The Bright Side of Prison Life Part 6

CHAPTER X.

RECAPTURED.

Our first objective point after leaving our negro friends was a ferry on the Sulphur Fork of Red River, to which we had been directed by them.

We had reached the plain, direct road to the place, and were journeying along quite happily, in single file, about 2 o'clock A. M. on Sunday, our ninth day out, when we suddenly met and pa.s.sed a negro man. Our recent experience prompted me to interview him, and my comrades halted in the brush by the roadside while I retraced my steps to overtake the man and learn what we had to expect as we advanced.

He stopped readily as I caught up with him and called out, proving to be a very intelligent darkey, who was on his way home after having been to see his best girl. We had a long and satisfactory talk, and I took him to where my companions were waiting. We found that he was well posted on army matters and the general situation of the country, and he seemed quite anxious to help us all he could, informing us of our near proximity to the ferry, which we might have trouble to cross without help.

By the advice of our new friend, whose name was George, and with his guidance, we removed to a secure hiding place in a ravine, while he agreed to see a friend of his who worked for the ferryman and endeavor to arrange with him for our trip across the river. Our hiding place was perfectly secure against anything except the mosquitoes and gnats, and we were soon discovered by large numbers of these companionable insects.

George was to see us again in the afternoon, and we tried to pa.s.s away the time by sleeping, but our attempts were not successful. We arranged to sleep in turns, one sitting up to keep off the flies and mosquitoes, but it was more than one could do to keep the tormentors away from his own face and hands; so each of us had to sit up for himself, and sleeping was impossible.

At the appointed time George brought us some food and informed us that we could cross the ferry that night, which we did, his friend ferrying us without charge. The interest of the negroes in us was very great, and they could not do enough for us.

When we left the ferry it was dark and muddy, and we lost our way in the river bottom. After wandering around for a time we blundered into a brier patch and stuck fast in the thorns. The work of our knives, with the a.s.sistance of considerable emphatic language, finally released us, and we eventually stumbled into the road again, completely exhausted.

Lying down in the mud at the side of the road, we got what sleep we could until daylight dawned.

Our breakfast consisted of biscuits and sow belly, the latter not being remarkable for its freshness.

Proceeding on our way, we came to a huckleberry swamp, into the recesses of which we retired to avoid ferry pa.s.sengers and to eat our fill of the fruit, which we did at our leisure.

Later in the day we emerged from the swamp and soon came to the high road, which we crossed in a hurry. Coming to a good camping place, we stopped to light a fire and try to cook some sweet potatoes.

Our fire department was called upon to furnish us with a light, and we crowded about him to witness the operation.

The gallant chief produced the apparatus with a confident air, and I loaned him my jack-knife for a steel. He held the gourd handle between his knees, as he had seen the negro boy hold it, carefully placing the charred cotton therein, and then, with all the apparent a.s.surance imaginable, he took the flint and steel in his hands, as his instructor had directed, and struck a careless blow with the knife. Not a spark responded to his call, and he looked up at us inquiringly. One of us suggested that it might be necessary to strike a more careful blow on the edge of the flint, and the captain struck such a blow, the result being a shower of sparks that flew all around, but not into the gourd handle. Several more blows followed, with a like result, when three careful attempts were made to catch one of the many sparks which he now had no trouble in producing, the failure causing another inquiring look.

I suggested that possibly this was a case for a general alarm and more help, and Johnson hinted delicately that our chief was not sufficiently well trained in his business. These comments caused an invitation to be extended for us to try it ourselves, but we were all modest and declined.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPT. THOMAS M. FEE.]

The chief now made one or two more unsuccessful attempts to catch a spark in the cotton, and each effort produced a laugh from us and an inelegant remark from the captain. The expression upon his face and the glare in his eye caused us to move farther away before offering any further advice, when I suggested that he should stop this fooling and strike a light. His reception of my remark was decidedly ungracious, and I retired behind a log, while he made another attempt. This time he caused a spark to alight on the charred cotton, but he forgot to blow it while he looked around with a smile of triumph on his face, and when he looked back at the spark there was none there. The mutterings and suppressed laughter of the rest of us caused the chief to make some emphatic remarks of a lurid nature, and, when I remarked that we would wait while he went back to find the negro boy, he grew furious in his denunciation of such ancient methods of procuring fire. Then I suggested that the potatoes would spoil if he did not hurry up, dodging down behind my log as he looked at me with anything but a loving glance.

He now made several careful attempts to locate another spark in the tinder, but history did not repeat itself, and he got up, exclaiming, hoa.r.s.ely:

"I'll be everlastingly d----d if I know as much as a 10-year-old n.i.g.g.e.r."

Glaring around him, he caught sight of my head above the log, striving to suppress my laughter enough to utter some words of consolation, when he violently threw the whole fire department at my head, saying:

"d.a.m.n you, Swiggett; I suppose I'll never hear the end of this!" and he walked off by himself.

We ate our sweet potatoes raw, as no one cared to risk further failure with the fire apparatus, and after a time our crestfallen chief came back and joined us. Several remarks by the others about the delicacy of baked sweet potatoes were noted by him, and a wild glare at the speakers was the result. I remarked to Captain Gedney that the n.i.g.g.e.rs were very kindly, but that their education was sadly neglected, and that a man who had not as much sense as a 10-year-old negro boy was not a remarkable man.

"You fellows want to let up, or I'll kill some of you," remarked Fee, and then, after the subject had been dropped for a time:

"Say, boys, what will you take to keep mum about this?"

