It was probably some time after these events that the bushwhackers came to our house and wanted Mother to cook a meal for a dozen men. Mother was hardly able to be out of bed, but my sister Mehala, thinking that they were Union soldiers, said, "Mother, I can cook for them." "Well, Mehala," Mother said, "if you can, you may go ahead." Mother helped all she could. They baked two large pones of corn-bread in the oldfashioned fireplace and fried plenty of fresh beef. Although the soldiers had ordered food for a dozen men, only two of them came. One of them took the provisions and the other guarded the house until he thought we would have no chance to report them. Then they went to the home of a neighbor and with much bad language said that Mother was Union and therefore pretended to be sick and did not want to cook for them. During the war, things we had to buy were very high and things we had to sell brought only a trifle. Father sold corn to the Union soldiers for 25 cents a bushel. In imagination I can see the government wagons coming to haul the corn away to their camp. The beds of the wagons were somewhat like those used today, only they sloped outward on either side until they would hold more than twice as much as our ordinary farm wagons. At that time, flour cost $10.00 and upward, a barrel, calico from 35 to 45 cents a yard, and cotton yarn from $9.00 to $11.00 a bunch. This quantity of yarn would make only about 25 yards of jeans. Mother did her own spinning and weaving until some years after the war. We sheared our own sheep, washed and picked the wool, and sent it to the carding machine, where it was made into rolls. Then Mother and my older sister, who was nearly grown, spun the yarn and wove it into jeans and linsey, and also into flannel and blankets. Mother made all the clothing for the family--underwear, pants, vests, coats, and even overcoats. I well remember the old loom and spinning wheel and the little wheel on which I used to quill for my sister while she wove. Small as I was, I had learned to knit. I knit mittens for the soldiers, for which I got 50 cents a pair at Sedalia, the nearest army post, twenty miles away. In the early part of the war Father was a militiaman. At one time he came very near being accidently killed in his own orchard by some of his own men. Some Federal soldiers who were passing came into our orchard, and seeing Father at a distance, thought he was a Southerner. Father, seeing his danger, started to run; but one of the soldiers who was near enough to recognize him, cried, "Cole, don't run or they'll shoot you"; but Father thought he said, "Cole run or they'll shoot you." Finally they got him to understand what they meant, and his life was saved.