CHAPTER XXIII.
RETURN HOME FROM CUMBERLAND GAP—MEETING WITH PARSON BROWNLOW ON HIS TRIP TO WASHINGTON.
I knew by that particular instinct, born of a soldier's daily experience of months among his own kind, that the two Cavalrymen I had seen coming up the road toward me were not from the army I had just left, or I should have kept quiet. Probably it was because I remembered, at the first glance of them, that I had not seen any such looking troopers in the Rebel Army, either about the Gap or in the interior country beyond, through which I had so recently traveled miles on horseback.
After some "mutual explanations and introductions," with a general hand-shaking all around, wherein it was laughingly agreed among them that my Jack Shepard manner of jumping out of a bush to demand satisfaction was a good joke—on my part—as they supposed it, I "fell in" with Lanyard and Baker, and we marched on ahead of the two cavalrymen toward the Union camp. Though I was tired and well-nigh exhausted, I walked ahead so briskly and stepped out so joyously that I was almost keeping the horses on a trot to keep up with us. This fact elicited from the older of the Kentucky cavalrymen an observation to his comrade that comprised about all the words that I remember to have heard him speak while in his company:
"My h—, don't that fellow travel!"
I am not prepared to say whether the renewed motive power was supplied through a fear of the Rebels coming after us in force, or a wild desire to get to a place where the blue soldiers were to be seen in greater numbers.
As we walked along together, Lanyard gave me a minute and funny account of the manner in which my disappearance was accounted for by my late companions in arms at the Gap.
"Well, by G—! I never thought you were a real Yankee. Why didn't you say something to me before? I was your best friend always, you sucker." Then, with a loud laugh and a slap on my tired back that nearly knocked me off my feet, he made a break for the little, fat Dutch baker.
"Say, Baker, ain't you just playing off as a Dutchman? Come now; let's hear you talk plain United States. You are in a free country."