At last I decided to gratify my curiosity, hoping to gain at the same time some information that would be of use to me.
Some miles back I had struck a path which I had been able to follow. When it again crossed a road, I stopped a few rods back, slipped my horse's bridle over a sapling and made my way to the edge of the road, which, as I soon made out at this point, ran along a sort of gully. On the side I was on the bank was at least four feet above the road, and along the edge of the bank was a rough attempt at a rail-fence pieced out and propped up here and there with stones. I crept noiselessly behind this shelter and waited until two stragglers came along. When nearly opposite me they accosted a third who must have been resting by the roadside.
We all went on together; they on the road and I behind the fence. From their interchange of confidences, scraps of which came up to me, I soon learned that they were Rebels and belonged to Knapp's division, and that in the first advance it had been left behind on the James, but had just crossed the Potomac and gone on to join Luce. The men seemed to be stragglers who had dropped behind from pure physical inability to keep up, and their great anxiety, as well as I could judge from their conversation, was to get there before anybody "fit."
Having learned all I was likely to from them, I retraced my steps and mounted my horse. I had to keep him at a walk, for I was in a rough piece of woods and could not see two feet beyond my horse's head. I had not rode long when I heard faint sounds of musketry in front of me and a little to my left, in exactly the direction I was traveling. I listened intently, and concluded it must be a chance brush between a party of our troops and some of the Rebels.
The firing was directly between where I was and the place where I intended to get breakfast and hoped to get a fresh horse. I did not want to miss stopping there, for it was the only Union man's house I knew of any where near. I could not afford to circle around the fighting, as it might lead me considerably out of my road. A skirmish, even if a small affair, is a very unsatisfactory thing to go around, not being exactly stationary.
I carried an old silver watch which I had procured during my stay in the Capital, but it was too dark to see the time without striking a match, which I did not care to do. I judged from the distance I had come it must be near daybreak. So, anxious as I was to get on, I knew it would be wise to halt until it began to get light and the dispute ahead should be settled.
I tied my horse to a tree and went as far away as I could to be within hearing distance of his movements. As soon as I discovered a log, which I did at last by taking a header over it, I lay down behind it. Though in point of fact I did not know which to call the front or back, considering it as a barrier to an approaching foe.
I was too weary to more than reach a recumbent position before I was asleep. I had been asleep long enough to feel completely chilled from the cold fog when something awoke me. I aroused with a start and a feeling that some one was near me. On the alert at once I waited with baited breath for some further noise to indicate in which direction the disturbance had been, but none came and I finally concluded that I had been mistaken or dreaming.
I went over to look at my horse and make sure that he had not pulled loose. He was where I had left him and had evidently spent his time nibbling off every tender branch in his reach.
I determined to look around before mounting. It was barely daybreak and there was a light fog, which made all excepting near objects indistinct. I made my way through a shallow, dry gully and across a wide flat covered with trees. I knew I must then be near the road which I had been skirting the latter part of my ride, so I paused a moment before advancing further. Hearing nothing I went on around a jutting point of rocks on a thicket-covered slope and stopped at the head of a washout, made by the summer rains.