In the Trenches 169 



superior at the guerillas' own game, killing eleven, 

 while not one of my men was scratched. Two of 

 the men who did conspicuously good service in this 

 work were Troopers Goodwin and Proffit, both of 

 Arizona, but one by birth a Californian and the 

 other a North Carolinian. Goodwin was a natu- 

 ral shot, not only with the rifle and revolver, but 

 with the sling. Proffit might have stood as a type 

 of the mountaineers described by John Fox and 

 Miss Murfree. He was a tall, sinewy, handsome 

 man of remarkable strength, an excellent shot and 

 a thoroughly good soldier. His father had been 

 a Confederate officer, rising from the ranks*, and if 

 the war had lasted long enough the son would have 

 risen in the same manner. As it was, I should 

 have been glad to have given him a commission, 

 exactly as I should have been glad to have given a 

 number of others in the regiment commissions, if 

 I had only had them. Proffit was a saturnine, re- 

 served man, who afterward fell very sick with the 

 fever, and who, as a reward for his soldierly good 

 conduct, was often granted unusual privileges; but 

 he took the fever and the privileges with the same 

 iron indifference, never grumbling, and never ex- 

 pressing satisfaction. 



The sharp-shooters returned by nightfall. Soon 

 afterward I established my pickets and outposts 

 well to the front in the jungle, so as to prevent all 



VOL. XI. H 



