Chapter III

As we were far within the Confederate lines, our guard was reduced to Lieutenant Whiting and three men, and our party of eleven prisoners had seven horses among them. There was also a pack-horse carrying our forage, rations, and some blankets. To the saddle of this pack-horse were strapped two Spencer carbines, muzzle downward, with their accoutrements complete, including two well-filled cartridge-boxes.

I called Mack’s attention to this fact as soon as the guard was reduced, and he needed no second hint to comprehend its full significance. He soon after dismounted, and when it came his turn to mount again, he selected, apparently by accident, the poorest and most broken-down horse of the party. After this he seemed to find it very difficult to keep up, and in some mysterious way he actually succeeded in laming his horse.

He then dropped back to the Lieutenant in charge and modestly asked to exchange his lame horse for the pack-horse. He was particularly winning in his address, and his request was at once granted, without a suspicion of its object or a thought of the fatal carbines on the pack-saddle. I used some little skill in diverting the attention of the Lieutenant while the pack was readjusted; and as the rain had begun to fall freely, no one of the guard was particularly alert.

I was presently gratified with the sight of Mack riding ahead on the pack-horse, with the two carbines still strapped to the saddle, but loosened, and well concealed by his heavy _poncho_, which he had spread as protection from the rain. These carbines were seven-shooters, loaded from the breech by simply drawing out from the hollow stock a spiral spring, and dropping in the seven cartridges, one after the other, and then inserting the spring again behind them, which coils as it is pressed home, and by its elasticity forces the cartridges forward, one at a time, into the barrel at the successive action of the lock.

I could follow the movements of Mack’s right arm underneath the _poncho_. While he was guiding his horse with his left hand, looking the other way, and chatting glibly with the other boys, I distinctly saw him draw the springs from those carbines with his right hand and hook them into the upper button-hole of his coat to support them, while he dropped in the cartridges one after another, trotting his horse at the time to conceal the noise of their click, and finally forcing down the springs. Then the brave fellow glanced at me triumphantly.

I nodded approval. Fearing that Mack might act too hastily, yet knowing that any instant might lead to discovery, I rode carelessly across the road to Brown, who was on foot, and, dismounting, asked him to tighten my girth. Then I told him the situation as quietly as possible, and requested him to ride up gradually beside Mack, to communicate with him, and, at a signal from me, to seize one of the carbines and do his duty as a soldier if he valued his liberty.

Brown was terribly frightened and trembled like a leaf, but went immediately to his post, and I did not doubt would do his duty well.

I rode up again to the side of Lieutenant Whiting, and like an echo from the past came back to me my words of yesterday, “Possibly my turn may come to-morrow.”

I engaged him in conversation, and, among other things, spoke of the prospect of sudden death as one always present in our army life, and the tendency it had to either harden or soften the character according to the quality of the individual.

He expressed the opinion which many hold, that a brutal man is made more brutal by it, and a refined and cultivated man is softened.

We were on the immediate flank of Early’s army. His cavalry was all around us. The road was much used. It was almost night. We had passed a rebel picket but a mile back, and knew not how near another camp might be.

The three rebel guards were riding in front of us and on our flanks. Our party of prisoners was in the centre, and I was by the side of Lieutenant Whiting, who acted as rear-guard, when we entered a small copse of willows which for a moment covered the road. The hour was propitious. I gave the fatal signal and instantly threw myself from my saddle upon the Lieutenant, grasping him around the arms and dragging him from his horse, in the hope of securing his revolver, capturing him, and compelling him to pilot us outside of the rebel lines. At the same instant Mack raised one of the loaded carbines, and, in less time than I can write it, shot two of the guard in front of him, killing them instantly; and then coolly turning in his saddle, and seeing me struggling in the road with the Lieutenant, and the chances of obtaining the revolver apparently against me, he raised the carbine the third time; and as I strained the now desperate rebel to my breast, with his livid face over my left shoulder, he shot him as directly between the eyes as if firing at a target at ten paces distance.

Brown had only wounded his man in the side, and allowed him to escape.

Our position was now perilous. Not a man of us knew the country, except in a general way. The rebel camps could not be far away; the whole country would be alarmed in an hour, darkness was intervening; and I doubted not that, before sundown, blood-hounds as well as men would be on our track. One-half our party had already scattered, panic-stricken, at the first alarm, and they were flying through the country in every direction.

Only five remained, including the faithful Wash, who immediately showed his practical qualities by searching the bodies of the slain, and recovering, among other things, my gold hunting-watch from the person of Lieutenant Whiting, and over eleven hundred dollars in greenbacks, the proceeds, doubtless, of their various robberies of our men.

“Not quite nuff,” said Wash, showing his ivories from ear to ear. “Dey vally dis nigger at two thousand dollars. I tink I ought to git de money.”

We instantly mounted the best horses, and, well armed with carbines and revolvers, struck directly for the mountain on our right; but knowing that would be the first place we should be sought for, we soon changed our direction to the south, and rode for hours as rapidly as we could ride, directly towards the enemy. Before darkness came on we had made thirty miles from the place of our escape; and then turning sharply up the mountain, we rode as far as horses could climb, and, abandoning them, pushed on through the whole night to the very summit of the Blue Ridge. There we could see the rebel camp-fires in the valley, and at break of dawn we could view their entire lines.

The length of this weary day, and the terrible pangs of hunger and thirst which we suffered on this barren mountain, belong to the mere common experience of a soldier’s life, and I need not describe them here.

We had to go still farther south to avoid the scouts and pickets, and finally struck the Shenandoah twenty miles to the rear of Early’s entire army. There we built a raft, and floated by night forty miles down that memorable stream, through his crafty pickets, until the glorious old flag once more greeted us in welcome.