During our walk he laid before me many of his plots and plans, which fully convinced me that he designated to excite the minds of the negroes with the hope of ultimately expelling all the white people from the State, except their immediate friends from the North.
We finally arrived at the place, but it proved to be a Rebel camp instead of a negro cabin. On coming up to the boys my missionary seemed to be badly alarmed, but made no show of resistance. We hung the scallawag to a limb, where he remained until we got our dinner, then we took him down and threw him into a hole of water, with a large stone tied to his feet. We crossed White river at a ferry several miles below Batesville, immediately after which we came suddenly upon a company of twenty armed men dressed in citizen‘s clothes. As we were not posted in regard to the state of affairs in that part of the State, we were utterly at a loss to know to which side they belonged in this war.
We were first seen by a tall, awkward looking specimen of humanity, who stepped out in front of us and questioned us about who we were and where we were going.
He held in his hand a double-barreled gun large enough to have killed all eight of us at one fire. Without answering his questions, as we wished to take items before committing ourselves, I asked “where is your Captain?” He replied that he was going to serve as captain himself, and immediately made a remark that led us to understand that they were merely a party starting out on a “bear hunt.”
At night we stopped at the Round Pond, and ascertained that there was but little Union sentiment in that part of the State, and that we would meet with no trouble from the Federals until we got into the counties bordering on Arkansas river. We avoided a military camp at Clinton, not knowing to a certainty whether they were Rebels or not.
We had no source of information upon which we could explicitly rely. On arriving in Conway county we stayed all night with an old gentleman on Point Remove; but being fearful that our horses might be stolen, we concluded to sleep under a shed between the stable and the smokehouse.
About one o‘clock in the night we saw two negroes approaching the smoke house very cautiously; after some little time they succeeded in removing a log, when one of them crawled in. We made an attempt to arrest the one on the outside, but he got away, followed by two shots, which, however, missed him. A great consternation was produced in the house, and out the old man came with a light. On taking our prisoner out he made a clean breast of it; he confessed that he belonged to a band of eight negroes, who were camped on the bank of Arkansas river, between Point Remove and Gilmore‘s Landing; that they were led by a white man, and were in the habit of robbing white people, and making them tell where their money was concealed by burning their feet.
On the next morning he consented to pilot us to the place where they were camped; but instead of taking us directly to the place, he took us a mile around through the cane, and finally brought us back to within two hundred yards of where we had been before, and then pointed to their camp. Here it was, sure enough, but the birds had flown.
For this trick the body of a dead negro was soon discovered floating down the muddy river.
I was much mortified in thus failing to squelch the foot-burning scallawag who was leading the negroes on to such acts of cruelty; but he succeeded in getting away and is no doubt by this time in Congress.