More than once, when our patrols reported the immediate presence of the enemy, Pat would turn up with the assurance that it was only so-and-so's "band," who had come into the neighborhood on a visiting or a marauding expedition, but with no intention of putting themselves in our way; and invariably we found his report to be correct. Indeed, so frequently did this happen that we became almost too confident in his assistance, and when an excitable picket shot at a donkey or a cow in the night-time, although the patrol of the guard went through the usual routine of investigation, we felt that there could be no serious attack or Dixon would have notified us. How he obtained his information we could not guess, and his own account of the matter was never satisfactory; but I believe that no considerable force of the enemy ever crossed the Memphis and Charleston Railroad (the whole State's width to the south of us) without our being speedily notified; and through this means we were several times enabled to telegraph to Columbus early information of contemplated raids,--information that was not always heeded, as the surprise of Paducah (on the Ohio River) several days after our warning sufficiently proved. One ambition of this worthy man had to remain unsatisfied. How little this was due to the fact that we at the headquarters were all perfectly mounted, modesty makes it improper to state here; but in our frequent meetings as we rode outside the lines, he rarely failed to tell of some particularly fine horse belonging to some particularly bad man and especially virulent Rebel, which it would really be a virtue to "confisticate." The worthy fellow was not satisfied with his own conspicuous appropriations; he would fain have mounted our regiments on the weedy screws which the Rebel impressments had left for the horsing of the crippled region of Western Tennessee. Possibly, too, he may have had some lurking fear that there was a suspicion of iniquity in his thefts, and longed for the reassurance of similar conduct on the part of true men like ourselves. It was, of course, not long after the commencement of this active campaign against the rights of ownership, that we began to receive assurances on every hand that unless we could do something to repress Pat Dixon's vagabondage an outraged people would take the law into their own hands, and avenge the wrongs he had inflicted. With a laudable desire to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, I told him one day of the state of feeling against him, urging him to be more circumspect and to conduct himself like a decent man, else he would be hanged the first time he was caught; intimating, too, that it would be improper for us to continue to employ him to such needless injury to an inoffensive people. His reply was characteristic.