“I understand that very well, but you see your rebel record is dead against you. You fought us like fury for more than a year, and now, when you find that you are in a fair way to get soundly whipped, you want to turn around and make money out of us. That plan won’t work, Johnny. If you could blot out your war record, or if you knew some solid Union man you could trust to sell your cotton for you, why then——”
“There isn’t a man, Union or rebel, in Louisiana that I would trust to do work of that kind,” declared Rodney with emphasis. “I don’t say whether my father has any cotton or not; but if he has he would tell you Yanks to burn it and welcome before he would give any friend of his a chance to cheat him out of it. Who buys cotton in the city—the government?”
“No; speculators. The government grabs it without so much as saying ‘by your leave.’”
“Do you give those speculators military protection?”
“Not yet. They take their own chances, and protect themselves if they go outside the pickets. But they are working for protection, and some day they’ll get it.”
“Do they pay in gold?”
“Not as anybody has ever heard of,” replied the captain with a laugh. “Confederate scrip for one thing, and——”
“I wouldn’t look at it,” exclaimed Rodney. “I wouldn’t give a bale of good cotton for a cart-load of Confederate scrip.”
“A fine loyal grayback you are to talk that way about your country’s shinplasters,” said the captain with another hearty laugh. “If all rebel soldiers are like you, I don’t see why your armies didn’t fall to pieces long ago.”
“It is because they are held together by discipline that would drive Union soldiers into mutiny in less than a week,” said Rodney bitterly. “I’ll take to the woods with the rest of the outlaws before they shall ever have an opportunity to try it on me again, and I know hundreds of others who feel the same way. But I wish you would tell a sorry rebel how to change cotton into money. If you will, I may become a trader myself.”