The Opelousas courier., 1889-02-02
A LOCK OF HAIR
An Incident in the Career Of a
Confederate Soldier.
Narrowly Escaping De It'll at
the Hands of His BroAher.

An ext Confederate tells the bllowing
thrilling wal story in the Detroit Free
Press: When the Federals got posses
sion of the Shenandoah Valley and re-
paired the railroad track and ran their
trains, detaehments of predatory bands
made it a business to lie in ambush and
fire into the coaches. A good deal of
this work was done for q time by men
belonging to Imboden and Mosby's COM
mands, and finally, to protect them
selves, the Federals used to take along
ia number of Southern citizens. Some
5would be compelled to ride on the
engine, and the others would be dis
trGouted through the cars, thus making
the chances ever &at if a volley was
fred some of u own people would be
killed. This stopped the practice of
ambushing trains, but not until the
writer had had a very close call from
death.
l was scouting around Winchester,
and had just left a farm house where I
had remained all night, when squadron
of Federal cavalry struck ny trail. 1 was
bounded and logged until mid-afterl
noon before l got clear away from them,
and during this time l was put to such
physical exertions that | was seized
with a chill about 5 o'clock in the after
noon, and soon became too i'll to travel.
[ was then in the woods, and there |
remained until next day at noon, a part
of the time out of my head. I finally
got better, and partly by walking and
partly by crawling reached a farm house
a mile away. The farmer was a Southern
man, too old to g o into the service, and
I would have been received with all
kindness but for the Federals. / had
scarcely entered the house when a de-
tachment of them rode up to the gate,
and then ten minutes later I was being
carried off as a prisoner.
The only good feature about it was
that | was taken for a Confederate de-
serter instead of a spy, and my treat
ment was, therefore, far better. In
three or four days l was al right again,
and then l was ordered aboard one of
the trains and given half the engineers
seat. Indeed, / was chained there, aud
when the officer who had the matter in
hand left me he was kind enough to
say:
"TheIs, now, if your friends can fire
into this side of the cal. without hitting
you, let them pop away
I had a brother that time in
Mosby's command, andJI knew that he
had been engaged in the work of firing
upon trains. / @mehow felt that we
should see Frank that day, and both
events quickly came to pass. We were
not fifteen miles out of Winchester, and
were just pulling out of a heavy cut into
q piece OF woods, when I caught sight
of the head and face of a man above q
log. We were running not over fifteen
miles an hour, and I was looking into
the woods. The man in ambush
was still ahead of us when / saw
him, and we were not ten feet nearer
when I recognized the face as Franks.
In the same instant / saw that he had a
cavalry carbine resting across the log,
and that there were four or five other
men beyond him. They were there to
fire q vo!ley into the train. and we on
the engine would get it first. I had
only seconds in which to act. The first
thing was to shout to the engine r and
fire2lan TO drop to the floor, and the
mex to wheel squarely around and shout
to Frank:
aFor Gods sake, don't shoot It's Ed
hold up"
Franks gun was pointed full at my
face as I shouted, and we looked right
into each others eyes. In that brief in
slant I saw q horxor come to his eyes,
his face grew white as snow, and he
could rot move his lips. His finger was
pulling the trigger, and it was too late.
A sheet of flame leaped up at me, some.
thing burned the side Of my cheek, and
then We had passed on. There was but
the one shot. The other men had heard
my warning in time to hold their fire.
For about a minute / could not tell
whether | was badly hurtpr had escaped
scott free. But BY and by I discovered
that I had a bullet blister across my
right cheek, and had lost a lock of hair
big enough 70 divide up among half q
dozen sweethearts.
My action in warning the engineer and
fireman was laid up to my credit, but for
the next four weeks / had to keep my
scat on the locomotive. It was the last
time any train was fred on, however,
and If + did the Federals all the dam
Sge I copsd before and after, they have
10 thank me for clearing afailroad line
Of q dangerous enemy. -[Detroit Free.
Press.
Ho0-KfIsissg IN Chicago.
To kill and prepare 900 to ], 800
beeves and 5000 to 10, 600 hogs in d
day, requires q complete system, says d