Dawn was an hour or more away, and the moon was shining brightly as the couple set out down the Mt. Pleasant road. There was an autumn chill in the air (Mrs. Locklin was grateful for the warmth of the lap robe), but there was no wind. The only sound was the clopping of the horses’ hoofs and the crunch of the wheels on the sandy gravel. The couple was silent, relishing the peaceful beauty of the predawn ride.

Then cantering down the road toward them came two columns of military riders, twelve men on grey horses. The moonlight reflected on the brass buttons on their uniforms and illumined their white-gloved hands. Their hands rested lightly on the pommels of their saddles, and their reins hung loose. As the cavalrymen neared the Locklins’ carriage, the columns separated with practiced precision, six riders passing on one side of the vehicle and six on the other.

It was then, as the riders passed their carriage, that the Locklins noticed something very peculiar about them: the riders wore no hats, and each man’s head was bound with a white cloth that came across the top of his head and was tied under the chin.

There was something else strange about those riders. Their horses’ feet made no sounds on the hard-packed road. There was an unnatural silence as horses and riders disappeared around the curve.

Captain Locklin wanted to turn and watch them out of sight, but his own horses were wild with fear. They snorted and reared and would have dashed headlong into the woods, pulling the careening carriage with them, had not Captain Locklin held fast to the reins.

"Whoa!" he shouted. "Whoa, I say!"

The masterful pull on the reins and the command from the familiar voice quieted the terrified animals, and they slowed to a walk.

Captain and Mrs. Locklin looked at each other and asked almost simultaneously, "Did you see what I saw?"

Each one had seen exactly the same thing: twelve men mounted on grey horses, brass buttons glistening in the moonlight, white-gloved hands crossed on pommels, reins hanging slack, and twelve heads bound with white cloths.

"Did you hear anything?" Mrs. Locklin asked her husband.

"Nothing. Not a sound. Those horses rushed past us without making any noise at all. The silence…"

"That’s what frightened me most. The silence. And those white cloths tied around their heads. What was it? What did we see?"

Captain Locklin had no answers, and, though he did not care to admit it, he shared his wife’s uneasiness about their strange encounter with the silent riders. They rode without speaking for some time, each one mentally reviewing the details of the scene they had witnessed.

Mrs. Locklin spoke first. "Those cloths," she said. "I keep thinking about them. They’re like the cloths used to hold the mouth of a dead person closed, aren’t they?"

"Yes," her husband replied. He had helped to prepare bodies for burial and was familiar with the use of the cloths for that purpose.

"But I’ve been thinking about something else, too," he continued. "Could they have been bandages? Could the cloths have been covering wounds? Could they have bandaged wounds left when ears were slashed off? You don’t suppose…"

"You mean those might have been the ghosts of Lafayette Seigler’s victims?" Mrs. Locklin interrupted.

"Now, I didn’t say that. I was just wondering if possibly…"

"I never knew whether to believe those stories about Lafayette Seigler or not," Mrs. Locklin said. "Are they true?"

"Exaggerated perhaps, but basically true," her husband answered. "I found them hard to believe, too, at first. Lafayette seems like a nice enough fellow. Hot-headed at times. But I always get along well with him. He hates Yankees though, hates them more violently than anybody I know. It was when I realized how deep his hatred is that I began to believe the stories."

Lafayette (his name honored the French general who visited Claiborne in 1825) Seigler, reliable sources whispered, was so incensed by the lawless actions of Yankee soldiers in and around Claiborne that he began one-man guerrilla attacks upon them.

Seigler had the fastest horse in the county, and his tactic was to entice Yankee horsemen to chase him. This was not difficult to do since they hated Seigler almost as much as he hated them, and each of them wanted the honor of capturing the rebel. The reward offered for Seigler’s capture increased their interest in pursuing him.

If one of his Yankee pursuers became separated from his companions, that soldier’s horse would likely return to Claiborne without its rider. And Lafayette Seigler would have two new trophies to add to his collection.

It was an unusual collection the young man had. He collected Yankee ears. Some men added notches to their guns to keep count of the enemies they killed. Seigler kept count of his victims by drying their severed ears, folding them neatly, and carrying them in his pocketbook.

Although they had no proof ("How do you prove such things?" Captain Locklin asked again and again), Captain and Mrs. Locklin were sure that they had met a contingent of Lafayette Seigler’s victims that predawn morning, had met a group of Yankees riding out of the moss-shrouded city of the dead in search of their ears.