“If I can’t, what’s the reason I was ’lected to that office?” asked Lambert in reply. “What do you want of me?”
“The members of the Randolph family are not quite as poor as some people seem to think, I want you to understand,” said Tom in a mysterious whisper. “We have several little articles hidden away that our neighbors know nothing about, and next week we shall have some store tea and coffee and salt to hand around to those who need them. Your shoes are full of holes, too. You ought to have a new pair.”
If Lambert had given utterance to the thoughts that were in his mind, he would have said that his old commander would miss it if he hoped to bribe him in this way. There were few people in the settlement who did not stand in need of the articles Tom mentioned, but Lambert knew where he could get them for the asking. Still he wanted to know what Tom wished him to do, and said so.
“You fought the conscript officers offen me long’s as you could, an’ I aint likely to disremember it,” he replied.
“I kept you out of the army for more than a year, and now is the time for you to pay me for it,” replied Tom impressively. “Now listen while I tell you something. You know that our government has ordered every planter who owns cotton to burn it so that it will not fall into the hands of the Yankees, don’t you?”
“No!” answered Lambert. He was surprised, for this was news to him; but he saw what Tom was trying to get at.
“Well, it is the truth, and those who do not comply with the order will be punished in some way, and their property destroyed by our own soldiers. Now there’s old man Gray; he has cotton.”
“And he won’t never burn it,” exclaimed Lambert.
“That’s the idea exactly. He’d rather sell it to the Yankees for sixty cents a pound; and so far as I can see there is nothing to hinder him from doing it.”
“Less’n some of our fellers slip up an’ burn it for him,” put in Lambert.