Rodney The Partisan Part 21

Rodney said all this at a venture and was overjoyed to hear the lieutenant say, as he thrust out his hand:

"Shake. I ought to know Rodney Gray, for I have often heard the sergeant speak of him as the hottest rebel in school; but I don't remember that I ever heard him mention Barton's name."

"He wasn't as intimate with Tom as he was with me," Rodney explained.

"There was a difference in their politics."

"That accounts for it. Graham was neutral until his State moved, and Barton here was an ardent Secessionist from the start. That's just the way my captain and I stand now. I began shouting for Southern rights as soon as Carolina went out, and he didn't."

"No, d.i.c.k held back," said Tom, "but Rodney did not. He was the first academy boy to hoist the Stars and Bars. But now, captain, say that you will not harm these folks. They haven't done anything, and as for the strong language they used toward us a while ago-we don't mind that."

"Who's your authority for saying that they haven't done anything?" demanded the captain. "You seem to think that they are the most innocent, inoffensive people in the world; but I know that is not characteristic of Unionists in this part of the country. How do you know but that they have ambushed scores of Confederates?"

"We don't know it; and seeing that you don't know it either, why not give them the benefit of the doubt and let their neighbors see that they get their deserts? Why not be satisfied with what you have already done? You burned two houses last night."

"I am aware of it. The men to whom they belonged are noted bushwhackers, and I went miles out of my way to teach them that they had better let our people alone-that burning and shooting are games that two can play at. But I have no heart for more work of that sort, and so I'll not trouble these men since you seem to be so tender-hearted toward them."

"Thank you, sir; thank you," replied Rodney, heartily. "Now will you pa.s.s us out, and send some men to the stable with us to get our horses?"

"I'll go with you myself," said the lieutenant; but as he was about to lead the way out of the house he stopped to hear what his captain had to say to Mr. and Mrs. Truman.

"We shall not touch your property, and you may thank these two 'traitors' for it," said the officer; and when he said "traitor," he waved his hand toward Rodney and Tom and paused to note the effect of his words.

The men, after the first shock of surprise had pa.s.sed, seemed ready to drop, Mr. Truman leaned heavily against the nearest wall, and his wife, who had borne up as bravely as the best of them, behaved as women usually do under such circ.u.mstances. She buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed violently.

"I hope you gentlemen will remember my forbearance and be equally lenient toward any Confederate who may chance to fall into your power," continued the captain, whose calm, steady voice had grown husky all on a sudden. "We are not a bad lot, but we are going to govern this State as we please, and you will save yourselves trouble if you will stop fighting against us. You'll have to do it sooner or later. Of course I shall be obliged to deprive you of your guns, for you might be tempted to shoot them at some loyal Jackson man when we are not here to protect him. I have saved these young gentlemen from your clutches, and as that was what I came for, I will bid you good-evening."

Rodney Gray did not hear much of this polite address for a new fear had taken possession of him, and he took the opportunity to say to his friend Tom:

"You go with the lieutenant after the horses, and I will stay with the captain to say a word in your defense in case any of these Union people happen to speak your name, or let out anything else you would rather keep hidden."

Tom thought this a good suggestion. It would certainly be disagreeable, and perhaps dangerous, to have the captain tell him when he returned with the horses that he wasn't Tom Barton at all-that his real name was Percival, that he was the commander of a company of Union men who had offered to help Lyon at St. Louis, and all that. While Tom did not think the captain would believe such a story if it were told him, it might suggest to him some leading questions that the boys would find it hard to answer. So he left Rodney to act as a sort of rear guard, and went off to the stable with the lieutenant.

"Did you really know that we were in the house?" Tom asked, when he was alone with the officer. "If you did, it can't be that Merrick's boy told you."

"Of course he didn't. He would have kept it from us if he could, but all the same the information came from him in the first place. The blacks in these parts are all Union-no one need waste his breath telling me different-and that scamp of a boy lost no time in spreading it among the Union men in the neighborhood that there were a couple of 'disguised rebels,' as he called you and Gray, putting up at Truman's house. That was the way those five fellows came to get on your trail; but, as good luck would have it, the darkey told the story to too many. Not being as well acquainted in this settlement as he probably is in his own, he told it to a Jackson man, who rode to our camp and told us of it. If it hadn't been for that we should be miles away now; but of course we couldn't think of going off and leaving some of our own people in the hands of the enemy."

