"I'll go with you myself," said the lieutenant; but as he was about to lead the way out of the house he stopped to hear what his captain had to say to Mr. and Mrs. Truman.
"We shall not touch your property, and you may thank these two 'traitors' for it," said the officer; and when he said "traitor," he waved his hand toward Rodney and Tom and paused to note the effect of his words.
The men, after the first shock of surprise had passed, seemed ready to drop, Mr. Truman leaned heavily against the nearest wall, and his wife, who had borne up as bravely as the best of them, behaved as women usually do under such circumstances. She buried her face in her handkerchief and sobbed violently.
"I hope you gentlemen will remember my forbearance and be equally lenient toward any Confederate who may chance to fall into your power," continued the captain, whose calm, steady voice had grown husky all on a sudden. "We are not a bad lot, but we are going to govern this State as we please, and you will save yourselves trouble if you will stop fighting against us. You'll have to do it sooner or later. Of course I shall be obliged to deprive you of your guns, for you might be tempted to shoot them at some loyal Jackson man when we are not here to protect him. I have saved these young gentlemen from your clutches, and as that was what I came for, I will bid you good-evening."
Rodney Gray did not hear much of this polite address for a new fear had taken possession of him, and he took the opportunity to say to his friend Tom:
"You go with the lieutenant after the horses, and I will stay with the captain to say a word in your defense in case any of these Union people happen to speak your name, or let out anything else you would rather keep hidden."
Tom thought this a good suggestion. It would certainly be disagreeable, and perhaps dangerous, to have the captain tell him when he returned with the horses that he wasn't Tom Barton at all—that his real name was Percival, that he was the commander of a company of Union men who had offered to help Lyon at St. Louis, and all that. While Tom did not think the captain would believe such a story if it were told him, it might suggest to him some leading questions that the boys would find it hard to answer. So he left Rodney to act as a sort of rear guard, and went off to the stable with the lieutenant.
"Did you really know that we were in the house?" Tom asked, when he was alone with the officer. "If you did, it can't be that Merrick's boy told you."
"Of course he didn't. He would have kept it from us if he could, but all the same the information came from him in the first place. The blacks in these parts are all Union—no one need waste his breath telling me different—and that scamp of a boy lost no time in spreading it among the Union men in the neighborhood that there were a couple of 'disguised rebels,' as he called you and Gray, putting up at Truman's house. That was the way those five fellows came to get on your trail; but, as good luck would have it, the darkey told the story to too many. Not being as well acquainted in this settlement as he probably is in his own, he told it to a Jackson man, who rode to our camp and told us of it. If it hadn't been for that we should be miles away now; but of course we couldn't think of going off and leaving some of our own people in the hands of the enemy."
"You rendered us a most important service," replied Tom; and he told nothing but the truth when he said it. "It is necessary that I should go home on business, but Rodney Gray wants to enlist in an independent command as soon as he can get the chance. Didn't you speak of Dick Graham as a sergeant?"