Price wanted to leave these supplies for the use of the union army, and he argued as follows: We've got to retreat, and the union army is going to stay here till we drive them out. They are in our country, and more than two hundred miles from their base. They will forage on the country for a large part of their supplies, and if we leave this bacon and corn they will have just so much less to take from the people, who are our people, and not theirs. Arkansas is a seceded state, and the Yankees and Dutch won't have any compunctions about living on the state that they might have in Missouri, which they claim to be still in the union, and are trying to keep there. The easier it is for them to find their living the easier it will be for Arkansas.
On this line of argument Price opposed the destruction of the supplies. McCulloch opposed his view of the matter, and said it was no part of their business to help feed the Yankee army, and what happened to the people was simply the fortune of war. The quarrel reached its height and came near a fighting point when McCulloch accused Price of disloyalty to the South and a willingness to see Arkansas subjugated by the Northern troops.
Price was overruled and the stores were set on fire. His prediction was verified, as the union forces foraged right and left among the people, and certainly caused them much more hardship than would have been the case had the supplies fallen into our hands. Which of them was right in the argument the reader may decide for himself. Certainly the question, like most matters on which men differ, had two well-defined sides.
McCulloch's army had spent the winter at Cross Hollows, where it erected buildings capable of lodging eight or ten thousand men. When the rebels retired from Cross Hollows these buildings were set on fire, and by the time our troops arrived all but half a dozen of them had been consumed. The ashes remained to mark the spot, and the positions of the smoking ash-heaps showed that the cantonment was laid out with the regularity of a carefully-platted town.
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The Third Illinois Cavalry, which was attached to General Vandever's brigade, followed closely upon the heels of the enemy after the skirmish at Sugar Creek, and pushed on in the direction of Fayetteville. A single company was retained by the general for scouting purposes, and to this company Jack and Harry were temporarily attached. The youths were among the first to enter the rebel cantonment and try to save what they could from the flames.
Harry's sharp eyes fell upon some chickens, of which a hundred or more were running wildly about the place.