On the twenty-third day of December my mother passed away. Her life had been an extremely hard one, but she had borne up bravely under poverty and privation, supplying with her own teaching the education that the frontier schools could not give her children, and by her Christian example setting them all on a straight road through life.
Border ruffians killed her husband, almost within sight of her home. She passed months in terror and distress and, until I became old enough to provide for her, often suffered from direst poverty. Yet she never complained for herself; her only thoughts being for her children and the sufferings that were visited upon them because of their necessary upbringing in a rough and wild country.
My sister Julia was now married to Al Goodman, a fine and capable young man, and I was free to follow the promptings of an adventurous nature and go where my companions were fighting. In January, 1864, the Seventh Kansas Volunteers came to Leavenworth from the South, where they had been fighting since the early years of the war. Among them I found many of my old friends and schoolmates. I was no longer under promise not to take part in the war and I enlisted as a private.
In March of that year the regiment was embarked on steamboats and sent to Memphis, Tennessee, where we joined the command of General A.J. Smith. General Smith was organizing an army to fight the illiterate but brilliant Confederate General Forrest, who was then making a great deal of trouble in southern Tennessee.
While we were mobilizing near Memphis, Colonel Herrick of our regiment recommended me to General Smith for membership in a picked corps to be used for duty as scouts, messengers, and dispatch carriers. Colonel Herrick recounted my history as a plainsman, which convinced the commander that I would be useful in this special line of duty.
When I reported to General Smith, he invited me into his tent and inquired minutely into my life as a scout.
"You ought to be able to render me valuable service," he said.
When I replied that I should be only too glad to do so, he got out a map of Tennessee, and on it showed me where he believed General Forrest's command to be located. His best information was that the Confederate commander was then in the neighborhood of Okolona, Mississippi, about two hundred miles south, of Memphis.
He instructed me to disguise myself as a Tennessee boy, to provide myself with a farm horse from the stock in the camp, and to try to locate Forrest's main command. Having accomplished this, I was to gather all the information possible concerning the enemy's strength in men and equipment and defenses, and to make my way back as speedily as possible.
General Smith expected to start south the following morning, and he showed me on the map the wagon road he planned to follow, so that I might know where to find him on my return. He told me before we parted that the mission on which he was sending me was exceedingly dangerous. "If you are captured," he said, "you will be shot as a spy."