CHAPTER XXXIII. A NEW SCOUTING EXPEDITION--CAPTURED BY THE ENEMY.
|General Curtis wants you to go on an expedition,” said GeneralVandever, when the youths reported to him. “Are you ready for it?”
“Certainly, General,” replied Harry; “anything that you order we ‘ll doif we can.”
“It is n’t an order,” said the general, smiling, “as it is one of thosethings that come outside of orders.”
Then he paused, and the youths waited for him to continue, which he didin a moment.
“It’s an expedition into the enemy’s country, where you ‘ll run a gooddeal of risk; but, as you are not enlisted into the service, you canundertake it without compromising yourselves to the same extent thata soldier would. You ‘ll have to go in disguise, and conceal your realcharacter. There’s where the risk comes in.”
The general left them, while he strolled outside his tent, to give theman opportunity to consider the proposal.
“I’m ready to go, Jack,” said Harry, “provided you are.”
“Of course I’m ready enough,” was the reply, “and feel sure we shall getthrough all right. We can play our old game that we succeeded withlast year, though we may have to vary it a good deal, according tocircumstances.” When the general returned they announced their decision.He immediately accompanied them to General Curtis’s tent, and theyreceived their instructions.
“I want you to go to Fort Scott, in Kansas, about one hundred milesnorthwest from here; go as quickly as you can, but don’t press yourhorses or appear to be in a great hurry. Take two days for the trip, orthree, if necessary, and when you get there do as the commander of thepost directs you. I will see that you are provided with ‘butternut’clothes during the day; and if you are using military saddles on yourhorses, you had better change them for common ones of the country.
“I have heard of the cleverness you have shown on previous occasions,” the general continued, “and have no doubt you will get through all rightand come back safely. But it will require courage and presence of mind,as you are likely to meet scouting parties of the enemy, and must beprepared to play your characters well.”
The boys promised they would do their best, and at a signal from GeneralVandever they saluted and retired.
From a quantity of clothing in the hands of the quartermaster theyselected two well-worn suits of common material of the country. Thoughwell worn, the suits were clean, having been recently washed, and byorder of General Vandever the garments were sent to General Curtis forhis chief of staff to inspect. The inspection showed that they neededmending in several places, to insure their holding out through thejourney, and they were accordingly submitted to the care of theheadquarters’ tailor for a few hours. To make sure that the work wasproperly done, the chief of staff had it performed in his own tent,and directly under his eye, being unwilling to trust the tailor out ofsight.
Toward evening the patched and mended garments were ready, and werebrought by an orderly to General Vandever’s tent. Their hats and bootswere in keeping with the rest of their wardrobe, and when fully riggedthe boys looked the very picture of natives of the soil of Missouri orArkansas. By General Vandever’s order they did not show themselves aboutthe camp in their new outfit, but remained closely concealed in a tentin the rear of his. They ate a hearty supper and went early into theirblankets, so as to be up and off before the break of day.
Nearly two hours before daylight their horses, which had been tied closeto the general’s tent and well fed, were saddled, and the boys, afterswallowing a hasty and very early breakfast, announced themselves readyto start. The general bade them good-bye, and said his adjutant wouldescort them out of the lines.
“But we have n’t any dispatches yet,” said Harry. “We supposed GeneralCurtis had some dispatches for us to carry.”
“Don’t you remember, he said, ‘Go to Fort Scott and do as the postcommander directs you’? That’s all. You ‘ll get your orders when youarrive there.”
Satisfied with the explanation, Harry returned the general’s good-bye,and so did Jack. The adjutant appeared at this moment, and underthe convoy of a single cavalryman they moved in the direction of thenorthern boundary of the camp.
Under the orders of the adjutant the picket allowed the two youths topass, and in a few moments they were lost in the darkness. They joggedslowly along the road until daylight came, and then, as the countrybecame visible, quickened their pace.
After riding about three hours, and meeting no interruption, they haltedat the crossing of a small creek to eat some of the corn-bread theycarried in their pockets, and give their horses a chance to graze.It was Harry’s suggestion that they should provide themselves withcorn-bread instead of dry biscuit or hard-tack, such as formed therations of the soldiers. “You see,” he explained, “the hard-tack mightgive us away in case we are stopped and searched; but if we carrynothing but corn-bread, which everybody eats in this country, it won’tbe at all suspicious.” Jack agreed to the soundness of this argument,and accordingly corn-bread formed their sole supply of provisions, withthe addition of a few slices of bacon.
