FORAGING, AND A NEW PRISON.
During this trip our rations were salt beef and corn bread, but the latter was unfit to eat, and I refused all rations, preferring to take the chances of foraging until we reached Shreveport.
On the first day out we made about twelve miles. At dusk it commenced to rain, and we camped in an old church at a cross roads. The wounded men and ourselves were placed in one end of the building, they on one side and we on the other, while the other end was used by our guards. They piled up all their equipments in one corner, and spread their blankets in the vacant space, then going off to a stillhouse in the neighborhood, where they got gloriously drunk, and leaving only a sentinel at the door.
When leaving Washington our party had been increased by three more runaways, who bore the names of Robinson, Fenton and Stanton, so that we were now six in all.
The guard at the door excited my envy, soon after his companions had left, by coolly drawing from his haversack a lot of biscuits and the ham of a shote. As he drew out his huge knife and began slicing off tempting bits of lean meat my envy overcame any timidity I may have had, and I determined to have some of that meat by fair means or foul.
Stanton came up to me as I came to this conclusion, and I remarked to him that I was about to take supper with the rebel. His curiosity spurred me on, and I walked out to the sentinel and asked if I could have some of his meat and biscuit. Much to my surprise and pleasure he promptly said: "Tub ber shure," and sliced off for me a liberal allowance of ham, giving it to me with some biscuits. My success led Stanton to follow suit, and we both had a fair meal with the generous fellow.
It was now getting dark, and the rain kept coming down. We had full possession of the room, and as Stanton and myself walked back to our companions, we saw Fenton eating. Inquiry developed the fact that he had been plundering the piled-up haversacks while we had been outside, and when we learned that there was a supply still unappropriated we promptly set out to empty the haversacks of everything desirable. During our talk together the sentinel had added his haversack to the pile, and the first thing to which we came was the balance of the ham from which we had just dined, together with fourteen biscuits. We felt awfully mean about it, but "self-preservation is the first law of nature," and we cleaned that bone, throwing it and the haversack behind the wainscoting.
This food was sufficient for our wants, and we would have been satisfied but that we found Rummel on one side eating some light bread, which he had purloined from another haversack. This made us ambitious again, so we went back and took all the desirable stuff we could find in the pile for future use.
We got a lot of light bread, about a pound and a half of butter and some sweet potatoes.
The wounded men had a kettle for cooking, and I borrowed this, built a fire in the stove and cooked our sweet potatoes.