I now decided to change my tactics, and try my luck alone and on foot. I thought that by stealthy movements I could find my family and get them off to Arkansas much better than with a small company of men.
In a few days I met my family about twenty miles south from Bloomfield on their way to Arkansas, in an old wagon pulled by a small yoke of oxen, which my wife was driving. I learned from her that some of Capt. Bolin‘s men had removed her from Flat Woods to Bloomfield, in Stoddard county, Missouri, but that McNeal, on taking possession of the town, had ordered her to leave, adding that the wife and family of that “desperado, Sam Hildebrand,” could not remain within one hundred miles of his headquarters.
With the wagon and oxen furnished her by a friend to our cause, she took the children and some provisions and started out upon the road, and when I met them she was making her way as best she could, but was just preparing to camp for the night in the lone woods. She cautioned me very particularly about the Federals, and said that she had seen two or three squads that day. On the following morning we resumed our journey, and about ten o‘clock I met six Union soldiers, who came suddenly upon me at a short turn in the road, but, being dressed in Federal uniform, they did not suspicion me as being a Rebel. They asked me to what command I belonged, and I answered them to Capt. Rice‘s, stationed at that time in Fredericktown; at this they seemed satisfied, and passed on, swearing vengeance against any Rebels that might fall in their way.
As soon as they were out of sight, I told my wife to drive on, while I traveled through the brush awhile. I had scarcely got out of the road when I discovered a whole regiment of Federal soldiers, not more than half a mile off, who were coming directly toward us. I soon gained an eminence in the woods, from which I could observe their maneuvers. They stopped at the wagon, and after parleying with my wife for several minutes, they turned her team around and took my family along.
At this juncture it is needless to say that I became enraged, and knowing an old rebel citizen about two miles off, I resolved at once to go to him, thinking that perhaps I might hear from some of our boys, for I was sure that if there were any in the neighborhood the old man would know it. I was overjoyed when he told me that James Cato and Wash Nabors were taking a nap in the barn, while he was standing on the lookout. I repaired to the barn at once, told them the fate of my family, and that I wanted their assistance that we might amuse ourselves in bushwhacking them.
After getting something to eat, and some provisions to take along with us, we started through the dense forest, and got in sight of them about sundown. Before darkness set in we killed a man apiece, and then lurked around the camp all night. About every two hours, Cato, Nabors and myself would meet at a certain hill, designated before dark, and report progress. I made a great many random shots, but I think that during the night I killed as many as fifteen men. My comrades thought that they both together killed as many more. I learned afterwards that the number we killed during the night was just thirty; none were wounded that I ever could hear of.
Morning began to approach, and we fell back to a high hill, until they began to move toward Bloomfield. Throughout the day they kept their skirmish lines so strong that we could do nothing; however, we got several shots, at long range, at their scouts, but during the entire day I was not certain of killing more than two men.
We kept in the woods, as near the troops as we could, until we had followed them into the very suburbs of Bloomfield; then we started back along the road about dark, intending to pick up stragglers. Judge of my surprise and joy when, on going back, I came across my wife and children sitting by the roadside, where the Federals had left them about noon, but without the oxen and wagon, and without any provisions, bedding or change of clothing.
The capture of my wife had proved rather fatal to them, and her detention among them had produced nothing but disaster and death.
It reminded me of a passage of Scripture that I once heard my mother read from the Book of Samuel, giving an account of the Philistines having captured the ark of the covenant; they took it from one place to another, but a plague was produced wherever it was detained, until many thousands were dead. Finally, to get it out of their hands, they hitched up a yoke of cattle to a cart, and without any driver started it out of the country. The Federals, however, varied somewhat from the Philistines, for, instead of giving her a cart and oxen, and loading her down with presents of gold, they took her wagon and oxen and everything else she had, and left her by the roadside in an unknown wilderness.