After some bargaining, we finally agreed to keep his experience a secret, and peace was restored; but we had not agreed to drop the matter, and as long as we were together the captain would occasionally see one of us sit down in a confident way and go through a pantomime in which were reproduced his expressions and actions while trying to run our fire department.

The same afternoon, while we were peacefully resting, in seeming security, on the sunny side of the sloping bank of a little creek, we discovered a man on horseback. He was not far off, and carried a gun on his shoulder, being engaged in following the slow trail of a hound, and evidently on our tracks.

We could not run, as he was too near to allow of hope for escape from his gun, and the surrounding country was too open for successful concealment; so we contented ourselves with such protection as the available logs and trees afforded, more because he might shoot when he discovered us than in hope of evading him.

The discovery soon came, when he halted, gazed upon us with a frightened stare, and screamed out:

"Come, boys; here they are!"

In a moment two other hors.e.m.e.n galloped up, being armed with double-barreled shotguns. They seemed to be worse scared than we were, for their hunt was for runaway negroes, and here they had found six white men, who might be armed.

A deathlike stillness prevailed for some minutes, when it became apparent that they, who were undoubtedly our captors if they wished to be, were afraid of us. Seeing this, I crawled from behind my friendly log and stepped in their direction across the little creek, intending to discuss the matter of letting them go about their business while we went about our own, but the leader suddenly wheeled his horse, brought his gun to a level and commanded me to come no closer. I mildly suggested that an unarmed man could not harm them, but he responded by repeating his command and ordering us under arrest.

Being without weapons, and the situation becoming serious, we had no choice but to submit, for argument was now dangerous.

As we made our captors no trouble, they became comparatively friendly after we had surrendered, and we then learned, as we had before surmised, that they were looking for some runaway negroes. They had found our tracks, where we had slept by the roadside the night before, and in the huckleberry patch, where we had done much foraging, and had seen that one of the tracks showed a shoe much run over at the side, which tallied with that worn by old Ned, one of the escaped darkeys.

This track was left by my shoe, and I was at once dubbed "Old Ned" by my companions, Captain Fee remarking that the t.i.tle was appropriate in several ways.

Despite all our efforts to tell a satisfactory story about ourselves, and to appear careless and independent, our interviewers evidently suspected us to be what we were, and they plied us with questions, finally accusing us of being escaped prisoners, refusing to listen to reason, and ordering us to fall in and move on ahead of them toward the nearest headquarters. Then we pleaded and made all sorts of future promises if they would let us go on about our business, but they were obdurate, and we sadly filed off toward the road, being promised a dose of lead if we tried to run.

Our reflections were now far from pleasant, and for a time we were much depressed, but there was no use of crying, and so we gradually recovered our spirits and hoped for the best.

CHAPTER XI.

THE BACK TRACK.

The location of our recapture was about ten miles from Boston, Texas, and our captors were taking us to that place.

On the way we stopped at a farmhouse to get a drink, and I begged the woman for some thread with which to mend my clothes. She searched around and found a ball, giving me several lengths of thread from it. I then asked her for some patches, and she hunted up a pair of old pants of very small size, evidently a boy's pair. They were corduroy, and it seemed a shame to cut them up, but she said it was all she could do.

While she had been gone for the pants I had stolen a ball of thread, which had been left within reach, and I felt some qualms of conscience over it, but necessity had urged me to do it, and I left the matter for necessity to settle with conscience. The pants were carefully stowed away for future use.

Proceeding on our way, we killed time and enlivened our weary tramp by telling stories. One of our captors developed a capacity for lying which was simply astounding. He was not a graceful, elegant liar, telling stories that you might doubt, but could not dispute, but was one of the cla.s.s of liars who distort facts that are well known and calmly make statements which you know are false. His stories were all upon the subject of eating and big eaters. We stood it until he told a story in which he claimed that he knew a man who had cooked and eaten, at one meal, a rock fish weighing thirty-six pounds, clinching the matter by a.s.serting that he knew it to be a fact, inasmuch as he had seen it done.

Then we concluded to shut the mouth of such an egregious and palpable liar.

Burnbaum asked me about my friend down in Baltimore, who was such an enormous eater, and, after some persuasion, I told the following story:

A colored man, called Eating Tom, stopped at a dining stall kept by a widow in Marsh Market one fine morning, and asked the charge for breakfast. The woman kept a table set for twelve, and had provisions cooked and ready for a like number. Being told that twenty-five cents was the price, Tom paid the quarter and took his seat, calling for everything in sight, until he had eaten all the cooked victuals the poor woman had, when he demanded more food or the return of his money, saying that he had paid for his breakfast and had not had enough. At this, the widow began to cry, which attracted the attention of a fat, burly policeman, who ordered the gluttonous brute to leave. Tom and the policeman soon got into a dispute as to what const.i.tuted a meal, and the negro offered to bet his opponent a guinea that he was yet sufficiently hungry to be able to eat a bundle of hay as large around as the fat policeman's body. The money was put up in my hands, the policeman procured the hay--the nastiest salt marsh hay that he could find--and compressed it to the required size by means of a strap. By this time quite a crowd had gathered. The strap was cut and the hay expanded so that it looked like a wagon-load, but the negro, with a broad grin and without hesitation, commenced his task with apparent relish, and soon ate up every particle of the hay. Being the stakeholder, and an eye-witness, I was compelled to pay over the money to Tom.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CAPT. CHARLES BURNBAUM.]

Our other two guards saw the point of this story and fairly roared with laughter, but the liar did not seem to appreciate it. However, it accomplished its object, and we heard no more fish or other stories from guard number three while we were together.