AFTER JOHN MORGAN.
The celebrated John H. Morgan was then in our front, doing his best to achieve notoriety, which he afterward succeeded in doing. To keep him in his place caused us much inconvenience; indeed, he was troublesome, and Gen. Mitchell resolved to drive him out of the country, if he could not catch or kill him. But before being successful, it became necessary to know exactly where to find him, and just how many men he had. The General told me what he wanted, and asked me if I would go down the country and hunt him up, and I replied that I would. He then gave orders that I should be fitted out to my own notion, and Captain Prentice, the Assistant Adjutant General, furnished me with a citizen's dress, and the General gave me his own saddle pony to ride, as it was the only unbranded horse in the camp.
Thus equipped, I put out from our lines in the night, and took the road to Murfreesboro. I had a lonely ride till morning, when I stopped at a house on Stewart's creek, to get breakfast; and there I fell in with a man who stated that he was going to Murfreesboro, and proposed to ride with me; and, of course, I was glad of his company. From the familiar way he spoke of Hardee, and other southern officers, I felt satisfied he was a rebel scout, and had just been to Nashville. He was a large, well-built man, with homely features, but expressive of a good deal of cunning. He was very bitter against the Yankees, in his conversation, and could tell me more meanness they had done, than I ever before thought they could devise. All this I stored away, as "stock in trade," to be reproduced to the Johnnies themselves, when occasion should require me to abuse my friends.
We crossed Stewart's and Overall's creeks, when we met with the first rebel pickets, standing in a field some distance away. As we approached they stepped up to know our business, where we were from, where we were going, etc. My companion was in a hurry to proceed, but I desired to converse with the pickets to get whatever information I could from them. They were as loquacious as I was, and had much to say about a fight they had been in a few days before, with the 4th Ohio cavalry, magnifying their own exploits hugely. They represented the 4th Ohio as little better than arrant cowards, which worried me a good deal, but I must keep up my disguise. Little did they imagine that they were then speaking with a member of that very regiment; and less did they suspect that my fingers were aching to shoot them. If the General had not given me such very strict orders, I believe I should have stopped right there and given them a fight. But a severer trial than that, even, was in store. One of the reprobates walked up to me, and with a flourish and an oath, handed me a pistol, saying it had been taken from the 4th Ohio cavalry the day before, and that Captain Morgan had come in, at the same time, with eight buckled around him. I examined the weapon, and although it looked very familiar, I handed it back, and told him I had never seen one like it before.
Next my curiosity was excited by their guns; I represented that I had never seen any like them, and innocently wondered if the Yankees had any of the same pattern.
"No," said the man, "these are English guns;" and there, sure enough, on the lock was the crown and the words "Tower, London," stamped on the metal. There were but three men at the post, and when the fellow gave me his pistol, their guns were in a corner of the fence and they at some distance from them, so that I could have shot all three before they could have helped themselves.
No passes were required from men going south, but no one could travel north, without a pass from Hardee. On arriving at Murfreesboro, I found it was guarded by Morgan's battalion of cavalry, and three companies of Texas rangers. Now, I had not the least idea of staying at the place, but had intended to ride through; and was proceeding along steadily, but carelessly, on the lower side of the public square, when I was hailed by a former acquaintance on the sidewalk. He was an old friend, and had served with me in Johnston's regiment, in Texas. I had intended to pass under the name of George Adams, but up to this time had never been questioned as to who I was; and it was very fortunate, as otherwise I should have been detected on the spot.
While talking with this man, a crowd soon assembled around me, to inquire the news from Kentucky, and wanting to know how I had possibly managed to get through the Yankee lines, and a hundred other such questions. I told them I had crossed the Tennessee sixteen miles below Nashville, at the mouth of Pond creek, and hence did not come through the lines at all, but flanked them, coming down Richland creek, and crossing the Charlotte pike at Davidson's. I had been at home on a visit, I said, and was going back to Texas. When asked where I lived, I told them in Bourbon county, Kentucky; and when further questioned as to my motive for returning to Texas, I told them I had been making that State my home for years; and there was my Texan friend by whom to prove it.
As soon as I could do so, I turned to the ranger and asked him so many questions, that he had no time to interrogate me. While I was standing in the crowd, asking and answering questions by turn, a very fine looking man dressed in a plain black suit of clothes, walked leisurely up, and stood listening to the conversation. He at length addressed me in a mild but deep and manly voice, and inquired if I was from near Lexington. I told him that I was, and he asked the news from that locality, and I was giving him the "local items" in detail, when an officer stepped up to him and addressing him as Captain Morgan, called him away on business.
Well, for a little while the top of my head got cold, and the blood all rushed to my heart; but I do not think my emotions were betrayed in my face, for, in an instant, the danger of my position occurred to me in full force, and I resumed my devil-may-care manner, but surveyed him closely as he walked off. He was a man about five feet ten or eleven inches in hight, fair complexion, rather red cheeks, round, manly features, with a light blue or gray eye, fiery red goattee of full dimensions, and a little coarse, light-brown hair, slightly inclined to red, which was closely cut. His appearance was genteel, and his manners very prepossessing. He appeared to be a general favorite, as all eyes appeared to follow him, as he walked along with his fellow officers; and, perhaps, this was the reason that my very close investigation of him passed unnoticed by the men around me. I could not help feeling a little proud that I would now be able to report to Gen. Mitchell that I had seen the very man he had sent me out to find.