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 leadin