I am anxious to make plain to my boy readers the manner in which the young colonel managed his campaign.  I think they will have no difficulty in understanding that Garfield had two very difficult things to accomplish.  Colonel Craven knew nothing of Garfield’s advance, nor of his plans.  It was necessary to inform him.  Again, if possible, a junction must be effected.  The first was difficult, because the intervening country was infested with roving bands of guerrillas, and a messenger must take his life in his hands.  How, again, could a junction be effected in the face of a superior enemy, liable to fall upon either column and crush it?

Obviously the first thing was to find a messenger.

Garfield applied to Col.  Moore of the Fourteenth Kentucky, and made known his need.

“Have you a man,” he asked, “who will die rather than fail or betray us?”

“Yes,” answered the Kentuckian, after a pause, “I think I have.  His name is John Jordan, and he comes from the head of the Blaine.”

This was a small stream which entered the Big Sandy, a short distance from the town.

At the request of Garfield, Jordan was sent for.  In a short time he entered the tent of the Union commander.

This John Jordan was a remarkable man, and well known in all that region.  He was of Scotch descent, and possessed some of the best traits of his Scotch ancestry.  He was a born actor, a man of undoubted courage, fertile in expedients, and devoted to the Union cause.

Garfield was a judge of men, and he was impressed in the man’s favor at first sight.  He describes Jordan as a tall, gaunt, sallow man, about thirty years of age, with gray eyes, a fine falsetto voice, and a face of wonderful expressiveness.  To the young colonel he was a new type of man, but withal a man whom he was convinced that he could trust.

“Why did you come into this war?” he asked, with some curiosity.

“To do my share, colonel, and I’ve made a bargain with the Lord.  I gave Him my life to start with, and if He has a mind to take it, it’s His.  I’ve nothing to say agin it.”

“You mean you have come into the war, not expecting to get out of it alive?”

“Yes, colonel.”

“You know what I want you to do.  Will you die rather than let this dispatch be taken?”

“I will.”

Garfield looked into the man’s face, and he read unmistakable sincerity.

He felt that the man could be trusted, and he said so.

The dispatch was written upon tissue paper.  It was then rolled into the form of a bullet, coated with warm lead, and given into the hands of the messenger.  He was provided with a carbine and a brace of revolvers, and when the moon was down, he mounted his horse in the darkness and set out on his perilous journey.

It would not do to ride in the daytime, for inevitably he would be stopped, or shot down.  By day he must hide in the woods, and travel only at night.