“Inoffensive, which? Mebbe you know these people an’ mebbe you don’t. I do! and a dern’der lot of unhung cutthroats an’ hoss-thieves you can’t find nowheres. As for hangin’, you needn’t give yourself no worryment ’bout that. They’re safe enough to hang me if they ketch me, an’ I guess I sha’n’t hang no higher if I go right on my own gait. If you don’t want to employ me you needn’t; theys enough corn an’ bacon in th’ Obion bottom to keep me awhile yet, and money ain’t no ’count down here; but, by King! if I kin git a chance to tell you anything that them ’uns don’t want you to know, you bet your skin I’ll do it, an’ you kin trust me every time, for I ain’t goin’ to lie,—not to your side, not if I know it. Why, you talk to me about inikities. I don’t want to do no man any hurt; but my old dad he was conscripted, an’ me an’ my brother Jake had to take to the bresh to save ourselves, an’ then Jake he was shot in cold blood right afore my eyes, an’ I made up my mind then an’ there that I wouldn’t give no quarter to the whole State of West Tannisy till this war was over an’ ther’ was some stronger hand than mine to do jestis an’ to furnish revenge. That’s all I’ve got to say about it. You needn’t give yourself no oneasiness ’bout my doin’s, I’ll answer for the hull on ’em; an’ p’r’aps the last thing you’ll hear of Pat Dixon will be that he’s hangin’ to a tree somewheres down Troy way. I know I’m booked for that if I’m ketched, and till I am ketched I’m goin’ my own gait.”
We had become too much accustomed to this state of feeling among the scanty Union population of the Southwest to be so shocked by it as we ought to have been, and it was not without sympathy with Dixon’s wrongs that I let him go, with an earnest caution that he should mend his ways, if only for his own sake.
It remains only to say that he did go his own gait, and that he went it with a desperation and an élan that I have never known equalled; and that, months later, after our snug quarters at Union City had been turned over to a feeble band of home-guards, word came that they had been burned to the ground, and that Pat Dixon, betrayed at last into the hands of the enemy, had been hanged in the woods near Troy. We could find no fault with the retribution that had overtaken him; for, viewed with the eyes of his executioners, he had richly merited it: but we had learned to like him for his frank and generous qualities, and to make full allowance for the degree to which his rough, barbaric nature had been outraged and inflamed by the wrongs inflicted on his family.
A returning patrol one afternoon led to the parade-ground a sorry horse drawing an open wagon in which were a man and a woman. The woman had a cold-blooded, stolid look, and her eyes were filled with the overflowing hatred we so often inspired among her sex at the South. Her husband was dressed in black, and wore a rather scrupulously brushed but over-old silk hat. In his hand was a ponderous and bulging cotton umbrella.
They had been taken “under suspicious circumstances” at a house a few miles outside the lines,—the suspicion attaching only to the fact that they were not members of the family and seemed to have no particular business in that region. When asked for an explanation, the woman said she had nothing to say but that her husband was a blind clergyman intending to fulfil an engagement to preach, and that she had driven him, as was her habit. He said nothing. It was a rule of our system to follow Hoyle’s instructions, and “when in doubt to take the trick”: this pair were remanded to the guard-house.
As they turned away, the reverend gentleman said, in a feeble voice, that if he could see me alone later in the evening, when he had recovered from the shock of his capture, I might be willing to talk with him. In the evening the Hun repaired to the dismantled warehouse where the prisoners were lodged, to hold conversation with the new-comers. When he came to the clergyman he found him so low spoken that their talk fell almost to a whisper, but it was whispered that he was to be taken alone, and subsequent disclosures led to his being brought to headquarters. He there informed me that he was a minister of the Methodist church, Canadian by birth and education, but married to a lady of that region, and had been for some years engaged there in his capacity as a circuit preacher. He was quite blind, and found it impossible to make his rounds without being driven.
His sympathies were with the North, and he was burning to make himself useful in the only way left him by his infirmity. His wife was of a suspecting disposition, and their peaceful consorting required that she should always accompany him; but, unfortunately, she was a violent secessionist, and he had been compelled, in the interest of the peaceful consorting above named, to acknowledge sympathy with her views, and to join her in her revilings of the Union army.
All this made his position difficult, yet he believed that, if the opportunity were given him, he could hide his intention even from her, and could gather for us much useful information.
He was a welcome visitor at the houses of the faithful, far and near, and warmed their hearts with frequent and feeling exhortation, as he gathered his little meetings at his nightly stopping-places. He was now about starting for the southern circuit, and had appointments to preach and to pray at every town between us and Bolivar.