“Yes, sir; and he broke him in less than half an hour.”
Leon then went on to tell how Tom had operated to break the mule, and when he described her kicking he made his father laugh heartily. By this time they had reached the lean to and found the two rebels enjoying their breakfast. They arose to their feet as Mr. Sprague approached, knowing that the Secretary of War had much authority over their prisoners, but he motioned them to keep their seats. Even the sentry got up, put down his plate—for the rebels had helped him most bountifully—and held his rifle in a way that was intended to present arms. But then the Secretary didn’t know whether the motion was properly executed or not. He touched his hat, however, and after bidding the rebels good-morning and lifting his hat once more out of respect to the woman who sat at the head of the table, he turned again to the sentry.
“I would like to see all the men who are on guard with you,” said he. “They are around here, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, sir; they are around here,” said the sentry. Then lifting his voice he called out: “All you guards turn out. The Secretary of War wants you. Come a-lumbering!”
The men came in a hurry, three of them, some bareheaded, some swinging on their bullet-pouches as they hastened through the bushes, and all eager to see what the Secretary of War wanted. Like the good soldiers they were, they concluded that there was some business to engage in, and they were impatient to do it. But when they found out what he wanted they were just as pleased, all the same. Mr. Sprague told them in so many words that the rebels were all right, and from this time they were released from all sentry duty. The rebels were just as free in their camp as they were themselves.
“Colonel, I want to shake your hand for that,” said the owner of the lean-to, and as he spoke he got up from the table and came out. “Now I want all of you boys to understand one thing. You have done nothing but call me ‘Johnny’ ever since I have been in camp, and now I want you to stop it. My name is Roberts, and I am as good a Union man as the best of you. If you don’t believe it, wait until we get into a fight and I will show you.“
All this was said in a perfectly good-natured way, and the guards, on being sent back to their lean-tos, promised that they would address him as Roberts ever afterward. They had called him “Johnny” because they did not know any other name for him.
“Now, Dawson, I am going to start for home,” said Leon. “Come with me and I will get your horse and weapons for you.”
When Leon and Dawson turned away the former was surprised to see standing at his side another boy, Newman by name, who was enough like Carl Swayne to have been his brother, except in one particular. Newman did not proclaim himself so much in favor of the secessionists as Carl did, but in every other way, so far as meanness was concerned, they were a good team. Leon was not the only one about there who believed that Newman was a rebel at heart, and that if he had his way he would have arrested every Union man in the county. He noticed that Newman did not go with them when they assaulted the train—he had something else that demanded his immediate attention; but he noticed, too, that when the expedition came back Newman had as much to say as anybody. There was one thing about Newman that did not look exactly right to Leon. In the early part of the year, when there was a good deal of talk about the secession of Jones county, this Newman’s father had piled all his worldly goods into a one-horse wagon and started for Mobile; but in two months’ time he came back. There was more fighting going on there than there was in Jones county, he said, and as he was a man of peace and did not believe in contests of any kind, he thought he and his family had better come back and stay in their own house until the trouble was over. Mind you, that was the story he told; whether or not it was the truth remains to be seen.
“Well, Leon, we got ’em, didn’t we?” was the way in which Newman began the conversation.