Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes Of The Civil War — A Hard Road To Travel Out Of Dixie by W.H. Shelton Part 2

Filling our haversacks with the fragments, we took grateful leave of our sable benefactors and resumed our journey, retracing our steps to the point of disagreement of the evening before.

Long experience in night marching had taught us extreme caution.

We had advanced along the new road but a short way when we were startled by the barking of a house-dog.

Apprehending that something was moving in front of us, we instantly withdrew into the woods.

We had scarcely concealed ourselves when two cavalrymen passed along, driving before them a prisoner.

Aware that it was high time to betake ourselves to the cross-roads and describe a wide circle around the military station at Pickensville, we first sought information.

A ray of light was visible from a hut in the woods, and believing from its humble appearance that it sheltered friends, my companions lay down in concealment while I advanced to reconnoiter.

I gained the side of the house, and, looking through a crack in the boards, saw, to my surprise, a soldier lying on his back before the fire playing with a dog.

I stole back with redoubled care.

Thoroughly alarmed by the dangers we had already encountered, we decided to abandon the roads.

Near midnight of December 16 we passed through a wooden gate on a level road leading into the forest.

Believing that the lateness of the hour would secure us from further dangers, we resolved to press on with all speed, when two figures with lighted torches came suddenly into view.

Knowing that we were yet unseen, we turned into the woods and concealed ourselves behind separate trees at no great distance from the path.

Soon the advancing lights revealed two hunters, mere lads, but having at their heels a pack of mongrel dogs, with which they had probably been pursuing the coon or the possum.

The boys would have passed unaware of our presence, but the dogs, scurrying along with their noses in the leaves, soon struck our trail, and were instantly yelping about us.

We had possessed ourselves of the name of the commanding officer of the neighboring post at Pendleton, and advanced boldly, representing ourselves to be his soldiers.

"Then where did you get them blue pantaloons?"

they demanded, exchanging glances, which showed they were not ignorant of our true character.

We coolly faced them down and resumed our march leisurely, while the boys still lingered undecided.

When out of sight we abandoned the road and fled at the top of our speed.

We had covered a long distance through forest and field before we heard in our wake the faint yelping of the pack.

Plunging into the first stream, we dashed for some distance along its bed.

Emerging on the opposite bank, we sped on through marshy fields, skirting high hills and bounding down through dry watercourses, over shelving stones and accumulated barriers of driftwood; now panting up a steep ascent, and now resting for a moment to rub our shoes with the resinous needles of the pine; always within hearing of the dogs, whose fitful cries varied in volume in accordance with the broken conformation of the intervening country.

Knowing that in speed and endurance we were no match for our four-footed pursuers, we trusted to our precautions for throwing them off the scent, mindful that they were but an ill-bred kennel and the more easily to be disposed of.

Physically we were capable of prolonged exertion.

Fainter and less frequent came the cry of the dogs, until, ceasing altogether, we were assured of our escape.

At Oconee, on Sunday, December 18, we met a negro well acquainted with the roads and passes into North Carolina, who furnished us information by which we traveled for two nights, recognizing on the second objects which by his direction we avoided (like the house of Black Bill McKinney), and going directly to that of friendly old Tom Handcock.

The first of these two nights we struggled up the foot-hills and outlying spurs of the mountains, through an uninhabited waste of rolling barrens, along an old stage road, long deserted, and in places impassable to a saddle-mule.

Lying down before morning, high up on the side of the mountain, we fell asleep, to be awakened by thunder and lightning, and to find torrents of hail and sleet beating upon our blankets.

Chilled to the bone, we ventured to build a small fire in a secluded place.

After dark and before abandoning our camp, we gathered quantities of wood, stacking it upon the fire, which when we left it was a wild tower of flame lighting up the whole mountain-side in the direction we had come, and seeming, in some sort, to atone for a long succession of shivering days in tireless bivouac.

We followed the same stage road through the scattering settlement of Casher's Valley in Jackson County, North Carolina.

A little farther on, two houses, of hewn logs, with verandas and green blinds, just fitted the description we had received of the home of old Tom Handcock.

