“Dan; and this is my brother, Cale Newman. We are two good Confederates, dyed in the wool.”
“I know you are, for I recognize the name. We had a long talk with Mr. Newman about it, and we agreed to give him a colonel’s position if he would put us in the way of getting the chief men of Jones county into our hands. Now, Captain, you can afford to give two such little offices as he wants in return for his services.”
“Why, yes, of course,” said the captain, who fell in at once with his lieutenant’s ruse. “You see, Captain—I want all of you men hereafter to address this man as captain and his brother as lieutenant—do you hear?” he added, turning to his squad; and a responsive “Yes, sir,” came from all the men; although candor compels us to say that some of them wanted to laugh. Some of them looked back down the road, and others had something to to do with fixing their feet in their stirrups.
“Thank-ee, Captain; thank-ee,” said Dan, who didn’t know whether he was awake or dreaming. “Just give us a horse apiece and a gun, and we will lead you against those men any day.”
Cale Newman scarcely believed he had heard aright. He knew more about military matters than his brother did, and he did not know that an officer had a right to promote one to his own rank without going first through some preliminary steps. He listened in a dazed sort of way to the conference between the leader of the squad and Dan, but as no one spoke to him and addressed him as “lieutenant,” he did not know whether he was an officer or not. At any rate, he decided to get home before he built any hopes upon it. His father had “seen some military” (although where he saw it, it would be hard to tell, unless he had seen some military companies march along the street), and he would know whether or not everything was just as it should be.
“You see, Captain, I was not with my officers when they talked this matter over with your father, and consequently I didn’t know anything about it,” said the leader of the squad. “However, I am glad to be set right on the matter. You spoke of surrendering the chief men into our hands; now, how are you going to do it?”
“I will tell you where you can get one of them right here,” said Dan. “Leon Sprague has gone down the road with a rebel fellow that he has been running with since yesterday—”
“A rebel fellow?” interrupted the captain, in astonishment. “Have any of our men deserted to you?”
“Oh, yes; there’s lots of them. We had 1498 men when this war broke out,” replied Dan, copying what he had often heard his father say, “and now we have a thousand fighting men camped right up this road.”
“Well, I declare,” said the captain, turning to his lieutenant. “We came within an ace of getting right in the midst of it. They are camping right up this road, you say?”