One day the guard brought in a suspicious character from the picket-line. He was about twenty-five years old, long, lank, and dusky,—a sort of half-Indian, half-Irish looking fellow, with uncombed hair and an over-prominent quid of tobacco. He rode the usual “nag” of the country,—an animal with more blood than bone and more vice than beauty. He dismounted, passed his bridle over his arm, and “squatted,”—the usual posture of the country. “The Hun,” the professional bully of all our culprits, took this creature in hand, and presently came in with a suggestion that I had better see him alone. He followed me cautiously to one side, leading his horse with him, and squatted again when we had halted at a safe distance from curious ears.
“I’m Pat Dixon. I live down Troy way on the North Fork. Ye see, when this yer muss fust broke out I didn’t go to take no sides in it. But Merryweather’s men they come along a little ’fore sun-up, last month was a year, an’ they taken the only nag we had left. I’d had him hid out all summer, but some derned skunk done found him out. I heern the cusses a trampin’ roun’ an’ I was goin’ to take a crack at ’em for ‘good mornin’,’ but, you see, I knowed if I did they’d just burn the old woman out, an’ she don’t git along but porely, anyhow, so I didn’t. They conscripted the old man the year afore, an’ he hain’t been heern on sence. So I come to the conclushin that I wa’n’t agoin’ to stan’ no such treatmint as that—by King! an’ I jest took to the bresh, an’ I reckon I’ve pestered them ’uns right smart. I ain’t agoin’ afoot long as theys hosses in West Tannisy,—you bet! I was agoin’ to jine you Yanks, but thinks sez I: ’Old Pat, you kin do a heap better in the bresh nor what you kin in no army,’ and so I stuck to it. O, now, I’m squar’! Frank Moore can tell you all ’bout me; I ain’t no gum-game, I ain’t. If you want a skeout, I’m on hand, an’ I don’t want no pass, I kin git ’roun’ in this kentry.
“Which? hoss? Well, ’t ain’t much of a nag, but theys more on ’em roun’, an’ if this ’un tuckers out I’ll git somethin’ to ride. I ain’t goin’ afoot.—no, mam!”
This was very much the sort of talk “Mr.” Forrest’s emissaries used in seeking our services for his purposes; so, partly to secure ourselves on this point, and partly to give Dixon a good character should he go out from our camp in his professional capacity, he was sent for a few days to the guard-house, until Frank Moore should return from an expedition. I believe Frank knew most of the vagabonds of Obion County, and he at once certified that this was no other than Pat Dixon; that his story was true; and that, while his controlling motives were not perhaps such as one would most admire, his unconquerable hatred of Merryweather’s men and all their confederates might be relied on with implicit confidence; so Pat was engaged as an employé of our Secret Service Department, and sent outside the lines with a conspicuous assurance, as he left his fellow-prisoners, that if found again within our reach he would be hanged forthwith for a spy. I was riding on the road he took, and he gave me a leering wink as he departed,—with instructions to watch the movements of all guerilla bands in our front, and to bring speedily any information he might obtain.
During the remaining months of our stay he was almost ubiquitous. Every scouting-party that we sent out in any direction, though entirely without notice to him, was pretty sure to meet him with important information, just when information was most needed.
This part of his work was done perfectly, but he seemed to regard his relation with us as a warrant for unending private iniquities. After his own code of morals he was a strictly virtuous man, but his code was of an extremely loose and pliable character. It is probably safe to say that he never murdered a Union man, and that, unless sorely tempted by the difference in value of the animals, he never forcibly exchanged horses with a Union widow; neither, I believe, did he commit any offence against a known Rebel when there was a probability of his being found out and caught; but the complaints that came to us of the manner in which he vented his private wrongs and carried on the feuds of his ancestors gave us frequent annoyance. Sometimes it seemed necessary to recall his commission and declare him an outlaw, but just then there would transpire some particularly brilliant achievement that showed him invaluable for our purposes.
More than once, when our patrols reported the immediate presence of the enemy, Pat would turn up with the assurance that it was only so-and-so’s “band,” who had come into the neighborhood on a visiting or a marauding expedition, but with no intention of putting themselves in our way; and invariably we found his report to be correct. Indeed, so frequently did this happen that we became almost too confident in his assistance, and when an excitable picket shot at a donkey or a cow in the night-time, although the patrol of the guard went through the usual routine of investigation, we felt that there could be no serious attack or Dixon would have notified us.
How he obtained his information we could not guess, and his own account of the matter was never satisfactory; but I believe that no considerable force of the enemy ever crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad (the whole State’s width to the south of us) without our being speedily notified; and through this means we were several times enabled to telegraph to Columbus early information of contemplated raids,—information that was not always heeded, as the surprise of Paducah (on the Ohio River) several days after our warning sufficiently proved.
One ambition of this worthy man had to remain unsatisfied. How little this was due to the fact that we at the headquarters were all perfectly mounted, modesty makes it improper to state here; but in our frequent meetings as we rode outside the lines, he rarely failed to tell of some particularly fine horse belonging to some particularly bad man and especially virulent Rebel, which it would really be a virtue to “confisticate.” The worthy fellow was not satisfied with his own conspicuous appropriations; he would fain have mounted our regiments on the weedy screws which the Rebel impressments had left for the horsing of the crippled region of Western Tennessee. Possibly, too, he may have had some lurking fear that there was a suspicion of iniquity in his thefts, and longed for the reassurance of similar conduct on the part of true men like ourselves.
It was, of course, not long after the commencement of this active campaign against the rights of ownership, that we began to receive assurances on every hand that unless we could do something to repress Pat Dixon’s vagabondage an outraged people would take the law into their own hands, and avenge the wrongs he had inflicted. With a laudable desire to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, I told him one day of the state of feeling against him, urging him to be more circumspect and to conduct himself like a decent man, else he would be hanged the first time he was caught; intimating, too, that it would be improper for us to continue to employ him to such needless injury to an inoffensive people. His reply was characteristic.