Knocking boldly at the door of the farther one, we were soon in the presence of the loyal mountaineer.

He and his wife had been sleeping on a bed spread upon the floor before the fire.

Drawing this to one side, they heaped the chimney with green wood, and were soon listening with genuine delight to the story of our adventures.

After breakfast next day, Tom, with his rifle, led us by a back road to the house of "'Squire Larkin C. Hooper," a leading loyalist, whom we met on the way, and together we proceeded to his house.

Ragged and forlorn, we were eagerly welcomed at his home by Hooper's invalid wife and daughters.

For several days we enjoyed a hospitality given as freely to utter strangers as if we had been relatives of the family.

[Illustration: WE ARRIVE AT HEADEN'S. ] Here we learned of a party about to start through the mountains for East Tennessee, guided by Emanuel Headen, who lived on the crest of the Blue Ridge.

Our friend Tom was to be one of the party, and other refugees were coming over the Georgia border, where Headen, better known in the settlement as "Man Heady," was mustering his party.

It now being near Christmas, and the squire's family in daily expectation of a relative, who was a captain in the Confederate army, it was deemed prudent for us to go on to Headen's under the guidance of Tom.

Setting out at sunset on the 23d of December, it was late in the evening when we arrived at our destination, having walked nine miles up the mountain trails over a light carpeting of snow.

Pausing in front of a diminutive cabin, through the chinks of whose stone fireplace and stick chimney the whole interior seemed to be red hot like a furnace, our guide demanded, "Is Man Heady to hum?"

Receiving a sharp negative in reply, he continued, "Well, can Tom get to stay all night?"

At this the door flew open and a skinny woman appeared, her homespun frock pendent with tow-headed urchins.

"In course you can," she cried, leading the way into the cabin.

Never have I seen so unique a character as this voluble, hatched-faced, tireless woman.

Her skin was like yellow parchment, and I doubt if she knew by experience what it was to be sick or weary.

She had built the stake-and-cap fences that divided the fields, and she boasted of the acres she had plowed.

The cabin was very small.

Two bedsteads, with a narrow alleyway between, occupied half the interior.

One was heaped with rubbish, and in the other slept the whole family, consisting of father, mother, a daughter of sixteen, and two little boys.

When I add that the room contained a massive timber loom, a table, a spinning-wheel, and a variety of rude seats, it will be understood that we were crowded uncomfortably close to the fire.

Shrinking back as far as possible from the blaze, we listened in amused wonder to the tongue of this seemingly untamed virago, who, nevertheless, proved to be the kindest-hearted of women.

She cursed, in her high, pitched tones, for a pack of fools, the men who had brought on the war.

Roderic Norton, who lived down the mountain, she expressed a profane desire to "stomp through the turnpike" because at some time he had stolen one of her hogs, marked, as to the ear, with "two smooth craps an' a slit in the left."

Once only she had journeyed into the low country, where she had seen those twin marvels, steam cars and brick chimneys.

On this occasion she had driven a heifer to market, making a journey of forty miles, walking beside her horse and wagon, which she took along to bring back the corn-meal received in payment for the animal.

Charged by her husband to bring back the heifer bell, and being denied that musical instrument by the purchaser, it immediately assumed more importance to her mind than horse, wagon, and corn-meal.

Baffled at first, she proceeded to the pasture in the gray of the morning, cornered the cow, and cut off the bell, and, in her own picturesque language, "walked through the streets of Walhalla cussin'."

Rising at midnight she would fall to spinning with all her energy.

To us, waked from sleep on the floor by the humming of the wheel, she seemed by the light of the low fire like a witch in a sunbonnet, darting forward and back.

We remained there several days, sometimes at the cabin and sometimes at a cavern in the rocks such as abound throughout the mountains, and which are called by the natives "rock houses."

Many of the men at that time were "outliers"--that is, they camped in the mountain fastnesses, receiving their food from some member of the family.

Some of these men, as now, had their copper stills in the rock houses, while others, more wary of the recruiting sergeant, wandered from point to point, their only furniture a rifle and a bed-quilt.

