1865.] OVER MOUNTAINS AND THROUGH RAVINES. 477 CHAPTER XLV. No tongue-all eyes; be silent.-TEMPEST. Ar nine in the morning our host awakened us. "Gentlemen, I trust you have slept well. The enemy has gone, and breakfast waits. I call you early, because I want to take you out of North Carolina into Tennessee, where I will show you a place of refuge infinitely safer than this." For the first time since leaving Salisbury we traveled by daylight. Our guide led us deviously through fields, and up almost perpendicular ascents, where the rarefied air compelled us frequently to stop for breath. We dragged our weary feet up one hill, down another, through ravines of almost impenetrable laurels, swinging across the streams by the snowy, pendent boughs, only to find another appalling hight rising before us. Nothing but the hope of freedom enabled us to keep on our feet. Once, when near a public road, our guide suddenly whispered. "Hist! Drop to the ground instantly!" Lying behind logs, we saw two or three horse-teams and sleds pass by, and heard the conversation of the drivers. Our pilot was not agitated, for, like all the Union mountaineers, danger had been so long a part of his every-day existence, that he had no physical nervousness. But it was reported that the Guards would be out to-day, so he was very wary and vigilant. We crossed the road in 478 MISTAKEN FOR CONFEDERATE GUARDS. [1865. the Indian mode, walking in single file, each man treading in the footsteps of his immediate predecessor. No casual observer would have suspected that it was the track of more than one man. At 4 P. M., we entered Tennessee, which, like the passage of the New River, seemed another long stride toward home. Approaching a settlement, we went far around through the woods, persuading ourselves that we were unobserved. A mile beyond we reached a small log house, where our friend was known, and a blooming, matronly woman, with genial eyes, welcomed us. "Come in, all. I am very glad to see you. I thought you must be Yankees when I heard of your approach, about half an hour ago." "How did you hear?" "A good many young men are lying out in this neighborhood, and my son is one of them. He has not slept in the house for two years. He always carries his rifle. At first, I was opposed to it, but now I am glad to have him. They may murder him any day, and if they do, I at least want him to kill some of the traitors first. Nobody can approach this settlement, day or night, without being seen by some of these young men, always on the watch. The Guard have come in twice, at midnight, as fast as they could ride; but the news traveled before them, and they found the birds flown. When you appeared in sight, the boys took you for Rebels. My son and two others, lying behind logs, had their rifles drawn on you not more than three hundred yards away. They were very near shooting you, when they discovered that you had no arms, and concluded you must be the right sort of people. In the distance you look like Home Guards-part of you dressed as citizens, one in Rebel 1865.] A REBEL GUERRILLA KILLED. 479 You are uniform, and two wearing Yankee overcoats. unsafe traveling a single mile through this region, without sending word beforehand who you are." After dark we were shown to a barn, where we wrapped ourselves in quilts. During the last twenty-four hours we had journeyed twenty-five miles, equal to fifty upon level roads, and our eye-lids were very heavy. XVIII. Wednesday, January 4. This settlement was intensely loyal, and admirably picketed by Union women, children, and bushwhackers. We dined with the wife of a former inmate of Castle Thunder. She told us that Lafayette Jones, whose escape from that prison I have already recorded, remained in the Rebel army only a few days, deserting from it to the Union lines, and then coming back to his Tennessee home. The Rebel guerrilla captain who originally captured him was notoriously cruel, had burned houses, murdered Union men, and abused helpless women. He took from Jones two hundred dollars in gold, promising to forward it to his family, but never did so. After reaching home, Jones sent a message to him that he must refund the money at once, or be killed wherever found. Jones finally sought him. As they met, the guerrilla drew a revolver and fired, but without wounding his antagonist. Thereupon Jones shot him dead on his own threshold. The Union people justified and applauded the deed. Jones was afterward captain in a loyal Tennessee regiment. His father had died in a Richmond dungeon, one of his brothers in an Alabama prison, and a second had been hung by the Rebels. The woman told us that another guerrilla, peculiarly obnoxious to the Loyalists, had disappeared early in 480 MEETING A FORMER FELLOW-PRISONER. [1865. November. A few days before we arrived, his bones were found in the woods, with twenty-one bullet-holes through his clothing. His watch and money were still undisturbed in his pocket. Vengeance, not avarice, stimulated his destroyers. Here we met another of our Castle Thunder fellowprisoners, named Guy. The Richmond authorities knew he was a Union bushwhacker, and had strong evidence against him, which would have cost him his life if brought to trial. But he, too, under an assumed name, enlisted in the Rebel army, deserted, returned to Tennessee, and resumed his old pursuit as a hunter of men with new zeal and vigor. He and his companion were now armed with sixteenshooter rifles, revolvers, and bowie-knives. Guy's father and brother had both been killed by the guerrillas, and he was bitter and unsparing. If he ever fell into Rebel hands again, his life was not worth a rush-light. But he was merry and jocular as if he had never heard of the King of Terrors. I asked him how he now regarded his Richmond adventures. He replied: "I would not take a thousand dollars in gold for the experience I had while in prison; but I would not endure it again for ten thousand." Guy and his comrade were supposed to be "lying out," which suggested silent and stealthy movements; but on leaving us they went yelling, singing, and screaming up the valley, whooping like a whole tribe of Indians. Occasionally they fired their rifles, as if their vocal organs were not noisy enough. It was ludicrously strange deportment for hunted fugitives. "Guy always goes through the country in that way," said the woman. "He is very reckless and fearless. The Rebels know it, and give him a wide field. He has killed 1865.] ALARM ABOUT REBEL CAVALRY. 481 a good many of them, first and last, and no doubt they will murder him, sooner or later, as they did his father." At night, just as we were comfortably asleep in the barn, our host awakened us, saying: "Five Rebel cavalry are reported approaching this neighborhood, with three hundred more behind them, coming over the mountains from North Carolina. I think it is true, but am not certain. I am so well known as a Union man, that, if they do come, they will search my premises thoroughly. There is another barn, much more secluded, a mile farther up the valley, where you will be safer than here, and will compromise nobody if discovered. If they arrive, you shall be informed before they can reach you." Coleridge did not believe in ghosts, because he had seen too many of them. So we were skeptical concerning the Rebel cavalry, having heard too much of it. But we went to the other barn, and in its ample straw-loft found a North Carolina refugee, with whom we slept undisturbed. He deemed this place much safer than his home -a gratifying indication to us that the danger was growing small by degrees. XIX. Thursday, January 5. This morning, the good woman whose barn had sheltered us mended our tattered clothing. Her husband was a soldier in the Union service. I asked her: "How do you live and support your family?" "Very easily," she replied. "Last year, I did all my own housework, and weaving, spinning, and knitting, and raised over a hundred bushels of corn, with no assistance whatever except from this little girl, eleven years old. The hogs run in the woods during the sum |