawn at a snail's pace by
a long-furred, knock-kneed horse. The tall but not very clerical figure
was wrapped in a shawl and swathed round the throat with many turns of a
woolen tippet. The daughter ran out with eagerness to greet her father
and tell of the wonderful arrival. I was received with genuine delight.
It was the enthusiasm of a patriot eager to find a sympathetic ear for
his long-repressed views.[20]
[Footnote 20: The Rev. James H. Duckworth, now postmaster of Brevard,
Transylvania County, North Carolina, and in 1868 member of the State
Constitutional Convention, in his letter of June 24, 1890, says: "I have
not forgotten those things of which you speak. I can almost see you
(even in imagination) standing at the fire when I drove up to the gate
and went into the house and asked you, 'Have I ever seen you before?'
Just then I observed your uniform. 'Oh, yes,' said I; 'I know who it is
now.' ... This daughter of whom you speak married about a year after,
and is living in Morgantown, North Carolina, about one hundred miles
from here. Hattie (for that is her name) is a pious, religious woman."]
[Illustration: ARRIVAL HOME OF THE BAPTIST MINISTER.]