It was a good race for about three miles. I won, and saved my neck again. As I reached the picket-lines that I had passed, I reported to the officer in command that guerrillas were burning our train, but this fellow—a Colonel—refused to cross his men over the run to help to save them.
"COLONEL MOSBY'S SOLDIERS, I RECKON, SIR."
I rode on back toward Fairfax and met some officers of Hooker's Staff, giving them my adventure. While I was talking to them, we heard sounds as if a distant blast was going off. Looking ahead over the straight road, in the direction whence I had retreated, we saw a dense cloud of white smoke, like a fog-bank, rise over the tops of the trees. Hooker's aide said:
"Well, those fellows will get badly fooled if they are burning that ammunition train."
That was it. They hurried back to Fairfax, and, there being no other cavalry available, Hooker sent out his bodyguard—Rush Lancers—whom I piloted back to the hill-top. When we got near, one or two wagons were yet unburned, but as they were surrounded by the debris of the explosion, we were afraid to go near, lest another wagon-load of ammunition would go off.
I have read Mark Twain's old joke regarding his bravery, in being in the army where cannon-balls and bullets were thickest—right where whole wagon-loads of ammunition were going right past him—but after this experience with a wagon-train, I'm willing to admit this as about as dangerous as anything in an army.
I saved my papers, my life, and got back to Aldie and headquarters that night under the escort of Hooker's bodyguard—or "turkey drivers," as we called them.
It was Pleasonton's cavalry scouts that definitely ascertained that Lee had crossed the Potomac into Maryland. We of the headquarters moved rapidly from Aldie, crossing the Potomac at some point near Leesburg. I think it was the Sunday preceding the contact with Lee that headquarters spent in Frederick, Maryland. We were comfortably quartered at the City Hotel, on a main street of that old town. It was one of the old-fashioned country taverns, with a big yard or court in the rear, for the accommodation of the country teams that visited the city on market days. On this particular Sunday the stables were filled with the horses of the Headquarters Staff, while the yard was crowded with ambulances, baggage-wagons, commissary supplies, etc.
Custer was with us in Frederick all of that Sunday, and spent most of his time at the big parlor window up-stairs flirting with a couple of quite young girls who lived opposite the hotel. The people usually lived above their stores in the town, and I remember very distinctly the name on the sign was spelled "Schley"; so, if there were one or two Misses Schley in Frederick in 1863, their children will have the testimony of a very-much-interested eye-witness that their mothers were beautiful ladies, who so attracted the handsome General Custer that he almost forgot all about his cavalry pickets who were on the South Mountain hunting Stuart's lost cavalry. In those days Custer wore his hair long; it was quite curly, and touched the blue velvet boyish-looking jacket which he always wore; this, with the long, loose ends of the invariable red necktie, gave the cavalry hero a very picturesque appearance, especially when he dashed along on his horse with all the Staff and orderlies spurring after him in the dust. As I remember, we of the cavalry were after J. E. B. Stuart. No one seemed to know where he was; even General Lee was at that time in entire ignorance of Stuart's whereabouts.