Rodney The Partisan

"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 Dick 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 Washington 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 arsenal. 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 circumstances 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 assume 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 Dick 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 scrap 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, Dick 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 Dick'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 passed 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.

"You see we have some men with us who are not in uniform, do you not?" said he. "Well, they are the recruits we have picked up since we have been out on this scout. They have been terribly persecuted by the Union men in their settlement, and want us to stop on our way back long enough to burn those Union men out. If we do, it will delay us a day or two; if we don't, and keep lumbering right along, we shall be with the rest of the boys in less than forty-eight hours."

This was what Tom wanted to know; and he decided that when the squad reached the old post-rode and turned up toward the place at which the regiment was stationed, he would go south toward Springfield, and so avoid the risk of meeting Dick Graham.

"I suppose you know your own business best," said the lieutenant, when Tom announced his decision. "But I'll never go piking off through the country alone so long as I know what I am doing. There's too much danger in it. When you get ready to go into the service, remember that our regiment is one of the very best, and that we are ready to welcome all volunteers with open arms."

The two boys slept under the same blankets that night, but the talking they did was intended for the benefit for those who were lying near them, rather than for each other. Tom sent numberless messages to Dick Graham, and wanted Rodney to be sure and tell him that he (Tom) would be a member of his company before its next battle with the Yankees; all of which Rodney promised to bear in mind. The squad broke their fast next morning on provisions which they had "foraged" from the Union men whose buildings they had destroyed two nights before, and at eight o'clock arrived at the old post-road where the Barrington boys were to take leave of each other, to meet again perhaps under hostile flags and with deadly weapons in their hands. But there was one thing about it: They might be enemies in name, but they never would in spirit.

"There goes one of the bravest and best fellows that ever lived," said Rodney, facing about in his saddle to take a last look at his friend who rode away with a heavy heart.

"Don't be so solemn over it," said the captain. "Didn't he say he would come back as soon as he could?"

Yes, that was what Tom said; but the trouble was, that when he came again he might come in such a way that Rodney could not shake hands with him.

CHAPTER XIV

"HURRAH FOR BULL RUN!"

Having decided that he would waste too much time if he turned from his course to punish the Union men who had persecuted his recruits, the captain "kept lumbering right along," and on the afternoon of the next day came within sight of the town in which his regiment had been encamped when he left it to start on his scout; but there was not a tent, a wagon or a soldier to be seen about the place now, and a citizen who came out to meet him, brought the information that the regiment had moved South to join Rains and Jackson, who were marching toward Neosho, a short distance from Springfield: and at the same time he gave the captain a written order from his colonel to join his command with all haste.

"If we had known this before, we might have kept company with your friend Tom," said the captain, as he faced the squad about after a fashion of his own and started them on the back track. "Both sides seemed to be concentrating in the southwestern part of the State, and there's where the battle-ground is going to be."

"Not all the time, I hope," said Rodney.

"Of course not. We'll drive the enemy back on St. Louis, and wind up by taking that city. General Pillow will march up from New Madrid to co-operate with us, and perhaps he will stop on the way to take Cairo. I hope he will, to pay those Illinois chaps for robbing the St. Louis armory."

This was a very pretty programme but the captain thought it could be easily carried out, and the very next day he heard a piece of news which caused him to make several additions to it. As the squad was moving past a plantation house an excited man, who was in too great a hurry to get his hat, rushed down to the gate flourishing a paper over his head and shouted, at the top of his voice:

"Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Hurrah for Johnston! Hurrah for Bull Run and all the rest of 'em!"

"What's up?" inquired the captain, reining in his horse.

"Here's something that one of Price's men slung at me yesterday while he was riding along," replied the planter, opening the gate and placing the paper in the officer's eager palm. "Aint we walking over 'em roughshod though, and didn't I say all the while that we were bound to do it? A Northern mechanic has got no business alongside a Southern gentleman."

"Have we had a fight?" asked the captain. "I wonder if my regiment was in it."

"No, I don't reckon it was," answered the man, with a laugh. "You see it happened out in Virginny, a few miles from Washington. I wish I might get a later paper'n that, for I calculate to read in it that our boys are in Washington dictating – "

"Hey – youp!" yelled the captain, who began to understand the matter now.

