CHAPTER VI.
CAPTAIN ROACH LAYS DOWN THE LAW.
As soon as the Baton Rouge men with their lowering looks and big revolvers were fairly out of sight of the house Captain Tom, feeling much the worse for the exciting ordeal through which he had just passed, went into his mother's room and flung himself down on the lounge with the air of a man who had nothing in the world to live for. There wasn't another captain in the Confederacy, he told himself, whose ambition to do something great for his country had been balked and defeated at every turn as his had been ever since he took command of the Home Guards. In no single instance that he could think of had his men conducted themselves as he thought they ought, or as he was sure Captain Hubbard's Rangers would have conducted themselves if they had been situated as the Home Guards were, and it was a sad disappointment and trial to him. Already he repented of his rash promise to turn his company over to the enrolling officer, for by such a proceeding he would place himself right where he was before the Governor honored him with his commission—that is to say, without any standing at all in the community. Now he had influence and he was not ignorant of the fact. It was very gratifying to his vanity to have men who were his superiors in every point of view, who had seldom invited him to their houses or treated him with anything more than ordinary civility—it was very gratifying to have such men go out of their way to speak to him, and to see them listen attentively while he discussed the issues of the hour, and told how the war ought to be conducted on the Confederate side. The most of these men in their hearts despised him, and Captain Tom knew it; but they were aware that through his intimacy with Captain Roach he was able to hasten or postpone their conscription, just as the humor seized him, and for this reason thought it prudent to treat him with some show of respect. But if he gave his company over to the enrolling officer, or if Captain Roach were relieved and a new and stricter man put in his place——
"Ow! Ow!" yelled the persecuted and furious captain of the Home Guards when these dispiriting reflections passed through his mind; and with the words he sprang from the lounge to the middle of the room, where he swung his arms and danced about like one demented. "No matter what I decide to do I am in a fix. But I'll never give up my company—never in this world. I am the biggest toad in the puddle now and I am going to stay that way, or else I'll go to Baton Rouge and curry favor with the Yankees, as other good Confederates have done to keep out of trouble. Jeff Davis can't reach inside their lines and take me by the collar and drag me into his army. And as for Roach, if he gets up on his dignity and says ugly things to me on account of Lambert's foolishness, I'll let him know who he is talking to. I'll report him myself for—for incompetency and general worthlessness. He's about as fit to be an enrolling officer as Adam's off ox. At any rate he shall never sit at my mother's table again, and he can bet on that."
At this moment Mrs. Randolph, who had done so much to help Captain Tom through his trying interview with the Baton Rouge committee, hastened into the room looking very much excited and distressed.
"My dear," said she nervously, "I am afraid we are going to have more trouble. There is a score or more of Home Guards in the road coming toward the house, and they are talking loudly and shaking their fists at one another as if they are very angry."
"I don't care if they are," shouted Captain Tom. "I am mad too, as I have good reason to be. Stand by me and see how I will talk to them."
Money would not have induced Captain Randolph to go out on the gallery alone to meet his mutinous soldiers, and even with his fearless mother at his side to support and encourage him he felt like running back into the house when he saw them coming through the gate and heard their loud, angry voices. Whether they intended to do him personal injury Tom never knew for certain, though he afterward heard it hinted that they did; but he was much gratified and relieved to observe that they ceased all hostile demonstrations when they saw his mother standing by his side on the gallery; and that emboldened him to go on with the programme he had laid out for himself.
"You are a pretty lot of soldiers—a very pretty lot indeed," was the way in which he went at them. "I am heartily ashamed of you and disgusted with myself to think I ever consented to act as your commanding officer. Do you know that you have done us and our glorious cause more injury than Farragut ever did? Men have been shot to death in the Army of the Centre for doing less than you have done, and now I am going to put you where you will be served in the same way the first time you misbehave yourselves. I shall stand your foolishness no longer. The field is the place for you, and there's where you are going as soon as Captain Roach can send you."
"Cap'n Roach can't send us there, nor you neither," shouted Lambert, who of course was expected to act as spokesman for the Home Guards. "We are swore into the service of the State, we are, and Confedrit officers can't touch us. Didn't Bob Hubbard's Rangers——"
"I can send you to the front to pay you for what you did yesterday, and I will," interrupted Captain Tom. "There are no such useless things as States troops any longer, and I am glad of it. Ask Captain Roach and he will tell you that you are here only because I asked him to let you stay, and that if the camp of instruction we are waiting for had been established I could have sent you there any day I pleased. I have been standing between you and him all along, and this is the way you repay me, you ungrateful blackguards! I'll teach you to play the part of fools without my orders."