RELEASED ON PAROLE.
Next morning they carried me back several miles to the company of Capt. Hunter. I found him to be an old veteran of Mexican war. He had recruited a company and was up there in Stoddard County drilling them and enlisting other men before going South. When I told him my story, he said: "I will release you on parole of honor, that you will not leave the camp. You will be safer with us than traveling alone. In a little while we will go down the river to Helena, Ark. That will be right on your road. I will take you in my mess and you will be treated right." Such kindness on the part of a perfect stranger, under the circumstances, was unusual and greatly encouraging to me. The next afternoon the scouts came along with their man. They had found him at home. He was there on a furlough. I saw their Captain and ours talking very animatedly for probably thirty minutes and as he rode off, he said: "He is mine by rights, and I am going to have him." When he was gone the Captain took me into his tent and asked me if I had met those scouts. I related to him the circumstance of my going through the grove at Bloomfield, rather than through the front gate, which would have caused me to meet the head of the column. I did it only from convenience, not from any fears that I had. He replied: "You certainly were fortunate in going through that grove. The Captain of that Company is nothing more than a marauder, although he wears the Confederate uniform. It is his custom, when he meets a civilian anywhere, to kill him, but he will take a Federal soldier prisoner. I will not ask you to enlist with us, but you be just as one of our soldiers. Have you a gun ready at hand with ammunition and whenever you see those scouts, don't expose yourself. We will pass and repass them on the trip south, no doubt, and he is mean enough to shoot you down. We are going to protect you." That the Captain was not mistaken in the man, I soon discovered. We saw a suttler pass our camp one day, and just a little later saw this Captain with his scouts going in the same direction. It was not a great while before we heard pistol shots and presently they came back and our men learned from them that the Captain had taken the suttler out into the woods and shot him, leaving his wagon standing in the road. He was a harmless fellow who was gathering up chickens and eggs and butter, and selling them wherever he could, sometime to the Federals and sometimes to the Confederates.