"Price's men whooped and yelled worse'n that when they went by yesterday," said the man, jumping up and knocking his heels together like a boy who had just been turned loose from school. "That's Davis's dispatch right there. He went out from Richmond to watch the fight, and got there just in time to see the Yankees running."

The officer, who was worked up to such a pitch of excitement that the paper rustled in his trembling hands, glanced over the black headlines to which the planter directed his attention, and then read the dispatch aloud so that his men could hear it. It ran as follows:

"Night has closed upon a hard-fought field. Our forces were victorious. The battle was fought mainly on our left. Our forces were fifteen thousand; that of the enemy estimated at thirty-five thousand."

"And when the Yankees got a-going," chimed in the planter, clapping his hands and swaying his body back and forth after the manner of a negro who had been carried away by some sudden enthusiasm, "they never stopped. It was such a stampede that their officers couldn't do nothing with 'em. The soldiers who were running away from the battle met the civilians who were riding out from Washington to see it, and the two living streams of humanity, one going one way and t'other going t'other way, got all mixed up together; and all the while there were our batteries playing onto 'em and our cavalry riding through 'em and sabering first one and then another, till – Hey – youp! I'll be doggone if I can seem to get it through my head, although I have read it more'n a hundred times."

This astounding intelligence almost took away the breath of the men who listened to it. Of course they had known all the while that whipping the North was going to be as easy as falling off a log, but to have their opinions confirmed in this unexpected way almost overwhelmed them. They knew it was bound to come, but they hadn't looked for it so soon. They gazed at one another in silence for a moment or two, and then the shout they set up would have done credit to a larger squad than theirs. The planter, who really acted as though he had taken leave of his senses, joined in, laughing and shaking his head and slapping his knees in a way that set Rodney Gray in a roar. It was a long time before the captain could bring his squad to "attention."

"There's a good deal more in this paper," said he, "and if you will let me have it, I should like to read it to the boys when we go into camp. We belong to Price, and want to catch up with the men who went by here yesterday."

"Then you'll have to skip along right peart," replied the man. "That's the way they were going stopped long enough to drink my well 'most dry, and then went off in a lope. As for the paper, take it along. You don't reckon there's any chance for a mistake, do you?"

"Not the slightest. President Davis knew what he was doing when he sent that telegram to Richmond."

"But fifteen thousand against thirty-five thousand," said the planter, whose excitement had not driven all his common sense out of his head. "That's big odds, and it kinder sticks in my crop. Well, good-by, if you must be going, and good luck to you."

"It doesn't stick in my crop," replied the captain. "I knew we could do it, and we'll whip bigger odds than that, if they keep forcing war upon us. Don't you know that the man who looks for a fight generally gets more than he wants? Forward! Trot!"

Never before had Rodney Gray been thrown into the company of so wild a set of men. If such a thing were possible, they were wilder than those his Cousin Marcy found on his train when he boarded it at Barrington on his way home. The first rational thought that came into his mind was: What a lucky thing that Tom Percival was well out of the way when this news came! Tom would have betrayed himself sure, for he never could have pulled off his hat and shouted and whooped with any enthusiasm when he heard that the cause in which he believed, and for which he was willing to risk his life, had met with disaster. At length the captain, who appeared to have been awed into silence, said slowly:

"I, too, would like to see a later paper than this. If it is true that the Federals were utterly routed and thrown into such confusion that their officers could do nothing with them, our victorious troops must have followed them into Washington, and I shouldn't wonder if they were there at this moment, dictating terms of peace to the Lincoln government."

The paper that had been given him, proved to be a copy of the Mobile Register. As the captain talked he ran his eye rapidly over its columns, and finally found an editorial containing a piece of news that caused him to halt his squad and face his horse about.

"Here's something I want to read to you," said he. "Come up close on all sides so that you can hear every word of it. You know that our governor proposed that Missouri should remain neutral, and that a conference was held at the Planter's House in St. Louis to talk the matter over. This is what General Lyon said in reply to the governor's proposition, Now listen, so that you may know who is to blame for the troubles that have come upon us:

"'Rather than concede to the State of Missouri the right to demand that government shall not enlist troops within her limits, or bring troops into the State whenever it please, or move its troops at its own will, I would see every man, woman and child in the State dead and buried. This means war.'

"What do you boys say to that?" continued the captain.

"I say that if the Yankees want war we'll give them more than they'll care to have," answered one of the squad; and all his comrades yelled their approval. "Now while you're reading, captain, suppose you read about that big battle. Let's hear just how bad our fifteen thousand whipped the Yankee thirty-five thousand."

