"The Lieutenant talked to them as if it might be so, because you had been having a row with the Captain again, and it was hard to tell what you had been doing last. That is about the way they kept talking about you.
"I began to think, if the Yankees were only a mile off, that I would like to go and see them, and not wait for them to come up and see us. So that night, after we got back to our quarters, I told the Lieutenant I would start out at daybreak and hunt you up, my notion being that you had left for good and I wanted to join you. The duffer that was with me swore he would not go along with me down the hill, if the Yankees were only a mile off. At this the Dutchy wakened up from his sleep and bravely volunteered to go along with me." Then Lanyard with a contemptuous look, turned to Baker and said: "Say, Dutchy, you blasted rascal, you played me for a marine, didn't you?" But getting only another broad smile from Baker for a reply, he continued talking, much to the amusement of our Guard of Cavalrymen, his tongue and jaw keeping pace with our quick steps.
"Well, to make a long story short, I laid awake all the balance of the night in thinking it over. I got our old chum to fix up a plan with the officers to allow me to go out to hunt you up; and just as soon as I could bundle up a little, we made the break, and came straight down the road to that house. They told us you had not been there that night. After taking my bearings, we grabbed the anchor, set full sail, and ran out the road until these chaps hailed us back at the house there.
"Dutchy kept right along side of me; he wasn't a bit afraid of the Yankees, he said, and wanted to go ahead." Then with a look of assumed disgust at the baker for having so shrewdly deceived him by pretending bravery in meeting Yankees, while his intention all the time was simply to conceal his real motive, which had been to escape, his tongue ran on with an amusing soliloquy, and, partly addressing himself to the cavalryman about 'the deceitful, lying, treacherous marines he—the guileless, innocent sailor boy—had been compelled to associate with for so long a time against his inclination.'
This cavalry was part of an outpost who were stationed at this point on the road nearest the rebels, as is the usual custom; they were some miles in advance of the infantry or the headquarters, of the camp. We learned from our Guard that their principal duty consisted in receiving and escorting to headquarters the scores of Unionist refugees, who were constantly coming into their lines day and night, in an exhausted condition, through the passes of these mountains. Most of these Unionists were promptly enlisted into the Tennessee regiments, then in camp with the Union army. By this means was solved a difficult problem for the officers, as to their maintenance, when driven away from their homes. (The Government was supposed to guarantee protection to them in their homes.) Under this head, or in this classification, we were placed by the Union officer with whom we first came in contact.
Some time ago, in looking over a volume of the published War Records, by a mere accident I turned to a page referring to some operations about Cumberland Gap, and, because of its familiarity to me, I took the time to hunt up, as nearly as I could, some of the official records bearing on the time of my escape. On a certain page, which I could give herein, is an official report of the general officer in command of the Union forces, announcing the arrival of "three men" who had escaped from the Rebel army that date, and who had given him valuable information of the plans and the forces of the Rebels in his front.
As I have previously stated, I have no memory for dates, but my impression is that our information, at that time, was of service to General Grant, who was then operating in the West, in this, that I had satisfied the general officer, from my account of the location of the Rebel troops, their guns and earthworks in the Gap, that it could not be captured by assault, by any reasonable force in front. In the words of Longfellow, adapted to the occasion:
"Try not the Pass, the young man said."
And they didn't. The force that had been idly lying out there, where provisions and ammunition had to be hauled for miles upon miles over the miserable Kentucky roads, soon after changed their base, and were placed where they could do the most good.
It was late in the afternoon when we reached the camp of the Union forces. I was tired—very tired, and most awfully hungry, too, when we got in sight of a real camp of soldiers, which was, in those days, laid out in regular form according to the books, in rows upon rows of tents in the woods; a neat clean parade ground, from the center of which rose a tall staff, on the very pinnacle of which was flying—old glory—the Stars and Stripes.