Still he, in a most kindly way, urged me to keep along with them, declaring it would not be for much longer. As I owed considerable to him for admitting me to the gang, and as he had always treated me in the most cordial manner, I consented to go on with them for a short time. In the meantime, I will say that we didn’t pass through the heart of the village!
I think we had gone about two miles farther when we sighted the Ohio River. There we paused for a moment, to realize what we had accomplished. It came back forcibly that we had passed over a very eventful Sunday and a night of travel into Monday, and had, in fact, been on the move or the anxious seat for more than twenty-four hours. Indeed, much had happened since we made that precipitous flight from the Cadiz car shanty. I shall never forget it.
Having our course well in hand now, we soon came up to the railroad, which would take us direct to Wheeling. As we plodded along the ties, we had less to think about our bearings, and consequently more time to lend an ear to the yearnings of our stomachs. We were much in need of food to sustain our strength, for there was no telling what we yet had to encounter. Jack Utley was particularly hungry; or if not more so than the rest of us, he was less philosophical about it, for he presently insisted that he must appease the inner man at any risk whatsoever.
“I’ll tackle the first hen-roost I spot,” said he, emphatically.
“Better starve the stomach a little, than bar the whole body,” spoke up Tall Jim, with an observable emphasis on the word “bar,” which I interpreted to mean jail. Thus thinking, I nudged Jim, by whose side I was walking.
Just then we came abreast of a barnyard, upon spying which Utley started on a sharp trot toward it. I had a vision of dogs, flying men, and clews thick enough to capture a regiment. I presume it would have been fully as well if I had kept my own counsel, but here was a man not only endangering his own neck, but putting me in the same fix with him.
“Jack Utley, you fool!” I cried to him as loudly as I dared, “don’t you dare to do it. What’s hunger alongside of our liberty?”
All I heard was a smothered reply, the tenor of which I could guess without hitting wide of the mark, and he went on his way, while we continued on ours, hearing no sound for upward of three minutes. Then there came to us a loud squawking of a chicken, which was quickly stifled, only to be succeeded by a chorus of similar squawks, the difference in them being their tones, some tenor, others of a lower scale of voice, the whole making a most discordant and disheartening din to our ears. I seemed to see ourselves in a pretty mess. There lay the farm-house, plain in the moonlight, and just in the rear was the barn. Two minutes later Utley came rushing up behind us with a big fowl stuffed under his coat, but a dead one, he having wrung its neck.
The curses we flung at him from all sides were like so much water on a duck’s back, his only retort being something about his stomach,—that it had to be considered once in a while. I feared the worst would come of this experience, and so remarked to the whole lot of them. As we went on I thought I heard the slam of a door, and, halting the lads for an instant, listened intently, but heard nothing more like it.
After hurrying forward for two miles or more, a deep cut was encountered, through which the track went, curving somewhat to the left where the bank on either side was the highest. Notwithstanding the bright moonlight, there was plenty of shadow at this curve, and not knowing what the darkness might conceal from us, we halted while Hughes went to investigate. He returned in a few minutes, and we could tell by his manner that he had something interesting to relate.