Rodney was not aware that the major knew he was harboring a rebel deserter, who had been badly wounded while escaping from the stockade at Camp Pinckney, and was careful to keep the fact from the knowledge of all except those who could be trusted. He did not care to receive callers, for fear there might be a spy or mischief-maker among them, and relied upon his hounds to give him warning when anyone rode up to the front bars. They acted so savagely when they rushed in a body down the walk to meet a stranger, that the latter, whoever he might be, usually thought it prudent to hail the house before venturing to dismount, thus giving Rodney time to get the deserter into some inner room where he would be out of sight. But one morning, about two weeks after the occurrence of the events we have just recorded, he had visitors so many in number that they stood in no fear of the hounds, nor did they hail the house. They simply threw down one or two of the top bars, jumped their horses over the rest, and came up on a gallop, their leader drawing rein in front of the open door, just in time to catch a momentary glimpse of the deserter as he vanished into a back room. Rodney’s heart sank. He had had all his work and worry for nothing. Of course his unwelcome visitors, who were Federal cavalrymen, would take the deserter to Baton Rouge when they went and ship him off to a Northern prison. The officer in command of the squad, which was a much larger one than Rodney had ever seen scouting through the country before, proved to be a captain whose acquaintance he had formed during one of his visits to the provost marshal’s office, and he walked out on the porch and faced him as if he had nothing to conceal.
“Good-morning,” said he, with a military salute. “What brought you out here in such a hurry and so far from your base?”
The captain waved his hand toward the back-yard as if to say to his men that they were at liberty to break ranks and quench their thirst at the well, and then he answered Rodney’s question.
“We came out to pay our respects to the conscript officer in Mooreville, but he was uncivil enough to light out before we could exchange a word with him,” said the captain. “We didn’t want to ride all the way out here for nothing, and so we changed our scouting party into a cotton-burning expedition. I don’t suppose you would know a bale of cotton if you ran against it, would you?”
The words were spoken in jest, but Rodney knew there was a good deal of truth in them, for he looked over the captain’s shoulder and saw a negro standing at the bars under guard. He was one of Mr. Randall’s field-hands, who had assisted in hauling his master’s cotton into the swamp.
CHAPTER IV.
THE PHANTOM BUSHWHACKERS.
“I am not exactly on a cotton-burning expedition either,” continued the captain, after he had drained the gourd which one of his men brought him, filled with water fresh from the well, “but I am ordered to look around and find it, so that I can tell whether or not it will pay the government to send out wagons to haul it in. But if it is in such a bad place that we can’t get it out, of course we shall have to burn it to keep the enemy from profiting by it. I understand that there is a good deal of cotton hidden about here somewhere, but I hope yours is where nobody will find it.”
“I haven’t a bale to bless myself with,” replied Rodney.
“Perhaps not, but your father has; several of them,” said the officer with a smile. “But I tell you it will go against the grain for us to touch anything that belongs to you, after what you did for some of our escaped prisoners.”
“Then why can’t you give us a chance to take it inside your lines and sell it?” inquired Rodney. “If it is the policy of the Federal government to drain the South of cotton, don’t you see that every bale we put into your hands will be one bale less for the Confederates?”