, on a baggage-wagon, a small game
rooster which he told me had whipped every chicken from Harrisonburg to
Winchester and back again. At last he met defeat, and Pete consigned him
to the pot, saying, "No chicken dat kin be whipped shall go 'long wid
Jackson's headquarters." At Harrisonburg we turned to the left again,
but this time obliquely, in the direction of Port Republic, twenty miles
distant. We went into camp on Saturday evening, June 7, about one mile
from Port Republic and on the north side of the Shenandoah. Shields had
kept his army on the south side of this stream and had been moving
parallel with us during our retreat. Jackson's division was in advance.
Instead of going into camp, I, with two messmates, Bolling and Walter
Packard, diverged to a log-house for supper. The man of the house was
quiet; his wife did the talking, and a great deal of it. She flatly
refused us a bite to eat, but, on stating the case to her, she consented
to let us have some bread and milk. Seated around an unset dining-table
we began divesting ourselves of our knapsacks. She said, "Just keep your
baggage on; you can eat a bite and go." We told her we could eat faster
unharnessed. She sliced a loaf of bread as sad as beeswax, one she had
had on hand for perhaps a week, and gave us each a bowl of sour milk,
all the while reminding us to make our stay short. For the sake of
"argument" we proposed to call around for breakfast. She scorned the
idea, had "promised breakfast to fifty already." "Staying all night? Not
any." We said we could sleep in the yard and take our chances for
breakfast. After yielding, inch by inch, she said we could sleep on the
porch. "Well, I reckon you just as well come into the house," and showed
us into a snug room containing two nice, clean beds, in one of which lay
a little "nigger" about five years old, with her nappy head on a
snow-white pillow. We took the floor and slept all night, and were
roused next morning to partake of a first-rate breakfast.

About eight or nine o'clock this Sunday morning we were taking our ease
in and about camp, some having gone to the river to bathe, and the
horses turned loose in the fields to graze. I was stretched at full
length on the ground, when "bang!" went a Yankee cannon about a mile in
our rear, toward Port Republic. We were up and astir instantly, fully
realizing the situation. By lending my assistance to the drivers in
catching and hitching up the horses, my gun was t