After a long search through the cane we found a road and started off, keeping a sharp lookout.
We had gone but a short distance down the road when we almost ran into another cavalry camp, and we had to swallow our hearts to keep them in their proper position, while we hastily executed a flank movement to avoid the soldiers. We succeeded in passing around them without being discovered, and again went on our way in peace for a time, but soon had another scare.
It was now nearly evening, and as we reached the river bank we heard some men approaching. It was a close shave, as we barely had time to conceal ourselves before they came out of the woods on the opposite side of the road and started for the camp we had just passed.
As soon as they had disappeared we started to follow the river bank, and as we proceeded down stream, with the timber on our right and the river on our left, we had not gone far when some men were heard coming in our direction. Dodging into the brush for concealment, we lay there until several men and their dogs had passed. They turned into the wood not far from us and began cutting down a tree in which they had located a coon. The tree was soon felled, and then occurred a lively skirmish between men, dogs, clubs and coon, in which the coon finally got the worst of it.
When the battle was over and the coon-hunters had gone, we crawled out of our hiding place and started down the river again.
In less than a mile, and about 12 o'clock, we came upon another lot of soldiers, camped in the road on the river bank and apparently sound asleep, our evidence of the latter fact being the unmusical sounds proceeding from them.
The situation was rather on the critical order, but it was light enough for us to see any movement of the enemy. We made a careful movement by the right flank, and were soon around them, fortunately without discovery.
Proceeding on our way, we would have felt quite happy had Miller been less miserable, but he could not forget that we had not as yet crossed the river, and it was impossible for him to be comfortable while on the wrong side of a stream of water.
Coming to an opening in the timber on our right we saw a plantation. A high fence was built along the road in front of it. Just as we had gotten fairly started away from the timber and in front of this fence the sounds of a horse galloping in our direction caused us to make a sudden choice between an unwise meeting and a slide down the steep river bank. We slid.
The horsemen reined up in front of the farmhouse, just abreast of where we were hugging the slippery bank, and we heard him call out some inmate of the house and ask the way to Rondo, where, it seemed, they were having a dance.