On December 29, we were joined at the cavern by Lieutenant Knapp and Captain Smith, Federal officers, who had also made their way from Columbia, and by three refugees from Georgia, whom I remember as Old Man Tigue and the two Vincent boys.

During the night our party was to start across the mountains for Tennessee.

Tom Handcock was momentarily expected to join us.

Our guide was busy with preparations for the journey.

The night coming on icy cold, and a cutting wind driving the smoke of the fire into our granite house, we abandoned it at nine o'clock and descended to the cabin.

Headen and his wife had gone to the mill for a supply of corn-meal.

Although it was time for their return, we were in nowise alarmed by their absence, and formed a jovial circle about the roaring chimney.

About midnight came a rap on the door.

Thinking it was Tom Handcock and some of his companions, I threw it open with an eager "Come in, boys!"

The boys began to come in, stamping the snow from their boots and rattling their muskets on the floor, until the house was full, and yet others were on guard without and crowding the porch.

"Man Heady" and his wife were already prisoners at the mill, and the house had been picketed for some hours awaiting the arrival of the other refugees, who had discovered the plot just in time to keep out of the toils.

Marshaled in some semblance of military array, we were marched down the mountain, over the frozen ground, to the house of old Roderic Norton.

The Yankee officers were sent to an upper room, while the refugees were guarded below, under the immediate eyes of the soldiery.

Making the best of our misfortune, our original trio bounced promptly into a warm bed, which had been recently deserted by some members of the family, and secured a good night's rest.

Lieutenant Knapp, who had imprudently indulged in frozen chestnuts on the mountain-side, was attacked with violent cramps, and kept the household below stairs in commotion all night humanely endeavoring to assuage his agony.

In the morning, although quite recovered, he cunningly feigned a continuance of his pains, and was left behind in the keeping of two guards, who, having no suspicion of his deep designs, left their guns in the house and went out to the spring to wash.

Knapp, instantly on the alert, possessed himself of the muskets, and breaking the lock of one, by a powerful effort he bent the barrel of the other, and dashed out through the garden.

His keepers, returning from the spring, shouted and rushed indoors only to find their disabled pieces.

They joined our party later in the day, rendering a chapfallen account of their detached service.

We had but a moderate march to make to the headquarters of the battalion, where we were to spend the night.

Our guards we found kindly disposed toward us, but bitterly upbraiding the refugees, whom they saluted by the ancient name of Tories.

Lieutenant Cogdill, in command of the expedition, privately informed us that his sympathies were entirely ours, but as a matter of duty he should guard us jealously while under his military charge.

If we could effect our escape thereafter we had only to come to his mountain home and he would conceal us until such time as he could despatch us with safety over the borders.

These mountain soldiers were mostly of two classes, both opposed to the war, but doing home-guard duty in lieu of sterner service in the field.

Numbers were of the outlier class, who, wearied of continual hiding in the laurel brakes, had embraced this service as a compromise.

Many were deserters, some of whom had coolly set at defiance the terms of their furloughs, while others had abandoned the camps in Virginia, and, versed in mountain craft, had made their way along the Blue Ridge and put in a heroic appearance in their native valleys.

That night we arrived at a farm-house near the river, where we found Major Parker, commanding the battalion, with a small detachment billeted upon the family.

The farmer was a gray-haired old loyalist, whom I shall always remember, leaning on his staff in the middle of the kitchen, barred out from his place in the chimney-corner by the noisy circle of his unbidden guests.

Major Parker was a brisk little man, clad in brindle jeans of ancient cut, resplendent with brass buttons.

Two small piercing eyes, deep-set beside a hawk's-beak nose, twinkled from under the rim of his brown straw hat, whose crown was defiantly surmounted by a cock's feather.

But he was exceedingly jolly withal, and welcomed the Yankees with pompous good-humor, despatching a sergeant for a jug of applejack, which was doubtless as inexpensive to the major as his other hospitality.

Having been a prisoner at Chicago, he prided himself on his knowledge of dungeon etiquette and the military courtesies due to our rank.

We were awakened in the morning by high-pitched voices in the room below.

