Rodney, the Overseer

by Harry Castlemon

The boys went back to their unfinished breakfast and ate heartily, as they had often done while men all around them were forming in line of battle and shells were bursting over their heads. But still Rodney was anxious, for the coming contest might bring great loss to his father. There were many bales of cotton concealed within a circle of a few miles of the place where he was sitting; both sides had proclaimed it contraband of war, and it seemed impossible that a line of battle could go far in any direction without discovering some of it; and the destruction of part would lead to the destruction of the whole, for some of those who lost, Mr. Randolph for instance, would be mean enough to point out the hiding-place of the rest. This reflection troubled Rodney, but before he sat down to another meal he had something besides cotton to think about. The scouts of the opposing armies came together down the road, out of sight, but within plain hearing of the two boys, who ran to the bars and listened to the sounds of the conflict. They heard the sharp, quick reports of the carbines, and the cheers and yells of the combatants; and when the yells became fainter and at last died away altogether, and the cheers grew in volume until they became one continuous cheer, they looked at each other with the same startling question in their eyes.

"That's the first encounter, and we're whipped," said Dick. "Now if the victorious Yanks come back this way—then what?"

"Our discharges and passes and permits will be of no more use than so much blank paper," answered Rodney. "They'll say that if we haven't given information of some sort to the enemy already, we will do it the first chance we get, and so we'd better trot right along with them to Baton Rouge."

"That's what I am afraid of. I don't want to go to Baton Rouge."

"Neither do I; and so I am going to do as other and better men have done under similar circumstances."

"Afoot or on horseback?" inquired Dick, who knew that his friend had resolved to take to the woods.

"On horseback, to save our animals from being stolen, and to give color to the story that we have gone to town," replied Rodney. "Come on, for there's no telling how soon the Yanks may come down the road at a gallop."

While one started for the stable yard, the other ran in to tell his black housekeeper that he was going to ride toward Mooreville, where he would remain until the Federals had left the country. Yes, there had been a sharp skirmish down there in the woods, he said in reply to the woman's anxious inquiries, the Confederates had been driven from the field, and he and Dick thought it best to get out of sight for awhile.

"The Federals may not come back this way," added Rodney, "but if they do, tell the truth and don't try to pass me off for a Union man. They know as well as you do that I have served my time in the Confederate army, and there's nothing to gain by telling a different story. If anyone asks for me, you can say that I have ridden toward Mooreville."