“You’ve hit it again,” exclaimed Tom, who told himself that he wasn’t going to have any trouble at all in bringing the man to do the work he had suddenly laid out for him. “He can sell his cotton if nobody stops him, but my father can’t sell his because he is known to be a loyal Confederate. Do you think that’s fair or right?”
“I know it aint,” answered Lambert. “Gray is Union, and oughter be sent amongst the Yanks where he b’longs; but your paw is Confedrit and so am I. Do you want me to tech off that cotton?”
“Well, no; not exactly that. You know where it is, I suppose?”
“There aint much of anything in the woods in this country that I don’t know something about,” said Lambert with a grin. “I reckon I might find it if I took a notion.”
“That is what I thought, and now I come to the point. While I was in camp I learned that a squad of our soldiers is coming here some day to look after the very cotton we are talking about,” said Tom, who did not think it would be just the thing to say that he had proposed the expedition himself, and accurately described the bayou in which Mr. Gray’s four hundred bales could be found. “Now if you happen to see that squad while you are riding about the country——”
“I’ll take leg-bail mighty sudden, I bet you,” interrupted Lambert.
“Without offering to show them where the cotton is hidden?” cried Tom.
“You bet! I aint got no call to go philanderin’ about the woods with a passel of soldiers, an’ if you was the friend you pertend to be you wouldn’t ask sich a thing of me.”
“Why, man alive, they are Home Guards,” began Tom.
“Then I wouldn’t trust none of ’em as fur as I could sling a church house,” replied Lambert.