Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1880-01-25

and communicated some valuable In
formation. # ss
Capt. Mitchell was fighting hard
some little distance from the town.
and having gained what We could
from these parties, the Colonel d.
rected me to go to the Captain and call
him In, that our road was In different
direction. j turned my horse aud
started, / saw one of our men, dis
mounted and taking aim with his ear-
bine. Looking in the direction the
the gun was pointing, to my as.onish-
ment I found he was aiming at cur
old citizen, who was riding off from
him. became angry at once,
and 8 ordered him Ito take
down his gun, bat he pulled
trigger anyway. The quo did not
Ere. | was 80 enraged that for q
moment or go forgot my orders and
stopped to reprOve the soldier, telling
him that II be wanted too shoot any,
body to go out to where Captain Mitch-
ell was and there meet men who were
on an equal footing and would stand
face to face with him. He only replied,
II know my man, The old man by
this time had turned the corner OF the
street. dashed on rapidly to make
up for lost time, and coming to the
street corner l saw the old man dis
m ount aud start off from his horse on
foot. He. only stepped once or twice,
when he squatted with his lower
limbs. then leeped high In the air and
fell fiat of his back. l knew from his
actions he was shot, but being behind
time, galloped on and fulfilled the
instructions given me. Returning, I
dsmounted and examined the wounds
of the old man. He was shot bys
large ball In the breast | asked him
who did 1t. He replied that he did
not know; all he knew was that q man
shot him He was too weak to give
any particulars. He was removed to
from him, whether he died or not.
We never knew who did 1t or why 1t
was done.
We soon started out In something of
westerly direction, and had pros
ceeded only few miles when we came
to u rapid mountain stream which was
impossible except on bridge, and it
was on fire. Toe boys soon succeeded.
In extinguishing the fire, but not I'M
til the bridge was badly damaged and
we had to cross one at a time with the
utmost caution. 1t was evident that
something was to do right at once, or
that bridge would not have been on
fire, so the Colonel directed us to sec
the men over the bridge, while he
proceeded at gsllop with as many as
had crossed. That crossing one at q
time was slow business, and scat
tered the command go that towards
the last they had to gallop miles to
overtake the others. Prosser had not
gone far until he came up with Hoods
pontoon train. The drivers were
alarmed, ard many of them unhitched
a mule or horse, and made haste
to get away. The boats. were
beauties, nicely painted and had pretty
names to them. The train was
stretched out about five miles long. A
good portion of the night was spent in
burning the boats and wagons, which
was very hard job, from the want of
kidding and because they were soaked
with water. The boys who could i'm
prove their stock by an exchange for
any of those abandoned by the rebels,
did so, while such animals as could
not be used were killed. We had only
very short sleep at night until the
bugie sounded reUeale for future opera
tons on the morning of the New
Year,