Among those who were suspected was a one-legged soldier named Hubbard. He hailed from Chicago and was a perfect pest. He was quarrelsome and impudent and would say things that a sound man would have got a broken head for saying. His squawking querulous tones, and hooked nose secured for him the name of “Poll Parrott.” He was a sort of privileged character, being allowed to go outside, which caused many to believe he was in league with Wirz, though I believe there was no direct proof of it. One day he came to where I was cooking my grub and wanted me to take him in. He said all his comrades were down on him and called him a spy, and he could not stand it with them. As a further inducement he said he could go out when he had a mind, and get wood and extra rations, which he would divide with me. I consulted my “pard” and we agreed to take him in. He then asked me to cook him some dinner, and gave me his frying-pan and some meat. While I was cooking his dinner he commenced finding fault with me, upon which I suggested that he had better do his own cooking. He then showered upon my devoted head some of the choicest epithets found in the Billingsgate dialect, he raved and swore like a mad-man. I was pretty good natured naturally, and besides I pitied the poor unfortunate fellow, but this presuming on my good nature a little too much, I fired his frying-pan at his head and told him to “get”; and he “got.”
Two days afterwards he went under the Dead-line and began to abuse the guard, a member of an Alabama regiment, who ordered him to go back, or he would shoot him. “Poll” then opened on the guard in about the same style as he had on me, winding up by daring the guard to fire. This was too much and the guard fired a plunging shot, the ball striking him in the chin and passing down into his body, killing him instantly.
A few days before this, a “fresh fish,” or “tender foot,” as the cow boys would call him nowadays, started to cross the swamp south of my tent. In one place in the softest part of the swamp the railing which composed the Dead-line was gone, this man stepped over where the line should have been, and the guard fired at him but he fired too high and missed his mark, but the bullet struck an Ohio man who was sitting in front of a tent near mine. He was badly, but not fatally wounded, but died in a few days from the effects of gangrene in his wound.