He was nervous and excited. He took off his revolver belt and unbuttoning his clothes as if he was going to disrobe he took from his waist a broad soft belt, saying: "Here, get this around your waist quickly; unbutton your pants and get the belt next to your body." After all was arranged as he wished, he had me take my coat from my saddle and put it on, he saying "I know it is very warm, but please wear it for a while." Then he said: "Now, Johnny, you are a young farmer lad and would not be suspected of having any money. But I would. There is over three thousand dollars in that belt. Now don't say a word about it."
We had no sooner got back to the porch than it was made plain to me what had caused Mr. Booth's quick actions. Looking down the stage line towards Monticello we saw approaching about twenty-five mounted men.
They came up within a hundred and fifty steps of us and halted and for quite a little bit seemed to be holding a council.
Presently three of the party came on up to the hotel. Mr. B. accosted them with "How do you do, gentlemen?" The courtesies of the day passed when one of the three asked "are you the proprietor?" Getting a negative answer, another one asked if he could tell them how far it was to Lanesfield on the Santa Fé trail, and what direction it was. Mr. B. said "perhaps this boy can tell you."
I stepped to the corner of the house and told them it was about twelve miles in this direction, pointing toward the place. They asked "What creek is that we crossed back yonder?" I answered Kill creek. One of them said "I thought so when we crossed it, but was not sure." Another said, "then that is the way we want to go up that west prong;" and saying good-by they rode back to their companions and all turned south and rode over the unsettled prairie toward Lanesfield.
One of the three men I noticed in particular; he had red hair, short scrubby beard and the scar of a recently healed wound under his left ear. I saw this same man's lifeless body in December, 1863, in the Boston Mountains in Arkansas.
That evening after it had become dark Mr. Booth and I took some blankets and went northwest from the house some distance to a swale and lay down in the prairie grass to sleep. Mr. B. told me in the morning he had had a bad night of it and had not been able to sleep but little; but I, a growing husky farmer boy, was sound asleep in a jiffy. Mr. Booth said he would give the world if he could sleep like I did. He awoke me in the early dawn and we went to the house.
After breakfast we saddled our horses, turned the cattle out and grazed them down to Kill creek; then after watering them and grazing them a few moments longer we drove them past Monticello and made our noon stop in some scattering sumac where grass was good and plentiful. We ate our lunch that had been put up at the Lexington hotel and that evening drove to an old Shawnee Indian's on Mill creek and put up for the night.
The next day, when we were about five miles from the outfitting post, we met a second lieutenant with twenty-five soldiers sent out to look for Mr. Booth. Just at that period of the war there was an unusual stir along the border. Lots of the guerrillas from north Missouri had worked their way south to the Sni hills; those from the two Blues were active and the troops at Independence (Union troops now) were kept busy chasing the bushwhackers.