pt the mule ahead by jabbing it with a saber occasionally. I felt
humiliated and indignant at being called slim-jim, sorrel-top, and
elder. They seemed to think I was a preacher. I stood it all until a
cuss reached into my pocket and took my meershaum pipe and a bag of
tobacco, filled the pipe and lit it, then I was mad. I had paid eight
dollars of my bounty for that pipe, and I said to the leader: "Boss, I
can stand a joke as well as anybody, but when you capture me, in a fair
fight, you have no right to jab my mule with a saber, or call me names.
I am a meek and lowly soldier of the army of the right, and want to so
live that I can meet you all in the great hereafter, but by the gods I
can whip the condemned galoot that stole my meershaum pipe. You think
I am pious, and a non-combatant, but I am a fighter from away back, and
don't you forget it." The young man who seemed to be in command told me
to dry up, and he would get my pipe. He went and took it away from the
one who had stolen it, filled it and lit it himself, and said it was a
good pipe, and then he passed it around among them all. We moved on at a
trot, and were getting far away from my regiment, and I realized that I
was a captive, and that I should probably die in Andersonville prison. I
looked at the dozen stalwart rebels that were riding behind me, and knew
I could not whip them all with one picket off the cemetery fence, and so
I resolved to remain a captive, and die for my country, of scurvey, if
necessary. I turned around in my saddle to ask if it wasn t about time
for me to have a smoke out of my own pipe, and as I looked up the road
we had come over I saw a large body of our own cavalry, coming like the
wind toward us. I said nothing, but my face gave me away. I looked so
tickled to see the boys coming that the rebels noticed it, and they
looked back and saw the soldiers in pursuit, they yelled, "The Yanks are
coming!" put spurs to their horses, stabbed my mule and told me to pound
it with the picket, and hurry up, and then they passed me, and away they
went, leaving me in the road alone between them and my own soldiers, I
yelled to the leader to give me back my pipe, and I can hear his mocking
laugh to this day, as he told me to "go to hell." This made me mad, and
drawing my picket I dashed after the retreating rebels, knowing that the
men of my regiment would soon overtake me, and they would think I had
chased the rebels three miles from town, armed o