Captain Cross hastily called his company together to counter this threat. He crossed to the north bank of Duck River and probed General Cooper’s picket line in the early morning of November 27. After exchanging a few shots, Cross withdrew his men and waited for daylight. In the morning Cooper advanced another seven miles to Centerville, where he detached the 130th Indiana and 99th Ohio to guard the fords on Duck River, then marched on another 15 miles with the balance of his brigade. Cooper reported, ‘I found the country infested with guerrillas, who hung upon my flanks and advance and rear guard.’ Cross wisely waited until the Federal column had left the open valley and moved onto the wooded ridges. Then he would fire and retreat, only to appear a few minutes later in an attack on the flank or the rear. Brownlee Cross was wounded during one of those hit-and-run attacks.

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Despite the menace posed by guerrillas, many Union soldiers failed to keep up with their brigade. The Yankee stragglers were easy targets for mounted bushwhackers. Private Ethelbert Crouse, Company F, 130th Indiana, left the column on the 26th to get a drink of water and could not catch up with the regiment that night. He soon fell in with five other soldiers from his company, Isaac Caston, Lewis Hendry, Joseph King, Adam Hoombaugh and Lemuel Grandstaff, and they all slept together that night in an outbuilding. Crouse later related what happened the following day:

We were out of rations, having eaten the last the day before. We could not forage, for we had been told that there were guerrillas in that locality, and we found it to be so, all too soon. We looked for turnip patches along the road, but did not enter a house.

It must have been about nine or ten o’clock of the forenoon of the second day, Sunday, November 27, 1864, that we found the guerrillas were in pursuit of us. We started to run and ran until about eleven o’clock, and were within a quarter of a mile of our rear guards, when they attacked us. Our guns were loaded, but would not go off, the ammunition being wet. Finding our guns were of no use, we threw them away, and again started to run; but the first thing I knew I was surrounded by nine or ten of the villains. They were dressed in citizen’s clothes and were armed with shot-guns, rifles, carbines, muskets, and revolvers. After giving them my pocket-book (I had no weapons), they told me not to be scared, for they intended to parole me and send me home.

The guerrillas captured all of Crouse’s party except 19-year-old Joseph King, who escaped into a ravine and then ran out into an open field where a planter and several slaves were at work. The planter drew his pistol, halted the fugitive and asked the Yankee who he was and where he was going. King blurted out an answer, whereupon the planter shot him dead as his captive friends watched helplessly.

Stunned by the coldblooded murder of their friend, Crouse, Caston, Hendry, Hoombaugh and Grandstaff were trotted back to the west some 10 miles. They traveled across fields and through woods, their mounted captors evidently avoiding roadways that might contain Union cavalrymen. Cross’ men told the Yankees not to be frightened, as they would soon be paroled and sent home. After fording Piney Creek, the guerrillas herded their captives down into a deep ravine in the midst of a pine forest.

By this time another squad of prisoners had joined the first group. Sergeant Oliver H. Blanchard, Company E, 25th Michigan, described how they had been captured:

November 26, I was unable to keep up with the regiment and in company with several others, fell some distance to the rear. The next day, Sunday, we crossed Piney Creek in the forenoon. I was in company with Moses Buck, Co. B, William Dewey, Co. D, Corp. George Westover, Co. G, Sergt. Otto Boote, Co. I, and a man from the 99th Ohio [William Haney, Company K]. When about a quarter of a mile from the creek, twenty-five or thirty guerrillas suddenly dashed upon us from behind in the road. They fired upon us and demanded our surrender.

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