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CHAPTER X. FROM PILOT KNOB TO VAN BUREN—THE ARMY MULE, ETC. We remained in Pilot Knob until the seventh of January and then started to guard a wagon train to our army camp. Bailey and I waited in Pilot Knob for the railroad train to arrive from St. Louis so as to get the mail for our boys and some newspapers. It was late before we got started. Had to wade the streams and were so much delayed that it became dark before we reached the command and were not able to get through. It was useless to attempt to proceed in those dark woods, liable at any moment to fall into some ditch of ice cold water. Just as we were looking for a dry piece of ground to stay over night upon we discovered a solitary camp fire just off from the road not far from us. We at once went up and found a Missourian and his wife who with their ox team were on their way to Ironton to barter their produce for goods. This is the way the people in the backwoods go to town. Men and women together, go as far as their slow teams will take them, during the day, and then camp for the night in the wild woods. They are usually from one to three weeks on the road going and coming before again reaching their wild woodland home. Those we met were very socially inclined and Bailey and I had a huge evening visit with them. We shared rations all round. They seemed to like a change, and relished our hard tack, while we took more kindly to the cornbread the woman had made. Of course, with other necessaries, they had a supply of home-made whisky which was offered as liberally as every thing else. It is strange, but it is undoubtedly a fact, that there is not a neighborhood anywhere in the wilds of Missouri, that does not have some way to make whisky. A little still to make a little whisky seems as necessary to the pioneer mountaineers of this wild country as a mill to grind their corn. And stranger yet, you will hardly ever find a drunkard among them. After the evening was well spent, we threw logs enough on the fire to keep it burning bright all night and then Bailey and I spread our blankets on one side and the Missourian and his wife theirs on the other and all hands were soon fast asleep. The only guard on deck that night being the mountaineer’s two big dogs, sleeping and watching under the wagon. Now there was no disguise of the fact, which we knew full well, that in their own home, the man, and his wife, too, for that matter, were fierce rebels, and they at the same time - Our Winter Campaign, Continued. 111 knew that we were members of the hated Yankee army, yet there was no thought of suspicion on either side. It is only the cause we each believe in that is at war. Individually we have no quarrel to maintain. We met as would members of opposite political parties or members of different church organizations. In the early morning we bid our night-friends adieu and each went his own way. We found our army comrades early in the morning and the entire force started at eight o’clock and went through to Patterson. The train we came with from Pilot Knob this time is made up of raw mules that have never before been hitched to army wagons. It has been fun alive to see the teamsters attempt to drive the stubborn, unbroken animals. At first it was a continual runaway through the entire line. But being in the woods all the time, the only result would be that the ponderous army wagon would in a moment be caught upon a tree and then the mules would become tangled together and tumble in a heap. The thing to do now was to untangle the huge pile of mules. Let imagination picture the scene. Sometimes in a fierce run a small tree would be bent over by the force with which the mules would strike it and then regaining its strength would straighten up and thus frequently a team of the smaller mules would be found hanging up in a tree. An army team consists of six mules. The two largest mules being the wheel mules...

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