The Lost Army

by Thomas Wallace Knox

“You understand,” said he, “that a general must depend a good deal on what his scouts tell him, and to avoid being deceived by them he is compelled to use a great deal of judgment. There are three classes of scouts: those who are really brave, cool and truthful; those who intend to be honest, but are timid and credulous, and lastly those who are born liars and boasters. The first are not always to be had, and at best are scarce, and so a general's scouting force is largely made up of the second and third classes. The second class get their information from the frightened inhabitants, and the fifty or so that composed the scouting party of rebels which came as far as 'Wilson's Creek were easily magnified into five or ten thousand; the imagination and fears of the scouts doubled the numbers given by the inhabitants, and thus the fictitious army was created. As for the liars and boasters, they are always, if their stories could be believed, doing prodigies of valor and whipping ten or twenty times their number of the enemy.

“What they principally do is to scare the people through whose country they ride, and many of them are not above plundering after a fashion no better than downright robbery. Generally they are in no hurry to meet the enemy face to face, but confine their scouting to places that are entirely safe.”

The soldier knew what he was talking about. Among Fremont's followers were several men of this sort with the rank of captain or lieutenant, and several who were unattached to any command and had an air of mystery about them. One of them used to ride out of camp about sunset as though bent on an important mission. He would return in the morning with a thrilling story of a night's ride, in which he had several times been fired upon by rebel scouting parties, and had used his revolver with such effect as to leave five or perhaps ten of his enemies dead upon the ground.

The fact was he went only a mile or two, and there spent the night at a farmhouse, having previously informed himself as to the entire safety of the place.

Another so-called scout was a forager whose equal is rarely to be seen. Whenever the army went into camp he would take half-a-dozen companions and start on a foraging expedition, from which he returned with a varied assortment of things, most of which were utterly unsuited to the uses of an army in the field and had to be left behind. One day he brought back a wagon drawn by two oxen and two cows, and with a horse attached behind it. Inside the wagon he had a pair of bull-terrier pups about three months old, a hoopskirt, and other articles of the feminine wardrobe, a baby's cradle and also a grain-reaping one, a rocking-chair, some battered railway-spikes, three door-mats and a side-saddle. Another time he returned with a family carriage drawn by a horse and a mule, and containing a litter of young kittens without the mother-cat, a bird-cage with a frightened canary in it, an empty parrot-cage, several bound volumes of sermons by celebrated English divines, and a box of garden-seeds.

This same scout got into trouble afterwards in a queer sort of a way. While on a foraging tour at one time he secured a lot of ready-made clothing, which he found in a trunk where some salt belonging to the rebel authorities had been stored. The quartermaster refused to receive the trunk and contents, and so the captain carried it to St. Louis and took it to the hotel where he temporarily stopped.

It so happened that some detectives were hunting for a suspected thief, who was said to be stopping at the hotel. They got into the captain's room by mistake and searched his trunk while he was absent; they did not find the articles they sought but they did find thirteen coats of different sizes, without any waistcoats or trousers to match. This was considered such a remarkable wardrobe for a gentleman to carry, that they did not hesitate to arrest him on general principles. He was locked up over night and did not succeed in obtaining his liberty until the quartermaster could be found to show that the goods were not stolen, but were simply the spoils of war.

Immediately after his removal, General Fremont, who had been in command just one hundred days, returned with his staff to St. Louis, and the army was ordered back to the line of the railway. On the ninth of November it evacuated Springfield, which was soon after occupied by General Price, and the second campaign of the Southwest was over. General Hunter remained only fifteen days in command and was succeeded by General Halleck, who proceeded to undo pretty nearly everything that Fremont had established.

Late in November Jack and Harry found themselves once more in Rolla, where a part of the army of the Southwest went into winter quarters. The rebels were content to remain in Springfield, though they sent scouting and foraging parties at irregular intervals to scour the country between those two points and gather whatever supplies could be obtained. The commander at Rolla also sent out similar expeditions, which were frequently accompanied by our young friends, and thus each army was fairly well informed as to what the other was doing.

The retirement of the Union forces gave the rebels great encouragement, and they pushed their recruiting through the interior country with great activity. They threatened to capture St. Louis, at least in words, and so loud were their promises that many of their sympathizers believed them.