The alarmist was a horseman
who gave notice that a detachment of Union soldiers was on its way from
Hannibal with orders to capture and hang any bands like ours which it
could find, and said we had no time to lose. Farmer Mason was in a
flurry this time, himself. He hurried us out of the house with all
haste, and sent one of his negroes with us to show us where to hide
ourselves and our tell-tale guns among the ravines half a mile away. It
was raining heavily.
We struck down the lane, then across some rocky pasture-land which
offered good advantages for stumbling; consequently we were down in the
mud most of the time, and every time a man went down he blackguarded the
war, and the people who started it, and everybody connected with it, and
gave himself the master dose of all for being so foolish as to go into
it. At last we reached the wooded mouth of a ravine, and there we
huddled ourselves under the streaming trees, and sent the negro back
home. It was a dismal and heart-breaking time. We were like to be
drowned with the rain, deafened with the howling wind and the booming
thunder, and blinded by the lightning.
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