The night was dark; the nearest timber to the house was two hundred and fifty yards. There was ice on everything. The tramping of iron shod feet over the frozen earth reverberated as artillery wheels. At the timber line Maddox suggested that one man should be left in charge of the horses, but Webb overruled the point.
“No man shall stir tonight,” he argued, “except he be hunted for either war or women. The horses are safe here. Let us dismount and make them fast.”
As they crept to the house in single file, a huge dog went at Harrison Trow as if he would not be denied, and barked so furiously and made so many other extravagant manifestations of rage, that a man and a woman came to the door of the house and bade the dog devour the disturber. Thus encouraged he leaped full at Trow’s throat and Trow shot him dead.
In a moment the house emptied itself of its male occupants, who explored the darkness, found the dog with the bullet through its head, searched everywhere for the author of the act, and saw no man, nor heard any retreating steps, and so returned unsatisfied to the house, yet returned, which was a great deal.
As for the Guerrillas, as soon as Trow found himself obliged to shoot or be throttled, they rushed back safely and noiselessly to their horses, mounted them and waited. A pistol shot, unless explained, is always sinister to soldiers. It is not to be denied. Fighting men never fire at nothing. This is a maxim not indigenous to the brush, nor an outcome of the philosophy of those who were there. A pistol shot says in so many words: “Something is coming, is creeping, is crawling, is about—look out!”
The Federals heard this one—just as pertinent and as intelligible as any that was ever fired—but they failed to interpret aright this significant language of the ambuscade, and they suffered accordingly.
Webb waited an hour in the cold, listening. No voices were heard, no skirmishers approached his position, no scouts from the house hunted further away than the lights from the windows shone, no alarm had been raised, and he dismounted with his men and again approached the house.
By this time it was well on to twelve o’clock. Chickens were crowing in every direction. The north wind had risen high and was blowing as a winter wind always blows when there are shelterless men abroad in a winter night.
The house, a rickety frame house, was two stories high, with two windows on the north and two on the south.
George Maddox looked in at one of these windows and counted fourteen men, some well advanced in liquor and some sober and silent and confidential with the women. None were vigilant. The six upstairs were neither seen nor counted.