“Some of the hardest times we saw, hyere in the Union parts of Tennessy, was when they come hunting conscripts. They got up some dogs now that would track a man. One of my neighbors turned and shot a hound that was after him, and got away. The men come up, and they was torn-down mad when they saw the dog killed. They pressed a man and his wagon to take the carcase back to town; they lived in Adamsville, eight miles from hyere. They stopped to my house over night, going back.”
“They just bemoaned the loss of that dog,” said Mrs. ——. “They said they’d sooner have lost one of their company.”
“They got back to town, and they buried that dog now with great solemnity. They put a monument over his grave, with an epitaph on it. But some of the conscripts they’d been hunting, dug him up, and hung him to a tree, and shot him full of bullets, and made a writing which they pinned to the tree, with these words on it: ‘We’ll serve the owners of the dogs the same way next.’”
“Was Owl Crick swimming to-day, Zeek?” Mrs. —— asked; meaning, was it so high that our beasts had to swim. And that led to a remark as to the origin of the name.
“Thar’s right smart of owls on this Crick,” said Mr. ——; “sometimes we’re pestered powerful by ’em; they steal our chickens so.”
Just then we heard a wild squawking in the direction of the hen-roost. “Thar’s one catching a chicken now,” quietly observed the farmer. I certainly expected to see either him or Zeek run out to the poor thing’s rescue. But they sat unconcernedly in their chairs. It was the chicken’s business, not theirs. The squawking grew fainter and fainter, and then ceased.
“The people all through this section I allow will never forget the battle,” said Mr. ——. “Friday night Johnson’s left wing was at Brooks’s,—the last house you passed to-day befo’e you fo’ded Owl Crick. The woods was just full of men. They took Brooks, to make him show ’em the way. He said he didn’t know the woods, and that was the fact; but they swo’e he lied, and he must go with ’em, and they’d shoot him if he led ’em amiss. He was in a powerful bad fix; but, lucky for him they hadn’t gone fur when they met Dammern, an old hunter, that knew every branch and thicket in the country. So they swapped off Brooks for Dammern.
“The Federals was on the other side of us, and I allowed there was going to be a battle. And it looked to me as if it was going to be right on my farm.”
“That was the awfulest night I ever had in my life,” said Mrs. ——. “My husband was for leaving at once. But it didn’t appear like I could bear the idea of it. Though what to do with ourselves if we staid? We’ve no cellar, and if we’d had one, and got into it, a shell might have set the house afire, and buried us under it. So I proposed we should dig a hole to get into. He allowed that might be the best thing. So the next morning I got off betimes, and went over and counselled with our neighbors through the grove, and told ’em I thought it would be a grand idee to dig a pit for both our families, and so they came over hyere and went to digging.”
“You never see men work so earnest as we did till about ’leven o’clock,” said Mr. ——. “Finally we got the pit dug, between the house and the spring. But when it was done it looked so much like a grave the weemun dreaded to get into it, and so much like a breastwork we men was afraid both armies would just play their artilleries onto it. So my wife give her consent we should take to the swamps. But what to do with the pit? for if it got shelled, the house would be destroyed; and then thar was danger the armies would use the hole to bury their dead in, and the bodies would spoil our spring. And as we couldn’t take the pit with us, it appeared like thar was but one thing to do. So we put in and worked right earnest till we’d filled it up again. A rain had come on Friday night, and bogged down some of Johnson’s artillery between hyere and Corinth, and that’s my understanding why the fight didn’t come off Saturday. That give us time to git off. I took my family three miles back to a cabin in the swamp, and thar they staid till it was all over; only Zeek and me come back for some loads of goods. We took one load Saturday, and come for another Monday. That was the second day of the fight. We found the place covered with Rebel soldiers. The battle was going on then. The roar of artillery was so loud you couldn’t converse at one end of the house, whur the echo was. The musketry sounded like a roaring wind; the artillery was like peals of thunder.