"Beauregard's whole army has fallen back, and done it so silently that they never awoke us," said Dick. "Let us hurry on and get into our lines before some of the enemy's cavalry come along and gobble us up. What do you see, Rodney?"
"I am afraid we are gobbled already," was the answer, "I saw some men dodging about in the woods over there. If they are not the enemy's pickets they must be our rear guard, and as we can't get away we had better go over and make ourselves square with them."
This proposition met with the approval of his comrades, but it did not seem to suit the men in the woods, for Dick's squad had not gone many steps in their direction when some one called out:
"By the right flank, march!" and the command was emphasized by the sudden appearance of half a dozen muskets which were pointed straight at them.
"Who are you, and what are you doing there?" demanded Dick.
"Who are you, and what do you want of us?" asked one of the men in reply. "Are you from Tennessee?"
"No; Missouri."
"By the right flank, then, and toddle right along. You want no truck with us; but if you meet old Daddy Bragg tell him to come and see us. We've got something for him."
"All right," answered Dick, as he and his squad faced to the right and marched away. "Good-by, and good luck to you. I don't think old Bragg will come out," he added, when the men had been left out of hearing. "They'd shoot him as quick as they would any other varmint. There must be two or three hundred in that party, and they straggled out of the ranks last night in the dark. They'll stay there until the enemy's advance passes, and then they'll come out and give themselves up. Slick scheme, but I'd die before I would do it myself."
The squad halted at the "diggings" long enough to fill their haversacks, and then kept on after the army, marching with a quick step and keeping a good look-out for the Federal cavalry, which they knew would be sent out to pick up stragglers as soon as Beauregard's retreat became known to Halleck. They were in no hurry to overtake their comrades, for they were doing very well by themselves, and neither did they want to be picked up and treated as deserters by their own rear guard. But if there was any rear guard they never saw it, although they ran into another body of Tennesseans, more than a thousand of them this time, who told them that the army gone on toward Tupelo, thirty-five miles from Corinth. No one seemed to know why Corinth had been abandoned, and it turned out afterward that the Richmond government disapproved of it, for the command was taken from Beauregard and given to Bragg, the man whom all his soldiers feared and hated, and who, a few months later, said to the people of Kentucky, "I am here with an army which numbers not less than sixty thousand men. I bring you the olive-branch which you refuse at your peril." But proclamations and threats did not take Kentucky out of the Union.