After a stop of an hour he remounted and rode on again, but the horse was still feeling his great strain, and he did not push him beyond a walk.  He calculated that nevertheless he would reach headquarters not long after nightfall, and he went along gaily, still singing to himself.  He crossed the river at a point above the army, where the Union troops had made a ferry, and then turned toward the camp.

About sunset he reached a hill from which he could look over the forest and see under the horizon faint lights that were made by Grant’s campfires at Pittsburg Landing.  It was a welcome sight.  He would soon be with his friends again, and he urged his horse forward a little faster.

“Halt!” cried a sharp voice from the thicket.

Dick faced about in amazement, and saw four horsemen in gray riding from the bushes.  The shock was as great as if he had been struck by a bullet, but he leaned forward on his horse’s neck, kicked him violently with his heels and shouted to him.  The horse plunged forward at a gallop.  The boy, remembering General Buell’s instructions, slipped the letter from his pocket, and in the shelter of the horse’s body dropped it to the ground, where he knew it would be lost among the bushes and in the twilight.

“Halt!” was repeated more loudly and sharply than ever.  Then a bullet whizzed by Dick’s ear, and a second pierced the heart of his good horse.  He tried to leap clear of the falling animal, and succeeded, but he fell so hard among the bushes that he was stunned for a few moments.  When he revived and stood up he saw the four horsemen in gray looking curiously at him.

“’Twould have been cheaper for you to have stopped when we told you to do it,” said one in a whimsical tone.

Dick noticed that the tone was not unkind—­it was not the custom to treat prisoners ill in this great war.  He rubbed his left shoulder on which he had fallen and which still pained him a little.

“I didn’t stop,” he said, “because I didn’t know that you would be able to hit either me or my horse in the dusk.”

“I s’pose from your way of lookin’ at it you was right to take the chance, but you’ve learned now that we Southern men are tol’able good sharpshooters.”

“I knew it long ago, but what are you doing here, right in the jaws of our army?  They might close on you any minute with a snap.  You ought to be with your own army at Corinth.”

Dick noticed that the men looked at one another, and there was silence for a moment or two.

“Young fellow,” resumed the spokesman, “you was comin’ from the direction of Columbia, an’ your hoss, which I am sorry we had to kill, looked as if he was cleaned tuckered out.  I judge that you was bearin’ a message from Buell’s army to Grant’s.”

“You mustn’t hold me responsible for your judgment, good or bad.”

“No, I reckon not, but say, young fellow, do you happen to have a chaw of terbacker in your clothes?”