"You rendered us a most important service," replied Tom; and he told nothing but the truth when he said it. "It is necessary that I should go home on business, but Rodney Gray wants to enlist in an independent command as soon as he can get the chance. Didn't you speak of d.i.c.k Graham as a sergeant?"

"May be so. That's what he is."

"Does he belong to your company?"

"No; but he belongs to our regiment, and that's how I came to get acquainted with him. He's got more friends than any other fellow I know of, and he will be glad to see an old schoolmate once more. I have heard him tell of Rodney Gray and the sc.r.a.pes he got into by speaking his mind so freely, and I am not the only one in the regiment who thinks that the Barrington Military Academy is a disgrace to the town and State in which it is located. The citizens ought to have turned out some night and torn it up root and branch."

"They would have had a good time trying it," said Tom. "The boys punched one another's head on the parade ground now and then, but it wasn't safe for an outsider to interfere with our private affairs."

"Why, the Confederates wouldn't fight for the Union boys, would they?" exclaimed the lieutenant. "That's a little the strangest thing I ever heard of. We don't do business that way in Missouri, and I could see that our boys didn't like it when you and Gray stuck up for those Yankee sympathizers back there in the house."

Perhaps they wouldn't have liked it either, if they had known how Tom and Rodney had "stuck up" for each other ever since they met at Cedar Bluff landing. But that was a piece of news that Tom did not touch upon.

He intended to reserve it for d.i.c.k Graham's private ear.

"And in the meantime I mustn't neglect to ascertain just when and where the lieutenant expects to rejoin his regiment, so that I can take the first chance that offers to get away and strike out for home," thought Tom. "d.i.c.k wouldn't expect to see me in Rodney Gray's company, and might betray me before he knew what he was doing."

Having saddled and bridled the horses Tom and the lieutenant returned to the house, the former somewhat anxious to know if anything had been said during his absence that could be brought up against him. But a glance and a rea.s.suring smile from Rodney were enough to show him that he had nothing to fear on that score. The guards stood at the windows watching the party inside, the horses had been brought into the yard in readiness for the squad to mount, and Rodney and the captain were sitting on the front steps. The prisoners, if such they could be called, were too sullen to exchange a word with the Confederates, and the captain thought it beneath his dignity to talk to Union men; and Rodney was glad to have it so.

"Bring in the guards and get a-going," was the order the captain gave when his lieutenant came up; and this made it evident to the well-drilled Barrington boys that Captain Hubbard's company of Rangers were not the only Confederates who had a good deal to learn before they could call themselves soldiers. But his men understood the order, and it was the work of but a few minutes for them to get into their saddles and set off down the road, and they did it without paying any more attention to the men in the house. Rodney rode beside the captain at the head of the column, Tom and the lieutenant coming next in line. The former thought it was a good evening's work all around, and that Merrick's red-eyed darkey could not have done him a greater service if he had been a friend to him instead of an enemy. He had had a narrow escape from being taken into the presence of men he hoped he might never see again, but he was all right now. So was Tom, for if he wasn't already beyond the danger of betrayal, he certainly would be by the time daylight came.

"No; we shall not march all night," said the captain, in response to an inquiry from Rodney. "We have been in the saddle pretty steadily for the last week, and both men and horses are in need of rest. But I shall take good care to get out of this settlement before going into camp. I don't want to be ambushed."

"I don't think those men back there would do such a thing," replied Rodney. "They seemed very grateful to you for letting them off so easily."

"Ha!" exclaimed the captain. "They would do it in a minute if they thought they could escape the consequences. You don't know how bitter everybody is against everybody else who doesn't train with his crowd, and you'll have to live among us a while before you can understand it."

"When shall I have the pleasure of shaking d.i.c.k Graham by the hand?" inquired Rodney. "Does he stand up for State Rights as strongly as he used?"

"Yes; and I am with him. You see, when the election was held in '60, our people, by a vote of one hundred and thirty-five thousand to thirty thousand, decided against the extreme rule-or-ruin party of the South, and declared that Missouri ought to stay in the Union; but at the same time they didn't deny that she had a perfect right to go out if she wanted to. If she decided to go with South Carolina and the other cotton States, the government at Was.h.i.+ngton had no business to send soldiers here to stop her; neither had those troops from Illinois any business to come across the Mississippi and steal our guns out of the St. Louis a.r.s.enal. That was an act of invasion, and we had a right to get mad about it. We decided to remain neutral, and our General Price made an agreement with the Federal General Harney to that effect; but that did not suit the abolitionists who want war and nothing else. They took Harney's command away from him and gave it to Lyon, who at once proceeded to do everything he could to drive us to desperation. He drove us out of Jefferson City and Booneville, and now he has sent that Dutchman Siegel to Springfield to see what damage he can do there."

