Shortly after this bitter disappointment the stockade got too full, and a lot of us were sent to Tyler under a heavy guard, Captain Rummel being left behind on account of sickness. These guards had special orders to shoot me if I tried to escape, evidently the result of my row with Captain Burchard. This fact was told to me by one of the guards, but I joked about it and professed not to believe it.
One of the guards was a boy, who seemed more inclined to general conversation than the rest. He walked and talked with me a good deal. In one of our talks he mentioned that he was from "Kasseder," in Davis county. As I knew several people in the place, having stopped there on my former return to Tyler, I at once surprised him by airing my knowledge. As I desired to amuse myself by quizzing him, I was mysterious and non-committal. He was puzzled considerably, and went off and told his captain.
The officer rode up to my side a little later and entered into a conversation. I treated him the same as I had treated the boy, and when he left me he was almost overpowered with curiosity.
I now discovered that one of the guards was the man whom I had met with a wagon when we crossed the Sulphur Fork of Red River. We talked together, but he did not recognize me. At first I claimed to have seen him before, but he thought not. After bothering him to my heart's content, I reminded him of our having crossed Sulphur Fork together, when he said that he had been suspicious of us at the time. This was so much of the "I-told-you-so" order that I had a good laugh at him for his "hindsight."
The other officers kept dropping back to interview me, and I got their curiosity inflamed to a high degree by talking familiarly of different places and of an imaginary plan of an underground railroad. This caused the officers to become agitated, and I saw that they suspected me of something serious. When a detail was finally sent to take me before the officer in command I concluded that the matter had gone far enough, and, when questioned, I explained how I had become acquainted, on a previous runaway trip, with the people and places spoken of so familiarly. The matter ended in much laughter and some jokes.
During the rest of the march I talked negro suffrage and equality, at times nearly driving our captors wild by picturing the pleasures to come to them when these liberties should prevail. They got mad at times, but seemed to like hearing me talk, and evidently saw that I said more than I meant in some ways; yet I told many truths—which made them mad—about the actual practice by Southern whites of equality with negroes, as evidenced by the thousands of mulattoes among them.
Another source of amusement to me was to bother the guard at night by sleeping away from my companions and as near the guard line as I could. The guards would remonstrate and get mad, but I would blarney them a little and say that I had money on my person which I was afraid my companions would steal, and that I wanted to keep close to them for protection. They could not reasonably object to this, but it made them keep an eye on me in particular, and the various characteristics of the different men were a constant source of study and amusement.
My feelings on this journey were of a kind that kept me constantly on the "qui vive" for something to divert my mind from reflections. To have escaped twice and been recaptured each time was bad enough, especially when one venture had been so nearly a success, and the failure through treachery of the last attempt to get away had seemed to cap the climax at the time; but to see all my regimental comrades file before me on their way to home and friends, while I was sent back to confinement, was the proverbial last straw—only, in this case, it did not break the camel's back; but it was a close call.
I had no interests in Camp Ford that I was not entirely willing to sacrifice for the sake of being at home or with my men, and the Confederacy was welcome to my rations if they would dispense with my presence; but, while my residence in Texas, with free board and lodging, was insisted upon so strongly as being necessary for the good of the country, I really could not leave the good people, not even for the sake of personal pleasures.
Talking to myself in this way when reflections crowded upon me, and by seizing every opportunity to amuse myself at the expense of the guards, I got the camel's back in pretty fair shape again, and resigned myself to the inevitable.