Lieutenant Sill and I had passed the night in neighboring caverns of the same miraculous feather-bed.

We recognized the voice of the major, informing some culprit that he had just ten minutes to live, and that if he wished to send any dying message to his wife or children then and there was his last opportunity; and then followed the tramping of the guards as they retired from his presence with their victim.

Hastily dressing, we hurried down to find what was the matter.

We were welcomed with a cheery good-morning from the major, who seemed to be in the sunniest of spirits.

No sign of commotion was visible.

"Step out to the branch, gentlemen; your parole of honor is sufficient; you'll find towels--been a prisoner myself."

And he restrained by a sign the sentinel who would have accompanied us.

At the branch, in the yard, we found the other refugees trembling for their fate, and learned that Headen had gone to the orchard in the charge of a file of soldiers with a rope.

While we were discussing the situation and endeavoring to calm the apprehensions of the Georgians, the executioners returned from the orchard, our guide marching in advance and looking none the worse for the rough handling he had undergone.

The brave fellow had confided his last message and been thrice drawn up toward the branch of an apple-tree, and as many times lowered for the information it was supposed he would give.

Nothing was learned, and it is probable he had no secrets to disclose or conceal.

Lieutenant Cogdill, with two soldiers, was detailed to conduct us to Quallatown, a Cherokee station at the foot of the Great Smoky Mountains.

Two horses were allotted to the guard, and we set out in military order, the refugees two and two in advance, Headen and Old Man Tigue lashed together by the wrists, and the rear brought up by the troopers on horseback.

It was the last day of the year, and although a winter morning, the rare mountain air was as soft as spring.

We struck the banks of the Tuckasegee directly opposite to a feathery waterfall, which, leaping over a crag of the opposite cliff, was dissipated in a glittering sheet of spray before reaching the tops of the trees below.

As the morning advanced we fell into a more negligent order of marching.

The beautiful river, a wide, swift current, flowing smoothly between thickly wooded banks, swept by on our left, and on the right wild, uninhabited mountains closed in the road.

The two Vincents were strolling along far in advance.

Some distance behind them were Headen and Tigue; the remainder of us following in a general group, Sill mounted beside one of the guards.

Advancing in this order, a cry from the front broke on the stillness of the woods, and we beheld Old Man Tigue gesticulating wildly in the center of the road and screaming, "He's gone!

He's gone!

Catch him!"

Sure enough the old man was alone, the fragment of the parted strap dangling from his outstretched wrist.

The guard, who was mounted, dashed off in pursuit, followed by the lieutenant on foot, but both soon returned, giving over the hopeless chase.

Thoroughly frightened by the events of the morning, Headen[18] had watched his opportunity to make good his escape, and, as we afterward learned, joined by Knapp and Tom Handcock, he conducted a party safely to Tennessee.

[Footnote 18: A short time ago the writer received the following letter: "Casher's Valley, May 28, 1890. Old Manuel Headen and wife are living, but separated.

Julia Ann is living with her mother.

The old lady is blind.

Old man Norton (Roderic), to whose house you were taken as prisoner, has been dead for years.

Old Tom Handcock is dead.

--W.

R.

HOOPER."

] At Webster, the court town of Jackson County, we were quartered for the night in the jail, but accompanied Lieutenant Cogdill to a venison breakfast at the parsonage with Mrs. Harris and her daughter, who had called on us the evening before.

Snow had fallen during the night, and when we continued our march it was with the half-frozen slush crushing in and out, at every step, through our broken shoes.

Before the close of this dreary New-Year's day we came upon the scene of one of those wild tragedies which are still of too frequent occurrence in those remote regions, isolated from the strong arm of the law.

Our road led down and around the mountain-side, which on our right was a barren, rocky waste, sloping gradually up from the inner curve of the arc we were describing.

From this direction arose a low wailing sound, and a little farther on we came in view of a dismal group of men, women, and mules.

In the center of the gathering lay the lifeless remains of a father and his two sons; seated upon the ground, swaying and weeping over their dead, were the mother and wives of the young men.

