At the end of half an hour the boys had eaten their dinner and were well on their way toward Ellisville, Leon having the map, for which the man in the rebel army had given his life, safely stowed away in one of his pockets. He wasn’t as happy now as he was when he came that way before. Dawson’s stories of his adventures had made him a little reckless, and he felt as though he would like to go through some of them himself; but unfortunately it did not come to him in quite that way. Here was his mother liable to see more adventures than he was, and how did he know but a squad of rebel cavalry would come down on her, kill her guard and carry her off to some Southern prison-pen? Another thing, the Union men had been very careful to hold a force on the main road which extended into Perry county, so as to meet the Confederate troops when they came there, and now the rebels had been at work operating in their rear. It told Leon that they had got something to do before they could establish their independence.
“I know what you are thinking of, Leon,” said Dawson. “I don’t care how strongly a place is fortified or how closely it is watched, the enemy will get in and make a map of it. They know right where the strongest works are, and all about it.”
“What do they do with a man they catch making those maps?”
“That depends. If he is in citizens’ clothes they take him and shut him up; but if he is in uniform, then it’s good-bye, John.”
“Do they shoot him?”
“No; they hang him just as surely as they can get their hands upon him. So you see that that rebel up to your house got what he deserved. He knew what was going to happen to him in case he was caught, and he would rather be shot than hung.”
Before the boys had gone a great way on their road to Ellisville they met a party of perhaps a hundred men, some with an axe on one shoulder and a rifle on the other, accompanied by three or four wagons loaded with their household furniture. They were going up into the swamp to build boats, so that their families would not be cut off when the time came for them to retreat.
“The President sent us, but I don’t look for much trouble up here,” said the leader of the party, leaning on his rifle. “But then it is well to be on the safe side.”
“Don’t fool yourselves,” said Leon. “The rebels won’t come along the main road.”
“Sho! How do you know?”