July 2, 1863, Gen. John H. Morgan, a brilliant and daring Confederate cavalry commander, got his troops across the Cumberland River at Burkesville, in southern Kentucky, on flat-boats and canoes lashed together. None but he and his second in command knew whither the proposed raid was to lead. People about their starting-point thought Morgan was merely reconnoitering. An old farmer from Calfkills Creek went along uninvited, because he wished to buy some salt at a "salt-lick" a few miles north of Burkesville and within the Union lines. He expected to go and come back safely with Morgan's men. After he had been through a few marches and more fights and saw no chance of ever getting home, he plaintively said: "I swar ef I wouldn't give all the salt in Kaintucky to stand once more safe and sound on the banks of Calfkills Creek."
Tom Strong, second-lieutenant, U. S. A., had not reckoned upon John H. Morgan, general C. S. A., when he planned his journey eastward from Cairo. No one dreamed that Morgan would dare do what he did do. The Confederate cavalry rode northward across Kentucky, with one or two skirmishes per day to keep it busy. It crossed the Ohio and fought for the South on Northern soil. It threatened Cincinnati. It threw southern Indiana and Ohio into a frenzy of fear. It did great damage, but damage such as the laws of civilized warfare permit. Morgan's gallant men were Americans. No woman or child was harmed; no man not under arms was killed. Military stores were seized or destroyed, food and supplies were taken, bridges were burned, railroads were torn up, and a clean sweep was made of all the horses to be found. The Confederate cavalry was in sad need of new horses. The Union officer who led the pursuit of Morgan said, in his official report: "His system of horse-stealing was perfect." But so far as war can be a Christian thing Morgan made it so.
Now the railroad which suffered most from the Confederate raid was the one upon which Tom was traveling eastward. The train he had taken came to a sudden stop at a way-station in Ohio, where a red flag was furiously waved.
"Morgan's torn up the track just ahead," shouted the man who held the flag.
Nothing more could be learned there and then. Of course the raiders had cut the wires. By and by fugitives began to straggle in from the eastward, farmers who had fled from their farms driving their horses before them, villagers who feared the sack and ruin that really came to no one, women and children on foot, on horseback, in carts, in wagons, in buggies. Every fugitive had a new tale of terror to tell, but nobody really knew anything. Tom questioned each newcomer. Piecing together what they said, he concluded that Morgan had swept northward; that the track had been destroyed for but a mile or so, possibly less: and that the quickest way for him to get to Washington was to walk across the short gap and get a train or an engine on the other side. He could find no one who would go with him, even as a guide, but well-meant directions were showered upon him. So were well-meant warnings, about ten warnings to one direction. The railroad, however, was his best guide-post. He started eastward, riding a horse he had bought from one of the fugitives. The big bay brute stood over sixteen hands high, but the price Tom paid for him was a good deal higher than the horse.
All went well at first. He soon reached the place where the Confederates had wrecked the railroad. Their work had been thorough. Every little bridge or trestle had been burned. Rails and ties had been torn up, the ties massed together and set on fire, the rails thrown upon the burning ties and twisted by the heat into sinuous snakes of iron. Occasionally a hot rail had been twisted about a tree until it became a mere set of loops, never to serve again the purpose for which it had been made. The telegraph poles had been chopped down and the wires were tangled into a broken and useless web. In some places the rails had entirely disappeared. Doubtless these had been thrown into the little streams which the burned bridges had spanned. Altogether the road-bed looked as if some highly intelligent hurricane and earthquake had co-operated in its destruction. It would be many a day before a train could again run upon it. Morgan's system of wrecking a railroad was almost as perfect as his system of horse-stealing.
A country-road wandered along beside where the railroad had been, so Tom's progress was easy. Its bridges, too, had gone up in smoke, but the little streams were shallow and could be forded without difficulty, for June had been rainless and hot that year. The few houses the boy passed were shut-up and deserted. The fear of Morgan had swept the countryside bare of man, woman, and child. The solitude, the unnatural solitude of a region normally full of human life, told on Tom's nerves. He longed to see a human being. He had now left the gap in the railroad well behind, but he was still in an Eden without an Adam or an Eve. So, as dusk came, he rejoiced to see the gleam of a candle in a farmhouse not far ahead. He was so sure Morgan's whole command was by this time far to the northward that he galloped gayly up to the house—and, perforce, presented to the Confederacy one of the best horses seized in the entire raid.
The gleam had come from a back window. The whole front of the house was closed, but that is common in rustic places and Tom was sure he would find the family in the kitchen, with both food and news to give him. Instead he found just outside the kitchen, as he and the big bay turned the corner, a group of dismounted cavalrymen in Confederate gray. A mounted officer was beside them. Two mounted men, one carrying a guidon, was nearby. Tom pulled hard on his right rein, to turn and run, and bent close to his saddle to escape the bullets he expected. But one of the men was already clutching the left rein. The horse reared and plunged and kicked. The rider, to his infinite disgust, was hurled from the saddle and landed on his hands and knees before the group. It was rather an abject position in which to be captured. The Southerners roared with good-humored laughter as they picked him up. Even the officer smiled at the boy's plight.
Before the men, on a table outside the kitchen door, lay a half-dozen appetizing apple pies, evidently of that day's baking. The farmer's wife, before she fled, had put them there with the hope that they might propitiate the raiders, if they came, and so might save the house from destruction. She did not know that Morgan's men did not make war that way. Those of them who had come there suspected a trap in this open offer of the pies.
"They mout be pizened," one trooper suggested.