A burial party, armed with spades and picks, waited by their mules, while at a respectful distance from the mourners stood a circle of neighbors and passers-by, some gazing in silent sympathy, and others not hesitating to express a quiet approval of the shocking tragedy.

Between two families, the Hoopers and the Watsons, a bitter feud had long existed, and from time to time men of each clan had fallen by the rifles of the other.

The Hoopers were loyal Union men, and if the Watsons yielded any loyalty it was to the State of North Carolina.

On one occasion shortly before the final tragedy, when one of the young Hoopers was sitting quietly in his door, a light puff of smoke rose from the bushes and a rifle-ball plowed through his leg.

The Hoopers resolved to begin the new year by wiping out their enemies, root and branch.

Before light they had surrounded the log cabin of the Watsons and secured all the male inmates, except one who, wounded, escaped through a window.

The latter afterward executed a singular revenge by killing and skinning the dog of his enemies and elevating the carcass on a pole in front of their house.

[Illustration: THE ESCAPE OF HEADEN.

] After a brief stay at Quallatown we set out for Asheville, leaving behind our old and friendly guard.

Besides the soldiers who now had us in charge, a Cherokee Indian was allotted to each prisoner, with instructions to keep his man constantly in view.

To travel with an armed Indian, sullen and silent, trotting at your heels like a dog, with very explicit instructions to blow out your brains at the first attempt to escape, is neither cheerful nor ornamental, and we were a sorry-looking party plodding silently along the road.

Detachments of prisoners were frequently passed over this route, and regular stopping-places were established for the nights.

It was growing dusk when we arrived at the first cantonment, which was the wing of a great barren farm-house owned by Colonel Bryson.

The place was already occupied by a party of refugees, and we were directed to a barn in the field beyond.

We had brought with us uncooked rations, and while two of the soldiers went into the house for cooking utensils, the rest of the party, including the Indians, were leaning in a line upon the door-yard fence; Sill and Lamson were at the end of the line, where the fence cornered with a hedge.

Presently the two soldiers reappeared, one of them with an iron pot in which to cook our meat, and the other swinging in his hand a burning brand.

In the wake of these guides we followed down to the barn, and had already started a fire when word came from the house that for fear of rain we had best return to the corn-barn.

It was not until we were again in the road that I noticed the absence of Sill and Lamson.

I

hastened to Smith and confided the good news.

The fugitives were missed almost simultaneously by the guards, who first beat up the vicinity of the barn, and then, after securing the remainder of us in a corn-crib, sent out the Indians in pursuit.

Faithful dogs, as these Cherokees had shown themselves during the day, they proved but poor hunters when the game was in the bush, and soon returned, giving over the chase.

Half an hour later they were all back in camp, baking their hoe-cake in genuine aboriginal fashion, flattened on the surface of a board and inclined to the heat of the fire.

[19] [Footnote 19: Sill and Lamson reached Loudon, Tennessee, in February.

A

few days after their escape from the Indian guard they arrived at the house of "Shooting John Brown," who confided them to the care of the young Hoopers and a party of their outlying companions.

From a rocky cliff overlooking the valley of the Tuckasegee they could look down on the river roads dotted with the sheriff's posse in pursuit of the Hoopers.

So near were they that they could distinguish a relative of the Watsons leading the sheriff's party.

One of the Hooper boys, with characteristic recklessness and to the consternation of the others, stood boldly out on a great rock in plain sight of his pursuers (if they had chanced to look up), half resolved to try his rifle at the last of the Watsons.

] That I was eager to follow goes without saying, but our keepers had learned our slippery character.

All the way to Asheville, day and night, we were watched with sleepless vigilance.

There we gave our parole, Smith and I, and secured thereby comfortable quarters in the court-house with freedom to stroll about the town.

Old Man Tigue and the Vincents were committed to the county jail.

We were there a week, part of my spare time being employed in helping a Confederate company officer make out a correct pay-roll.

When our diminished ranks had been recruited by four more officers from Columbia, who had been captured near the frozen summit of the Great Smoky Mountains, we were started on a journey of sixty miles to Greenville in South Carolina.

