“Of course we know where it is.”
“Well, now, what I want to know is this: Why did you take such a long tramp through the country when you were within less than a hundred miles of the coast?”
Bowen answered this question, giving their reasons as we have given them to the reader, but the captain acted as though he did not believe a word of it. Marcy tried to help him out by telling of the relatives he expected to meet when he reached the Mississippi River, and the story was so improbable that the captain told them bluntly that he believed they were spies, that they had come into his camp to see how many men he had under his command, and that they hoped to escape to their friends with the information. Marcy was surprised and hurt to find himself suspected by the officer he wanted to help.
“I assure you, sir——” he began.
“I’ve had that trick played on me twice during this scout, and if it is played on me again it will be my own fault,” interrupted the captain. “Consider yourselves in arrest.”
He ordered a sentry to be placed over them at once, and we may add that Marcy and his friend were under suspicion all the time, and under guard most of the time they remained with Grierson’s men.
The next morning at daylight Captain Forbes resumed his rapid march, and in two hours’ time arrived within sight of Enterprise, which, to his amazement and alarm, he found to be filled with rebel soldiers. There were three thousand of them. They were in motion too, and that proved that they were aware of his coming and making ready to attack him. A fight meant annihilation or capture, and there was but one way to prevent it. Halting his men in the edge of a piece of woods out of sight of the enemy, Captain Forbes called a single officer to his side and galloped boldly toward the town. He was gone half an hour, and when he returned he placed himself at the head of his squad and led it in a headlong retreat, which did not end until the captain reported to Colonel Grierson at Pearl River. In speaking of this dashing exploit history says: “The captain, understanding his danger, tried to bluff the enemy and succeeded. He rode boldly up to the town and demanded the instant surrender of the place to Colonel Grierson. Colonel Goodwin, commanding the Confederate force, asked an hour to consider the proposition, to which request Forbes was only too willing to accede. That hour, with rapid riding, delivered his little company from its embarrassing situation.”
That rapid retreat was about as much as Marcy and Bowen could stand after their long walk across the country. They were given broken-down plough-mules to ride, and these delightful beasts, which took every step under protest and “bucked” viciously when pressed too hard, had well-nigh jolted the breath out of them by the time they reached the main column at Pearl River. But they journeyed more leisurely after that, all the most dangerous places along their line of march having been left behind, and when the fugitives learned that they were within forty-eight hours’ ride of Baton Rouge, and that the column would pass through Mooreville on the following day, they asked and obtained permission to accompany the scouts that were sent on ahead the next morning. That was the way they came to ride into Rodney Gray’s dooryard as we have recorded.
“You have heard my story,” concluded Marcy, settling contentedly back among the pillows. “Now, who is going to give me a drink of water?”
“How you must have suffered,” said his aunt, with tears in her eyes.