We remained at Arkadelphia for several days before we were moved to Magruder's headquarters at Washington, and during this wait we were treated more like guests than prisoners, excepting, of course, the being under guard. I do not think that there was an able-bodied personage in the place who did not come to see us, and there were several callers who were not able-bodied.
All the people were curious to see us, because we were Yankees, and more curious because of our successful escape to this point, while our almost successful effort to get through at the last was the occasion of much admiration, many jokes and friendly actions.
When we did not give ourselves time to think of our capture we really enjoyed our stay.
In discourse of time the guards who had captured us were detailed to take us back, and they were given a leave of twenty days in which to do so, Rocket now being a sergeant.
Our start was made after a farewell that showed far more friendship than enmity, and we made the fifty miles to Washington in four days, taking it easy.
Of the nine men who composed this squad eight were positively disloyal to the Confederacy, but were forced to fight for it because of their homes and families.
Each one of the eight, at different times, talked very freely to me when the others were not around, and each one told me that they would never have held us at the river if the others could have been certainly depended upon not to report the matter. We got to be very friendly with these guards, and we were really sorry when it came time to part from them.
One of our guards was an old man whom his companions called Captain Payne. He rode a sorry-looking specimen of a horse and was evidently only a private. Wishing to be friendly, he offered to let me ride his horse if I would allow him to hold the halter, which offer I promptly accepted, informing him that he was welcome to hold the halter and the horse's tail as well if he so desired. As an apology for the limitation of my actions with his horse, he informed me that he had positive orders to let us have no chance of escape, and to shoot us without notice if such an attempt was made.
In the course of conversation I asked him why he was called captain while being under orders of a sergeant. His reply was that he had been elected captain of 500 men who had organized to resist the draft and afterwards joined the Federal army; that they had been informed upon and the scheme frustrated, he having been forced to compromise between his neck and the halter by enlisting in the Confederate army as a private.
We were taken up behind on the horses of our guards during part of the trip, and in one of these rides behind Sergeant Rocket I learned that he had been in Missouri with Price, but had disliked the job very much, as had most of his companions. When Price had commenced his retreat he had simply broken ranks and ordered the men to fall in again at Boggy Hollow. They had all been forced to shift for themselves, and for three days he had had nothing to eat. After that they had lived almost entirely on fresh meat, without salt, for twenty-four days, and the organization had been largely broken up.