Horses used on the Escape Route

[L Verge]

I spent my whole life in Southern Maryland listening to the old-timers snicker about how the horses lived to ripe old ages on some Charles County farm - and I agree with them. Horses were valuable property. Also, the soldiers were looking for two-legged fugitives, not four-legged ones. Smart soldiers would have figured out that fugitives take to the cover of ground instead of perched on horses.

Shots would have reverberated through the fields and alerted the swarms of Union soldiers in the area. The shot to the first horse would have spooked the second one so badly that it would have been difficult to control it. Some have suggested that their throats were slit. Again, the smell of blood would have instantly sent the second horse into panic. The circling of buzzards would have alerted the troops, and the Zekiah is not known to have quicksand nor muck deep enough to suck a horse's carcass under.

Finally, Bill Richter and Rick Smith did an excellent article for the Surratt Courier several years ago on horse faking - the art of disguising a horse in a natural manner so that it is unrecognizable as the original one. Of course, Jones, Cox, and Herold would testify that the horses were disposed of -- they didn't want to tattle on any of their friends and cohorts that they had to live out the rest of their lives with.