About noon we broke camp, and compelled our half-dead horses to move on. The road was clearer and safer than we anticipated. At the first farm which afforded corn, we stopped two or three hours to feed and rest the poor brutes.
Three of us rode forward to a Union house, and asked for dinner. The woman, whose husband belonged to the Sixteenth (loyal) Tennessee Infantry, prepared it at once; but it was an hour before we fully convinced her that we were not Rebels in disguise.
We passed through Russelville soon after dark, and, two miles beyond, made a camp in the deep woods. The night was very cold, and despite the expostulations of Dan Ellis, who feared they belonged to a Union man, we gathered and fired huge piles of rails, one on either side of us. Making a bed between them of the soft, fragrant twigs of the pine, we supped upon burnt corn in the ear. By replenishing our great fires once an hour we spent the night comfortably.
XXVI. Thursday, January 12.
At our farm-house breakfast this morning, a sister of Lieutenant Treadaway was our hostess. She gave us an inviting meal, in which coffee, sugar, and butter, which had long been only reminiscences to us, were the leading constituents.
By ten we were again upon the road. Two or three of our armed men kept the advance as scouts, but we now journeyed with comparative impunity.
"Slide Down Off that Horse."
Some of our young men, who had long been hunted by the Rebels, embraced every possible opportunity of turning the tables. No haste, weariness, or danger could induce them to omit following the track of guerrillas, wherever there was reasonable hope of finding the game. On the road to-day, one of these footmen met a citizen riding a fine horse.
"What are you, Southerner or Union?" asked the boy, playing with the hammer of his rifle.
"Well," replied the old Tennesseean, a good deal alarmed, "I have kept out of the war from the beginning; I have not helped either side."