sergeant took plenty of chances.

He passed the Union pickets, entered a ravine which led up between two
hills and followed it for some distance. In a cross ravine he found a
little stream of water, flowing down from some high, rocky ground above,
and, at one point, he came to a pool several yards across and three or
four feet deep. It was cool and fresh, and the sergeant could not resist
the temptation to slip off his clothes and dive into it once or twice.
He slipped his clothes on again, the whole not consuming more than five
minutes, and then went on much better equipped for war than he had been
five minutes before.

Then he descended the hills and came down into a valley crossed by a
creek, which in ordinary times had plenty of water, but which was now
reduced to a few muddy pools. The Southern pickets did not reach so far,
and save for the two tiny streams in the hills this was all the water
that the Northern army could reach. Farther down, its muddy and detached
stream lay within the Confederate lines.

Crossing the creek's bed the sergeant ascended a wooded ridge, and now
he proceeded with extreme caution. He had learned that beyond this ridge
was another creek containing much more water than the first. Upon its
banks at the crossing of the road stood the village of Perryville, and
there, according to his best information and belief, lay the Southern
army. But he meant to see with his own eyes and hear with his own ears,
and thus return to McCook's force with absolute certainty.

The sergeant, as he had expected, found cover more plentiful than it was
on the plains, but he never stalked an Indian camp with more caution. He
knew that the most of the Southern scouts and skirmishers were as wary
as the Indians that once hunted in these woods, and that, unless he used
extreme care, he was not likely to get past them.

He came at last to a point where he lay down flat on his stomach and
wormed himself along, keeping in the thickest shadow of woods and
bushes. The night was bright, and although his own body was blended with
the ground, he could see well about him. The sergeant was a very patient
man. Life as a lumberman and then as a soldier on the plains had taught
him to look where he was crawling. He spent a full hour worming himself
up to the crest of that ridge and a little way down on the other side.
In the course of the last fifteen minutes he passed directly between two
alert and vigilant Southern pickets