A little farther on a road turns off, and the men are sure that it was this road we took. At the turn (wherever it may be), there was on that evening a man with a yoke of oxen, who came near being run down. As we stand discussing the question, a contraband comes up.
"Sam," says one of the men, "do you remember the fight on the Obion last spring?"
"Yes, sah," says Sam; "I like to been killed thar."
"You did! how so?"
"Why, just as the soldiers were a comen along, I was a standen right here on this here very corner with our ox-team, and for all the world I thought they'd a run over me."
"What! are you the man with the oxen?" I exclaim.
"Yes, sah," says Sam; "I'm the very man."
"Then, Sam," I say, "you are the very man we want, and must go along and show us where the soldiers went that night."
We dismount, and half the men take the horses to the nearest house to feed, and, with the others, I walk on. The men say they remember it, but to me it is all a blank. The main events I recollect clearly, but my fall, I find, knocked the last three miles of the ride entirely out of my memory. We go on nearly two miles, and I see nothing that I can recall. Then the road goes down a series of steep descents—so steep I wonder if I ever did ride down them on a runaway horse. As we descend one of these I stop, for before me, as in a dream, stand two trees, and through them I see the fallen trunk and branches of another. I do not expect to see the remains of my horse, for I have already learnt that he staggered bleeding to a house near by, and was seized by the enemy. But this is the spot—I am sure of it.