After disposing of our prisoners, we secreted our horses in a dense thicket, and ten of us took our stations on a road leading from Benton, Scott county, Missouri, to watch for Federals. We remained here nearly all day without seeing any, and were thinking about giving it up as a bad job and returning to our camps; but when the sun was about an hour high, in the evening, we discovered five Federals wending their way slowly toward Bloomfield.
My men were divided into two parties, and were stationed about one hundred yards apart. We allowed them to get nearly opposite the second squad of which I was one, then we stepped suddenly into the road before them and demanded a surrender, to which they submitted, but seemed very much alarmed. On calling up my men who had been stationed farther down the road, and who stood at this time behind the prisoners. They seemed somewhat relieved as they recognized one of them as being an old acquaintance, who extended his hand cordially to all of them but one, remarking to him that he would not shake hands with him “until he met him in h—ll.”
They now dismounted and surrendered up their arms and their horses. I then marched them out of the road to a safe distance into the woods and inquired of my man who had recognized them, concerning their character. He reported that all of them were his acquaintances of long standing; that four of them were very clever fellows, these I released immediately; but the fifth one we hung after investigating his case.
When night came we mounted our horses, and taking our booty with us, started back to Arkansas.
CHAPTER XXV.
Put in a crop.—Started to Missouri with nine men.—Killed a soldier near Dallas.—Went to St. Francois county,—Watched for Walls and Baker.—Watched near Big River Mills for McGahan.—Came near shooting Mr. Sharp.—Robbed Burges, Hughes and Kelley of their horses.—Robbed Abright‘s store.—Captured some Federals on White Water.
As we all belonged to the “Independent Bushwhacking Department of the Confederate States of America,” and were entirely dependent on our own exertions for a livelihood, it was necessary now that we should put in our crops.
For nearly two months Crowley‘s Ridge on which we lived, and the adjacent country, looked as if it contained an industrious little community of “honest farmers.”
The axe was heard in every direction; the smoke from burning brush was curling up from a thousand fires, and at night the little boys and girls were making bright fires until midnight, under the impression hinted at by their fathers that it was “such fun.” All day long the women were out in full force with their hoes and their rakes, unmindful of the music of crying babies heard at nearly every cabin. Mothers are nearly always deaf while planting out onions; it is a little season of orphanage through which most children in the country have to pass once a year. We have all passed through that bitter day with red eyes, and it is no wonder that the sight of an onion in after life is so apt to bring tears in our eyes.