L. P. Brockett, The camp, the battlefield, and the hospital: or, lights and shadows of the great rebellion

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[54] an intention of going to the rebel camp, he ascertained the truth of the information he had received, and then riding to the house of the imperiled Union lady, he informed her of her danger, caught her a horse, and accompanied her to Nashville, avoiding by means of by-roads the rebel pickets.

The forward movement of Rosecrans' army on Chattanooga had now commenced, and Corporal Pike was sent by General Stanley as a scout to search for some steamboats on the Hiawassee. While on this expedition he passed through the region where he was captured the year before, and after frightening relatives of the man who had betrayed him, he went up to the summit of Cumberland mountain, and near Cowan, in a narrow and crooked pass of the mountain, discovered that the rebels were blockading the gap, with the intention of cutting off and destroying any Union troops who might pass that way. They had felled some timber, but had not put much of it in position. There were about twenty rebel soldiers, who were guarding the gap and directing a force of fifty or more negroes who were felling the trees. Finding his position a safe one, Pike determined to put a stop to this proceeding, and accordingly fired at the evident leader of the movement, and the bullet striking his horse he was thrown and severely injured, and the whole band of rebels were thrown into confusion; firing again, Pike ordered an imaginary comrade to run back and tell the regiment to hurry up, and then turning sent another shot whizzing among them, while he ordered a pretended body of skirmishers to come down from the opposite ridge and close in with the rebels, accompanying this order with such gestures