The night before our arrival we were quartered at a large farm-house.

The prisoners, together with the privates of the guard, were allotted a comfortable room, which contained, however, but a single bed.

The officer in charge had retired to enjoy the hospitality of the family.

A flock of enormous white pullets were roosting in the yard.

Procuring an iron kettle from the servants, who looked with grinning approval upon all forms of chicken stealing, we sallied forth to the capture.

Twisting the precious necks of half a dozen, we left them to die in the grass while we pierced the side of a sweet-potato mound.

Loaded with our booty we retreated to the house undiscovered, and spent the night in cooking in one pot instead of sleeping in one bed.

The fowls were skinned instead of plucked, and, vandals that we were, dressed on the backs of the picture-frames taken down from the walls.

At Greenville we were lodged in the county jail to await the reconstruction of railway-bridges, when we were to be transported to Columbia.

The jail was a stone structure, two stories in height, with halls through the center on both floors and square rooms on each side.

The lock was turned on our little party of six in one of these upper rooms, having two grated windows looking down on the walk.

Through the door which opened on the hall a square hole was cut as high as one's face and large enough to admit the passage of a plate.

Aside from the rigor of our confinement we were treated with marked kindness.

We had scarcely walked about our dungeon before the jailer's daughters were at the door with their autograph albums.

In a few days we were playing draughts and reading Bulwer, while the girls, without, were preparing our food and knitting for us warm new stockings.

Notwithstanding all these attentions, we were ungratefully discontented.

At the end of the first week we were joined by seven enlisted men, Ohio boys, who like ourselves had been found at large in the mountains.

From one of these new arrivals we procured a case-knife and a gun screw-driver.

Down on the hearth before the fire the screw-driver was placed on the thick edge of the knife and belabored with a beef bone until a few inches of its back were converted into a rude saw.

The grate in the window was formed of cast-iron bars, passing perpendicularly through wrought-iron plates, bedded in the stone jambs.

If one of these perpendicular bars, an inch and a half square, could be cut through, the plates might be easily bent so as to permit the egress of a man.

With this end in view we cautiously began operations.

Outside of the bars a piece of carpet had been stretched to keep out the raw wind, and behind this we worked with safety.

An hour's toil produced but a few feathery filings on the horizontal plate, but many hands make light work, and steadily the cut grew deeper.

We recalled the adventures of Claude Duval, Dick Turpin, and Sixteen-string Jack, and sawed away.

During the available hours of three days and throughout one entire night the blade of steel was worrying, rasping, eating the iron bar.

At last the grosser yielded to the temper and persistence of the finer metal.

It was Saturday night when the toilsome cut was completed, and preparations were already under way for a speedy departure.

The jail had always been regarded as too secure to require a military guard, although soldiers were quartered in the town; besides, the night was so cold that a crust had formed on the snow, and both citizens and soldiers, unused to such extreme weather would be likely to remain indoors.

For greater secrecy of movement, we divided into small parties, aiming to traverse different roads.

I was to go with my former companion, Captain Smith.

Lots were cast to determine the order of our going.

First exit was allotted to four of the Ohio soldiers.

Made fast to the grating outside were a bit of rope and strip of blanket, along which to descend.

Our room was immediately over that of the jailer and his sleeping family, and beneath our opening was a window, which each man must pass in his descent.

At eleven o'clock the exodus began.

The first man was passed through the bars amid a suppressed buzz of whispered cautions.

His boots were handed after him in a haversack.

The rest of us, pressing our faces to the frosty grating, listened breathlessly for the success of the movement we could no longer see.

Suddenly there was a crash, and in the midst of mutterings of anger we snatched in the rag ladder and restored the piece of carpeting to its place outside the bars.

Our pioneer had hurt his hand against the rough stones, and, floundering in mid-air, had dashed his leg through sash and glass of the window below.

We could see nothing of his further movements, but soon discovered the jailer standing in the door, looking up and down the street, seemingly in the dark as to where the crash came from.

At last, wearied and worried and disappointed, we lay down in our blankets upon the hard floor.