“Say, Leon, what do you reckon those fellows will do with us after they get us to Ellisville?” said Cale, speaking with difficulty.
“I am sure I don’t know. If I had my way with you I would send you among the rebels, with orders not to come back. You talk of the rebels as ‘our men,’ and you belong with them.”
“I guess you’ll stretch hemp,” said the man who was acting as sentry over them.
“I hope they won’t go that far, but I don’t know,” said Leon, as he turned his horse about and started for Ellisville.
It was getting dark by this time, but all the way Leon saw some signs of the fight. Here was a dead rebel who had been shot during the retreat, and who had fallen in the middle of the road, and he had been moved out on one side and his body covered with a blanket. A little further on he came across a wagon which was loaded with wounded Confederates, and the Union men all greeted him as though they were glad to see him. There was one thing about it, if there was any faith to be put in what the men said to him: His father had been in a constant worry ever since he failed to show up at Newman’s house, and he became so satisfied that Newman was to blame for his capture—for Mr. Sprague knew that somebody had made a prisoner of him—that he sent a squad of men back to the house and placed them all in custody. Finally Leon came up to the place where the slaughter had taken effect when the Confederates got ready to make their charge, and he shuddered when he looked at it. The rebels and their horses had fallen together in a heap until they were piled on top of one another. The Union men had not got through removing them yet.
“By gracious, if those rebels could come up here from Mobile and see what I have seen to-day, I’ll bet they would give up trying to conquer us,” said Leon, as he once more gave his horse the rein and drew up before the hotel porch. “I didn’t suppose that a battle ended in that way. I thought the dead and wounded were scattered all around, and that you had to hunt a long time before you found them, but—I never want to see another fight.”
The hotel porch was empty when he got there, but a little way up toward the grove he saw a company of Confederates, all huddled together, and Union men were keeping guard over them. They were waiting there until their paroles could be made out. You see they had no printing-press in Jones county, and everything like this had to be made out by hand. He went up into the President’s room, and there he found as many men as could find seats at the table engaged in writing. Some of the prisoners were there to assist them.
“The way we do this,” said Mr. Knight, addressing himself to the captain who had last commanded the regiment (by the way, he was wounded, too, for a handkerchief that was wet with blood was tied around his forehead)—“the way we do this is all owing to you rebels alone. You have not hung any of our men yet; indeed, I don’t know that you have had a chance, but if you had hung any of them, we should pick out as many men as had been executed and hang them to the nearest tree. We want you to understand that these paroles are matters of life and death with you. If you go into battle against us without being exchanged, and we capture you, you can expect nothing but death. I think you have found out, by the way that cavalry charged upon us, that we know how to fight. How many men had you to go back to Mobile?”
“Well, sir, I should say about two hundred.”
“And how many had you in the first place?”