"But what was the reason Siegel was sent to Springfield?" inquired Tom, who, riding close behind the captain, heard every word he said. "Wasn't it to repel the invasion of McCulloch, who was coming from Arkansas with eight hundred bandits he called Texan Rangers? Has he any right to ride rough-shod through our State, when some of our own citizens are not permitted to stick their heads out of doors?"

"Hallo!" exclaimed the captain, turning about in his saddle to face Tom, while Rodney began to fear that his friend's tongue would get them both into trouble. "You are about the same kind of a Confederate I am, only I don't blurt out my opinions in that style, and you hadn't better do it, either. To be consistent I am obliged to say that those Texans had no business to come over the Missouri line, but circ.u.mstances alter cases. We are in trouble, we can't stand against the power of the abolition government, and I shall be glad to see that man McCulloch."

"I understand that there had been no fighting to speak of, and yet you say we have been driven out of two places," said Rodney.

"Oh, we were not ready and the Yankees were," answered the captain. "We had just lighting enough to give us a chance to learn how gunpowder smells. We are waiting for McCulloch now, and when he comes, we'll a.s.sume the offensive and drive Lyon out of the State."

"That's the very thing I came here for, and I am glad to know that I shall be in time to help," said Rodney gleefully. "But are you a partisan and is d.i.c.k Graham one, also?"

"Yes, to both your questions; but of course we are sworn into the service of the State."

"You couldn't be ordered out of the State, could you?"

"Not by a long shot, and we wouldn't go if we were ordered out. If other States desire independence, let them win it without calling upon their neighbors for help. That's what we intend to do."

"And that was another thing I wanted to know," said Rodney, with a sigh of relief. "I am satisfied now, and wish my company was here with me. Some of the members seemed willing and even anxious to come, but when the thing was brought before them in the form of a resolution, they voted against it."

And then he went on to tell the captain how it happened that he came to Missouri alone, not forgetting to mention how he had fooled the telegraph operators at Baton Rouge and Mooreville.

"Those operators told that St. Louis cotton-factor I was a Confederate bearer of dispatches," said he, in winding up his story. "But I haven't a sc.r.a.p of writing about me."

"You are a great deal safer without any," replied the officer. "Suppose those Union men at Truman's house had searched you and found a letter of introduction to some well-known Confederate living in these parts! They might have strung you up before we had time to go to your relief. But how did you fall in with your old schoolmate, Barton? You couldn't have expected to meet him at the landing?"

This was a question that Rodney Gray had been dreading, for you will remember that he had had no opportunity to hold a private consultation with Tom and ask him what sort of a reply he should make when this inquiry was propounded, as it was sure to be sooner or later. He turned about in his saddle and rode sideway so that Tom could hear every word he said.

"He was the last person in the world I expected to see when I left the steamer at Cedar Bluff landing to get ahead of the Yankee cotton-factor in St. Louis," said Rodney. "Tom had been over Cape Girardeau way on business, and got a trifle out of his reckoning when Mr. Westall and his party of Emergency men picked him up and brought him to the wood-cutters' camp. We slept there that night and came out together in the morning."

This was a desperate story to tell, seeing that they were not yet out of reach of men who could easily prove that there was quite as much falsehood as truth in it, but Rodney did not know what else to say. He rested his hopes of safety upon the supposition that the Confederate captain had done all his scouting on interior lines, and that he had not been into the river counties until he came to Truman's house to rescue him and Tom from the power of the Union men; and there was where his good luck stood him in hand. More than that, d.i.c.k Graham was one of the best known members of his regiment, and it would have taken a pretty good talker to make the captain believe that there could be anything wrong with one of d.i.c.k's friends.

While this conversation was going on Rodney noticed that the captain was constantly on his guard, and that as often as they reached a place where the woods came down close to the road on each side, his men closed up the ranks without waiting for orders. Every house they pa.s.sed was as dark as a dungeon, and no sounds of music and dancing came from the negro quarters. The people, white and black, had gone into their houses and barred their doors to wait until these unwelcome visitors in gray had taken themselves out of the neighborhood.

Before the captain went into camp, which he did about midnight, Tom Percival, as we shall continue to call him, had ample time to question the lieutenant and find out where his regiment was stationed and when he expected to join it. The last question, however, was one that the young officer could not answer with any degree of accuracy.