Allan Pinkerton, The spy in the rebellion; being a true history of the spy system of the United States Army during the late rebellion, revealing many secrets of the war hitherto not made public, compiled from official reports prepared for President Lincoln , General McClellan and the Provost-Marshal-General .

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[632] dumped into the flour barrel by some one of the half-score of tow-headed, half-clad children, which the “General” and his buxom help-meet had seen fit to provide for torturing another generation with rare Texan dinners at a dollar a plate.

It was an all-day's labor getting to La Grange, but thirty-five miles from Brenham, where they arrived at ten o'clock, tired and exhausted from the day's banging about in the stage and out of it, for they were obliged to walk many times in order to rest the jaded horses so that they could get through to La Grange at all; but before retiring made all the inquiries necessary to develop the fact that their man had not been at that point.

The next day, Wednesday, was rather more trying than the previous one. Two miles out of town the stage got “bogged,” and the entire load of passengers were obliged to get out and walk through three miles of swamps, the stage finally sticking fast, necessitating prying it out with rails. After this Slough of Despond was passed, the Colorado river had to be forded three times, and then came a “dry run,” which now, with every other ravine or depression, had became a “wet run,” and was “a booming” as the drunken driver termed it between oaths. There was at least four feet of water in the dry run, and the horses balking, the buckskin argument was applied to them so forcibly that they gave a sudden start, and broke the pole off short, which further