"And when I make my first report to the Governor or his adjutant-general, and ask him about your commission and Moseley's, I want to be able to say that you are in every way satisfactory to me as well as to the people hereabouts, and that I am sure you will make brave and obedient officers. But you can see for yourself that I can't say that if you keep on bothering good and loyal Confederates like Wallace and Boswell. I think you had better give me those guns."
"I aint got but one," replied Lambert, who seemed to have lost the independent and swaggering air he had assumed at the beginning of the interview, "and I'll go right in and bring it out."
"Where are the others?" demanded Captain Tom.
"Well, Moseley's got one, Smith's got another, and where t'other one has went I disremember just at this minute."
"You distributed the spoils among you, it seems."
"Yes, kinder; so't the Yankees couldn't easy find them."
"Then you must ride around and gather them up; and as I have nothing particular to do this morning I will go with you. I'd rather be a king among hogs than a hog among kings any day," said Tom to himself, as his lieutenant turned about and went into his house, "but I confess I little thought I should get so low down as to command a lot of brigands. That idea about the commissions makes me the biggest toad in the puddle from this time on. I'll hold them up as prospective rewards for good behavior and prompt obedience of orders; but Lambert and Moseley shall never have commissions on my recommendation, I bet you."
The Home Guards had deliberately stolen these four valuable guns, and Tom Randolph knew it as soon as he found how they had been scattered about. The plea that if permitted to remain in possession of their owners they might be captured by the Yankees, who would use them to kill Confederates, was Lambert's excuse for one of the worst outrages that had ever been perpetrated in that part of Louisiana; but it was by no means the last. Three-fourths of all the Home Guards in the South were like Captain Tom's men, and the worst that can be said of them is that they acted as guards at Andersonville, Libby, Millen, and Salisbury. It was not the Confederate soldiers who served at the front, but the Home Guards, who starved the boys in blue to death in those prison pens, and hunted them with bloodhounds when they escaped.
The upshot of the whole matter was that Tom got the guns, which in due time were restored to their lawful owners, and plumed himself on having firmly established his authority over his men. Well, they did behave a little better during the daytime and in that settlement where they were so well known, but they took to riding around of nights, and making "visits of ceremony" to isolated farmhouses in which they had reason to suppose that they would find something worth stealing. But riding was anything but easy work, and the novelty of frightening women and children and browbeating unarmed men wore off after a while; and when they had secured bacon and meal enough to last them for a few weeks, the Home Guards subsided and were seldom heard of again until the news of the glorious victory at Bull Run raised the war spirit of the Southern people to the old fever heat. Then they came to the surface again, and persecuted Union people in and around Mooreville so fiercely that some of them were compelled to flee for their lives, Captain Randolph being in command this time. From his friend Drummond, the telegraph operator, he secured a list of all suspected persons in the neighborhood, and with this to aid him Tom succeeded in doing effective work for the cause of Southern independence. But it was too much like labor to be kept up for any length of time; there was not very much glory in it anyway the better class of Secessionists in the community became strongly opposed to it, and so the Home Guards dropped out of sight once more, not to appear again until Farragut captured New Orleans and sent some of his vessels up the river to effect a junction with Flag-Officer Davis at Vicksburg. When the people of Mooreville heard of it they were very indignant, and some of them declared that they would never submit to have their country overrun in that way—they would die first; and to show how very much in earnest they were they stopped all work, shut up their houses, and ran about the streets in the greatest excitement. When the ship of war Iroquois came up with Commander Palmer on board and demanded the surrender of Baton Rouge, the mayor of that insignificant little town "indulged in the same mock-heroic nonsense that the mayor and council of New Orleans had been indulging in the week before." He declared that the city would not be surrendered to any power on earth, and that if the Federals took possession of it they would do it without the consent and against the wishes of the peaceable inhabitants.
"It was all done for effect, and that man will be one of the last in the Confederacy to shoulder a musket," said Rodney Gray when he heard of it; but being a soldier he applauded the action of Captain Palmer, who, without any fuss or parade, promptly took possession of the barracks, arsenal, and other property of the United States. He hoisted the flag of the Union over the arsenal too, and told the boastful mayor in pretty plain language that he would let it stay there if he did not want to get himself and his town into trouble.