But Cale didn’t agree with his father’s opinions in regard to locking him up, and he secretly resolved that he wouldn’t say anything more in the presence of the quartermaster that would lead him to carry that resolution into effect. His father filled his pipe and sat down in his usual place in the doorway, and Cale, following the motion of Dan’s head, accompanied him around behind the house. Mr. Newman didn’t care where they went or what they did while they were gone. All he thought of was the carrying out of Dan’s proposition to surrender the head men of the Jones-County Confederacy into the hands of the enemy. It looked like a very small piece of business for a father to put this into his sons’ hands, but Mr. Newman thought he was acting just right. The boys were gone half an hour or more, and came back in time to get something to eat. They sat down to their supper in silence, and when they had got through they put on their hats and left the house. They didn’t take their dogs with them, and that proved that they were not going after wild hogs.
“You just let those boys alone,” said Mr. Newman, looking down the path along which they had gone with some satisfaction. “They are going to get whatever they go for.”
“I think it would have been some honor to you if you had gone in their place,” said his wife. “Somehow it don’t seem right to leave the capturing of so many men to boys.”
“Yes, and run the risk of stretching hemp,” replied Mr. Newman, indignantly. “Those boys can be away from home as much as they are a-mind to and nobody will say a word; but if I go down to where the men are and find out something about them they would know in a minute if I wasn’t at home, like I had oughter be. And I don’t want them to ask that question. Let the boys go on. We’ll have some of them men arrested the first thing you know.”
“But how are they going to arrest them? Are they going to come here and take them?”
“No; it will be in a fight, likely.”
“And where will you be when the fight comes off?”
“Oh, I’ll be around somewhere. You look out for yourself and let your husband look out for himself. That’s the way to do it.”
“I wish we had a muel to ride,” said Dan, as they trudged through the woods toward the creek. “Somehow it puts me on nettles to walk. Now that Tom Howe has got a muel I don’t see why we can’t have one. We ought to have gone with them men that captured that train.”
“But we had no guns,” said Cale.