Having decided that he would waste too much time if he turned from his course to punish the Union men who had persecuted his recruits, the captain "kept lumbering right along," and on the afternoon of the next day came within sight of the town in which his regiment had been encamped when he left it to start on his scout; but there was not a tent, a wagon or a soldier to be seen about the place now, and a citizen who came out to meet him, brought the information that the regiment had moved South to join Rains and Jackson, who were marching toward Neosho, a short distance from Springfield: and at the same time he gave the captain a written order from his colonel to join his command with all haste.
"If we had known this before, we might have kept company with your friend Tom," said the captain, as he faced the squad about after a fashion of his own and started them on the back track. "Both sides seemed to be concentrating in the southwestern part of the State, and there's where the battle-ground is going to be."
"Not all the time, I hope," said Rodney.
"Of course not. We'll drive the enemy back on St. Louis, and wind up by taking that city. General Pillow will march up from New Madrid to co-operate with us, and perhaps he will stop on the way to take Cairo. I hope he will, to pay those Illinois chaps for robbing the St. Louis armory."
This was a very pretty programme but the captain thought it could be easily carried out, and the very next day he heard a piece of news which caused him to make several additions to it. As the squad was moving past a plantation house an excited man, who was in too great a hurry to get his hat, rushed down to the gate flourishing a paper over his head and shouted, at the top of his voice:
"Hurrah for Jeff Davis! Hurrah for Johnston! Hurrah for Bull Run and all the rest of 'em!"
"What's up?" inquired the captain, reining in his horse.
"Here's something that one of Price's men slung at me yesterday while he was riding along," replied the planter, opening the gate and placing the paper in the officer's eager palm. "Aint we walking over 'em roughshod though, and didn't I say all the while that we were bound to do it? A Northern mechanic has got no business alongside a Southern gentleman."
"Have we had a fight?" asked the captain. "I wonder if my regiment was in it."
"No, I don't reckon it was," answered the man, with a laugh. "You see it happened out in Virginny, a few miles from Washington. I wish I might get a later paper'n that, for I calculate to read in it that our boys are in Washington dictating—"