Memphis Daily Appeal CS
An Exciting Adventure in Arkansas.
From the Memphis Argus, October 16.]
Guerrillas, it seems, still hug the opposite shore occasionally, for purpose best known to themselves. We learn that on Tuesday morning a party of four soldiers from the 40th Illinois regiment and two from the 6th Iowa, crossed over from Fort Pickering in quest of paw-paws, a fruit more pleasant to look upon than eat, and narrowly escaped annihilation from a party of guerrillas concealed in some bushes. The main fact of the affair, as derived from a soldier of the latter regiment cognizant of them, are about as follows: While walking quietly down the levee they were approached by a horseman in citizen’s dress, who informed them that he was going a little further down to lay up a piece of fence which had been torn down around a house of his that had been burned; and after a few more commonplace remarks, put spurs to his horse and galloped away through the thick woods. He had not been gone five minutes, when a perfect volley of musketry broke upon their listening ears, and buckshot and bullets rained around them—wounding one of the men, Charles Stephens, of company D, 6th Iowa infantry, completely riddling the hats, blouses, clothes, etc., of the rest of them. The remainder, frightened at the unexpected attack, and forgetting that they had guns as well as the assailants, (probably as most would,) fled, when the attacking party sprang from their places of concealment, and ordered the soldiers to halt or they would be shot. All continued their flight but one, who, hard pressed, inverted his musket as if to surrender; but upon the pursuers firing, concluded that the place was a little too hot, and after an exciting chase rejoined his comrades. They afterward went in quest of Stephens, who had sunk to the ground exhausted after running half a mile, the blood meanwhile trickling from a wound in his side made by two buckshot. He was found and carried to the skiff, and brought to the Tennessee side. The regimental surgeon pronounces his wound mortal. He was still alive yesterday.* We learn that a party of five from the 6th Iowa, who entered the Arkansas swamps yesterday, four were captured, doubtless by the same party. The remaining ones escaped.

*6th Iowa Infantry, Co. D—Stephens, Charles. Age 22. Residence Centerville, nativity Ohio. Enlisted Feb. 22, 1862. Mustered May 13, 1862. Wounded by guerrillas Oct. 14, 1862. Died of wounds Oct. 15, 1862. Pg. 885. Roster and Record of Iowa Soldiers in the War of the Rebellion, Vol. I, Des Moines, Iowa, 1908.