The officer complied and read an account of the battle of Bull Run, which was so highly sensational and so utterly unreasonable, that Rodney Gray's common sense would not let him believe, more than half of it. He hoped and believed that the Southern soldiers had gained a glorious victory over the Lincoln hirelings; but that there could have been so great a difference in the size of the contending armies, did not look reasonable. But the captain put implicit faith in the story.

"It seems that the Federal success in the beginning of the fight was owing to their overwhelming numbers," said he. "But the men on our side were gentlemen who could not be driven by a rabble, and of course they were bound to win in the end. But here is an article that may be of more interest to us. It is entitled. 'The Situation in Missouri.' You know that Governor Jackson went to Jefferson City and issued a proclamation calling the people to arms, and that Lyon came up the river on steamboats and routed him from there and from Booneville, too. You know all about it, because you were there and so was I. Well, the Northern papers think that that was a blow that secured Missouri to the Union, and that thousands, who have been hesitating which side to take, will now enlist to put down the rebellion. Rebellion! Remember the word. That's what the Lincoln hirelings call the efforts of a free people to maintain their freedom. But listen to what the Register has to say on this point:

"The Northern soldiers prefer enlisting to starvation. But they are not soldiers, least of all to meet the hot-blooded, thorough-bred, impetuous men of the South. They are trencher-soldiers who enlisted to make war upon rations, not upon men. They are such as marched through Baltimore, squalid, wretched, ragged, half-naked, as the newspapers of that city report them; fellows who do not know the breech of a musket from its muzzle; white slaves, peddling watches; small-change knaves and vagrants. These are the levied forces which Lincoln arrays as candidates for the honor of being slaughtered by gentlemen such as Mobile sends to battle. Let them come South and we will put our negroes to the dirty work of killing them. But they will not come South. Not a wretch of them will live on this side of the border longer than it will take us to reach the ground and drive them off.'

"Can we at the front be whipped while our friends at home keep up such heart as that?" cried the excited captain, pulling off his cap and flourishing it over his head with one hand, while he shook the paper at his men with the other. "Three cheers for brave old Missouri, and confusion to everybody who wants to keep her down."

"Everybody except Tom Percival," thought Rodney, as he threw up his cap and joined in to help increase the almost deafening noise that arose when the officer ceased speaking. "Whatever happens to anybody else I want Tom to come out all right."

After this short delay the squad rode on again, and along every mile of the road they traversed they found people to cheer them and hurrah for the great victory at Bull Run. There were no signs of Union men anywhere along the route, but the blackened ruins they passed now and then pointed out the sites of the dwellings in which some of them had formerly lived. Those ruins had been left there by some of Price's men scouting parties like the one with which he was now riding. Rodney had always thought he should like to be a scout, but if that was the sort of work scouts were expected to do, he decided that he would rather be a regular soldier. He wouldn't mind facing men who had weapons in their hands, because that was what soldiers enlisted for; but the idea of turning women and children out into the weather, by burning their houses over their heads, was repugnant to him. There was one piece of news he and the captain did not get, although they asked everybody for it. No one could tell them for certain that the victorious Confederates had gone into Washington and dictated terms of peace to the Lincoln government. There were plenty who were sure it had been done, but they had received no positive information of it. The only news they heard on which they could place reliance was that Price had withdrawn from Neosho, and effected a junction with Jackson and Rains at Carthage. That was a point in the captain's favor, for instead of being obliged to make a wide detour to the east and south of Springfield, he turned squarely to the west toward Carthage, and saved more than a hundred miles of travel, as well as the risk of being captured by a scouting party of Yankee cavalry.

The squad reached Carthage without seeing any signs of Siegel's troopers, who were supposed to be raiding through the country in all directions, and when Rodney rode into the camp, which was pitched upon a little rise of ground a short distance from the town, he remarked that he had never seen a stranger sight. The camp itself was all right. The tents were properly pitched, the wagons and artillery parked after the most approved military rules, and all this was to be expected, since the commanding general was a veteran of the Mexican war; but the men looked more like a mob than they did like soldiers. There were eight thousand of them, and not one in ten was provided with a uniform of any sort. The guard who challenged them carried a double-barrel shotgun, and the only thing military there was about him, was a rooster's feather stuck in the band of his hat.