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"I had read about hell, and seen pictures of it, from the imagination of some eminent artist, but the hell I had read of, and seen pictured, was not a marker to the experience of the next three hours.
"In a few minutes the colonel woke up, and the regiment mounted and moved on. An advance guard was put further out than before, with orders to charge the rebel picket almost into town, and then hold up for the rest of us. As we neared the town it was just light enough to see. The advance captured the picket post without a shot being fired, and moved right into town, followed by the regiment, and we rode right into the camp of the boys in gray, and woke them up by firing. They scattered, coatless and shoeless, firing as they ran, and in five minutes they were all captured, killed, gone out of town, or were in hiding in the buildings.
"Then came the conflagration. Immense buildings, filled with goods, or bales of cotton, were fired, and soon the black smoke and falling walls made a scene that was enough to set a recruit crazy. A train came in just as the fire was at its greatest, and a squad of men was sent to burn it, and the colonel told me to go and capture the engineer and bring him to the headquarters. I rode up as near to the engine as my horse would go and told the engineer I wanted him. He turned a cock somewhere, and a jet of steam came out towards me that fairly blinded me and the horse, and I couldn't see the engine any more. My horse turned tail, the engineer threw a lump of coal and hit me on the head, and I went away and told the colonel the engineer wouldn't come, and beside had scalded me with steam, and hit me with a lump of coal. The colonel said he could be arrested for such conduct. Pretty soon the train was on fire, and one of our boys clubbed the engineer, got on the engine and run it on a side track and ditched it, and brought the engineer to headquarters, where I had quite a talk with him about squirting steam and throwing lumps of coal at peaceable persons. Then the railroad bridge was on fire, and it looked cruel to see the timbers licked up by flames, but when the burning trestle fell into the river below, it was a grand, an awful sight. I came out of the fight alive, but with a lump on my head as big as a hen's egg, so big I couldn't wear my hat, and a firm determination to whip that engineer who threw the lump of coal when I could catch him alone.
"We cooked a late breakfast on the embers of the ruins, and after eating, I noticed a sign, 'Printing Office', in front of a residence just outside the burnt district, and asked permission to go there and print a paper, with an account of the fight, and the destruction of the town. Permission was granted, and I went to the office and found an old man and two daughters, beautiful girls, but intensely bitter rebels. The old man was near eighty years old, and he said he could whip any dozen yankees. I told him I would like to use his type and press, but he said if I touched a thing I did it at my peril, as he should consider the type contaminated by the touch of a yankee. The girls felt the same way, but I talked nice to them, and they didn't kick much when I took a 'stick' and began to set type.
"I worked till dinner time, when they asked me to take dinner with them, which I did. During the conversation I convince them that I was practically a non-combatant, and wouldn't hurt anybody for the world. I worked till about the middle of the afternoon, when I noticed that the girls, who had been up on the house, looked tickled about something, and presently I heard some firing at the edge of the town, some yelling, more firing, bugle calls among our soldiers, and finally there was an absence of blue coats, and I looked for my horse, and found the old man leading him away. I halted the old man, and he stopped and told me that the Confederates had come into town from the East and driven our cavalry out on the other side, and I would be a prisoner in about five minutes, and he laughed, and the girls clapped their hands, and I felt as though my time had come. I had never killed an old man in my life, but I made up my mind to have my horse or kill him in his tracks, so I drew my revolver and told him to let go the horse or he was a dead man. It was a question with me whether I could hold my hand still enough to kill him, if he didn't let go the horse, and I hoped to heaven he would drop the bridle. He looked so much like my father at home that it seemed like killing a near relative, and when I looked at the two beautiful daughters on the gallery, looking at us, pale as death I almost felt as though it would be better to lose the horse and be captured, then to put a bullet through the gray head of that beautiful old man. How I wished that he was a young fellow, and had a gun, and had it pointed at me. Then I could kill him and feel as though it was self defense. But the rebels were yelling and firing over the hill, and my regiment was going the other way on important business, and it was a question with me whether I should kill the old man, and see his life-blood ebb out there in front of his children, or be captured, and perhaps shot for burning buildings. I decided that it was my duty to murder him, and get my horse. So I rested my revolver across my forearm, and took deliberate aim at his left eye, a beautiful, large, expressive eye, so much like my father's at home that I almost imagined I was about to kill the father who loved me. I heard a scream on the gallery, and the blonde girl fainted in the arms of her brunette sister. The sister said to me, 'Please don't kill my father.'
" He was not ten feet from me, and I said, 'Drop the horse or you die.' The old man trembled, the girl said, 'Pa, give the man his horse,' the old man dropped the bridle and walked towards the horse. I mounted the horse and rode off towards the direction my regiment had taken, thanking heaven that the girl had spoken just in time, and that I had not been compelled to put a bullet through that noble-looking gray head. The face haunted me all the way, as I rode along to catch my regiment, and when I overtook it, and rode up to the colonel, and asked him what in thunder he wanted to go off and leave me to fight the whole southern Confederacy for, he said, 'O, get out! There are no rebels there. That was the Indiana regiment that started out day before yesterday, to get on the other side of the town. The fellows were shooting some cattle for food. What makes you look so pale?' I was thinking of whether a man prospered who killed old people.
END PART 11
Part Twelve: Three Days Without Food!-The Value of Hard Tack-A Silver Watch for a Pint of Meal