Rodney, the Overseer

by Harry Castlemon

"I know, but a battle sometimes ends a good many miles from where it begins, and the one that's coming is as likely to be fought here as anywhere else. And if that should happen, wouldn't you rather have a musket in your hands than go skulking through the bushes trying to keep out of danger? I would a hundred times over. But really we must be going. Good-night."

Rodney and his companion bowed themselves to the door and went out, and Captain Tom and his mother sat in their chairs looking at each other and listening to the clatter of the receding hoofs. When it died away altogether Tom jumped to his feet in great excitement.

"We never once thought to ask them where they got that order, or why it was sent by their hands instead of by the hands of one of that colonel's own men," he fairly sputtered. "Mother, it's an infamous trick, and there isn't going to be any fight. I'll remember Rodney Gray for this and other things he has done to me—you see if I don't!"

"I hope you are duly ashamed of yourself for frightening that poor woman so terribly," said Dick, as he and Rodney galloped out of the yard and turned their horses toward the village.

"Why didn't she stay out of the room?" retorted Rodney. "We sent in word that we desired to see Captain Tom privately, but she didn't take the hint. So Tom thought he couldn't spend the night in riding about the country. Well, we've got to, if we do the work we set out to do."

The first part of that work was to call upon Captain Roach, who had excited Tom Randolph's ire by accepting Rodney's invitation to dinner, and the next to warn some of the Union men whom he had conscripted. The former was overwhelmed with surprise and didn't know what to do, not being a veteran; but he wasn't a coward, if he did turn white. He talked the matter over very calmly with his visitors, and following their advice said he would drop the conscript business until the battle had been decided one way or the other. And then he looked helplessly at Rodney as if to ask what he should do next.

"You ought to do duty or shed that uniform," said the boy bluntly. "You can't assemble your conscripts now, and if you could, where would you find men to guard them to Camp Pinckney? You can only show your good-will by reporting at the camp; and if I were in your place, I think I should start the first thing in the morning. If you delay, you will be liable to be cut off by Federal scouting parties. Have you seen any Yanks about here to-day?"

Captain Roach replied that he hadn't seen or heard of any, and Rodney went on to tell about the skirmish that had taken place near his plantation, and how he and Dick had taken to the woods and escaped being caught in the house. The Federals couldn't prove anything against them, he said, but they could shut them up in Baton Rouge until Breckenridge captured it or was driven back where he came from, and that was something he didn't want them to do. Then he and Dick shook hands with the enrolling officer, wished him good luck, and went out into the night to finish their work. It kept them busy until daylight, and then they went to Mr. Gray's to breakfast, happy in the knowledge that they had done as they would be done by, and not one who wished them harm was the wiser for it.

Tom Randolph was hardly out of bed the next morning before he was made aware that there was some truth in Rodney Gray's story. A squad of Federal cavalry went by the house on a keen jump, and about an hour behind them a larger squad of Confederates went past at the same rapid gait. Tom wasn't soldier enough to know that these were nothing but scouts, and in his ignorance supposed that the battle had been fought while he was asleep, and that the Confederates had driven their antagonists; but it was not long before he discovered that the worst was yet to come. All that day soldiers in gray uniforms were in sight somewhere. They streamed by the house or came into the yard and gathered about the well, and an officer with high top-boots and a fierce mustache stood on the front gallery and issued orders in a voice that sounded as loud as a fog-horn. They trampled down the flower beds, cleared the cellar of everything eatable, and helped themselves to what there was in the kitchen, and through it all, the captain of the Home Guards never showed himself. Some of the time he was in the garret, oftener he was under the bed in his mother's room, and then again his frightened eyes were peeping through the carefully closed blinds. He had never dreamed that there were so many men in an army, and yet he saw but one column of a very small army, for Breckenridge made his assault with less than 4000 men. To his immense relief no one asked for him, and perhaps the reason was because Colonel Clark, who wrote that order, was with the other column, five or six miles away.