While they were lying on the ground, indulging in their very plain meal,a party of ten or twelve men appeared suddenly, from the direction theyintended to go. Their leader brought them to a halt, and they quicklysurrounded the two boys.
Harry and Jack were prepared for just such an emergency, and continuedto munch their corn-bread with the greatest unconcern. The leader of thescouting party asked who they were and where they were going.
“We’s from Forsyth way, and want to find some Home-Guard Yankees thatstole two of our horses,” Harry explained.
“Forsyth way? Then you know Pony Matteson, down on Dobbin’s Branch.”
“Don’t know him,” answered Harry, “but I’ve heard tell of him. We ain’tlived there long enough to know many folks; used to live up close toRolla, till the Yanks drove us out six months ago.”
This suggestion appeared satisfactory to the questioner, as it impliedthe soundness of the youths on the war-question. But he was notaltogether convinced, and asked if they’d been in the army.
Harry answered that they tried to get down to join Price’s army beforethe battle of Pea Ridge, but were captured by the Yankee soldiers, andonly got away by promising to go home and stay there. Since the battlethe country had been in the hands of the Yankees and Home Guards, andthey had to hide in the bushes most of the time to keep out of the way.
Then he went into a general denunciation of the Yankees, and gavedetails, somewhat garrulous, about their appearance and conduct. To thishe added stories of what the people around the battlefield said aboutthem, and altogether gave them anything but a good character.
The leader cut short the talk by ordering the boys to stand up. Needlessto say they obeyed, but with a wondering expression on their faces.
“We’ll go through you,” said he, with more emphasis than civility in histone, “and if we find out you’re lying it ‘ll be bad for you.”
At his orders four of the men searched the youths, turning their pocketsinside out, and looking in the inside of their hats and shoes. Ifany dispatches had been concealed there they would surely have beendiscovered. By advice of General Vandever, rather than their owninclination, they had taken no weapons of any kind, and now they thankedtheir stars that they were unarmed. Had they carried their pistols theywould have been of no use at this juncture, and would certainly have gotthem into trouble.
Harry had a pocket-knife, very old and worn, and this he was allowed tokeep. Jack had a dozen fish-hooks in his pocket and three or four yardsof line, in addition to eight or ten dollars in rebel shinplasters. Theshin-plasters and fish-hooks were appropriated by the searchers, andalso the line, the captain remarking that they could buy more line whenthey got home. The pieces of corn-bread which they had in their pocketswere left to them, along with the pocket-knife, and then they were toldthey might go.
Jack protested against the loss of his fish-hooks,
but he did notcontinue the protest very long. Then Harry assumed the role ofquestioner, and asked about the roads leading to the northwest, and wasparticularly anxious to ascertain if any Home Guards had been seen inthat direction. He described the lost horses minutely, and asked thecaptain to send word to James Pratt at Forsyth in case he found outwhere the horses were.
With this parting request he mounted his steed, thankful that it wasleft to him, and Harry followed his example. It was fortunate for theyouths that the scouting party were all well mounted and their horseswere fresh, as they would have been quite likely to ask for an exchange,and make it, too, without waiting to ascertain if an exchange wasdesired by the parties of the second part.
“They’re pretty searching in their investigations,” said Harry, assoon as they were out of sight and hearing. “It was lucky we had nodispatches about our hats or boots.”
“Yes, indeed,” responded Jack. “Wonder what the next party ‘ll do?Perhaps they ‘ll make us take off our clothes and see if we have n’tsomething written on our skins.”
“That’s a good idea,” said Harry. “I ‘ll suggest it to General Vandeverthe next time he wants to send a courier through the enemy’s country.”
“I have it,” exclaimed Jack. “Why not put a dispatch under a porous orsome other plaster between a fellow’s shoulders? Nobody would think ofdisturbing it.”
“Don’t be so sure of that,” was the reply. “The plaster is an old trickof diamond smugglers; it has been successfully used, and it has alsobeen detected. It might work on these country jayhawkers, but anybody ofexperience is sure to have heard of it.”
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As they rode along they busied themselves with devising means ofconcealing dispatches and making ciphers which would be absolutely blindto the uninitiated and only read by those possessing the key. As fast asone of them designed a mode of concealment the other cited an instanceof its previous use, and whenever one proposed a cipher the othermanaged in one way or another to show its defects.
They had about come to the conclusion that Solomon was right when hesaid there was nothing new under the sun, when suddenly a gruff voicefrom the bushes at the roadside called out:
“Halt, there!”
They looked in the direction whence the sound came, and saw the muzzlesof four or five rifles pointing directly at them. It is needless to saythey halted.
The Lost Army Page 33