"We were kept with the main body about two hours, and during that time were used like white men. The veterans divided their grub with us, patted us on the back, and said we were good fellows for driving them out of Corinth and licking them on the river as we had been doing, and we had nothing in the world to complain of; but I tell you we shook in our shoes when we learned that nine of us prisoners were to be sent to Camp Pinckney under a strong escort of Home Guards, while the soldiers kept to the road to hunt for more Yankees. And right there is where I blame the officer in command of the Confederate detachment," said the blue-coat, now beginning to show such signs of anger and excitement that Ned Griffin would have been alarmed if he hadn't known that his loyalty to the flag was beyond suspicion, "and if he ever falls into the hands of my regiment he will have cause to regret that act of his. He knew what manner of men his Home Guards were—that they were, as you say, sneaks and cowards, that they dared not go to the front, and that their highest ambition was to shoot a Yankee without running the risk of being shot themselves. But he told us to go, and when the order was given for us to fall in, we had to obey it. Well, sir, you may believe it or not, but I can prove it, we hadn't much more than got out of sight of the soldiers before those Home Guards began laughing and joking about losing us on their way to camp."
"Did they think you were going to try to escape?" asked Ned.
"They meant that they were going to shoot us," said the man fiercely.
Ned and his mother could hardly believe that their ears were not deceiving them.
"Thank goodness, our Home Guards are not as bad as that," said the former.
"Have they ever been put to the test?" demanded the fugitive. "I know that they have fought gunboats and defeated some detachments of our cavalry, but did they ever have a Yankee prisoner in their hands?"
Ned was greatly astonished to hear that the Mooreville Home Guards had been in action with the Federal cavalry, but he managed to say that he didn't think they had ever taken a prisoner. Before he could say more the blue-coat continued:
"I shouldn't like to fall into their power, for I believe they would make short work of me. The men who had been detailed to take us nine prisoners to camp came from the Pearl River bottoms, and looked, acted, and talked more like heathen than any men I ever saw before. Believing that we did not understand their jokes about losing us in the woods, they talked freely among themselves until we came to a place where the road forked; and there they separated into two parties, four of their number taking my three comrades and myself down one road, while the rest of the escort went with the other five prisoners down the other road.
"Before this happened I had made up my mind that I wasn't going to be killed by those long-haired Yahoos if I could help it, and that act of separation was two points in favor of the plans I had formed in my mind. It gave me as companions three men who enlisted at the same time I did, who had served in my company and regiment all through the war, and who I knew could be depended on to back me up in anything I undertook, and it gave us four the smallest escort, the main body having gone down the other road with the rest of the prisoners. And I hope and believe that those five fellows got safely into camp, for the men who went with them were not half as villainous or blood-thirsty as those who guarded us. To show you what sort of men we had to deal with, one of them remarked, as he drew a big knife from his boot to cut off a chew of tobacco, that he wouldn't think any more of sticking that knife into a Yank than he would of putting it into a pig.