ll while it affected only themselves, but the trial
was too great when it came to denying their horses; and men whose
discipline kept faith with my guards during the roasting-ear period
now fell from grace. Their horses were growing thin, and few could
withstand the mute appeals of their suffering pets; so at night the
corn, because of individual foraging, kept stealthily and steadily
vanishing, until the field was soon fringed with only earless stalks.
The disappearance was noticed, and the guard increased, but still the
quantity of corn continued to grow less, the more honest troopers
bemoaning the loss, and questioning the honor of those to whose
safekeeping it had been entrusted. Finally, doubtless under the
apprehension that through their irregularities the corn would all
disappear and find its way to the horses in accordance with the
stealthy enterprise of their owners, a general raid was made on the
field in broad daylight, and though the guard drove off the
marauders, I must admit that its efforts to keep them back were so
unsuccessful that my hopes for an equal distribution of the crop were
quickly blasted. One look at the field told that it had been swept
clean of its grain. Of course a great row occurred as to who was to
blame, and many arrests and trials took place, but there had been
such an interchanging of cap numbers and other insignia that it was
next to impossible to identify the guilty, and so much crimination
and acrimony grew out of the affair that it was deemed best to drop
the whole matter.

On August 27 about half of the command was absent reconnoitring, I
having sent it south toward Tupelo, in the hope of obtaining some
definite information regarding a movement to Holly Springs of the
remainder of the Confederate army, under General Price, when about
mid-day I was suddenly aroused by excited cries and sounds of firing,
and I saw in a moment that the enemy was in my camp. He had come in
on my right flank from the direction of the Hatchie River, pell-mell
with our picket-post stationed about three miles out on the Ripley
road. The whole force of the enemy comprised about eight hundred,
but only his advance entered with my pickets, whom he had charged and
badly stampeded, without, on their part, the pretense of a fight in
behalf of those whom it was their duty to protect until proper
dispositions for defense could be made. The day was excessively hot,
one of those sultry debilitating days t