“Well, you see, gentlemen, I had undertaken to deliver those lads alive in Vicksburg, and I was afraid that some of your men might fire at us before we had time to surrender. I was in a bit of a hurry when I converted that dugout into an iron-clad and I was afraid that she wouldn’t navigate well if I nailed the iron to the outside, because I was too much rushed to make a good job of it.”
“Well,” the presiding officer decided, “I guess we’ll have to let you stay. It would be cruel to send you back. Those Yankee gunners might start practicing on you. Too bad you couldn’t smuggle in a little more fresh beef and coffee and white bread.”
“Should have been mighty glad to do it,” the trapper assented, and at that the court adjourned.
The parents of the lads had received most of the letters the boys and Barker had sent, including the one thrown over the Confederate parapets.
Of Hicks they had neither heard nor seen anything, and by his silence he stood condemned.
Like most people in Vicksburg during the siege, the Fergusons lived in a cave, where they were fairly safe from mortar shells and Parrott shells which the Union gunboats and batteries threw into the city every day.
For the sum of fifteen dollars two negroes dug a cave for Barker and Tatanka. Cave-digging had become a profession in Vicksburg and many of the colored men made good wages at it.
Barker and his party had heard a great deal of shooting and cannonading but now they were in the city at which the guns were aimed.
The mortar-boats, anchored below the city, did most of the bombarding. The mortars were short guns throwing large shells. They had to be aimed high and the shell fell almost vertically or with a great high curve.
This vertical fire did not do very much damage, but it drove practically the whole civilian population into caves in the high clay-banks. The civilians who had remained in Vicksburg had done so against the wishes of General Pemberton, and they were now living in constant terror of the shells, although very few people were injured or killed.