“It’s the greatest scheme I ever heard of,” said Ned. “But it cannot be carried out. We’ve got to go to work in earnest now to put up the bacon and beef your father promised to give as the price of my exemption, and while we are doing it, it will be no trouble for us to keep an eye on that cotton.”
Rodney Gray afterward declared that work and plenty of it was all that kept him alive during the next three months, and it is a fact that as the year drew to a close, with anything but encouraging prospects for the ultimate success of the Union forces in the field, Rodney’s spirits fell to zero. Although he never confessed it to Ned Griffin, the latter knew, as well as he knew anything, that all Rodney’s hopes and his father’s were centred on the speedy putting down of the rebellion, but just now it looked as though that was going to be a hard, if not an impossible, thing to do. “Burnside’s repulse at Fredericksburg in the East had its Western counterpart in Sherman’s defeat on the Yazoo, and indeed the whole year presented no grand results in favor of the national armies except the capture of New Orleans.” But if Rodney had only known it, some things, many of which took place hundreds of miles away and on deep water, were slowly but surely working together for his good. He knew that General Banks had relieved General Butler in command of the Department of the Gulf; that he had an army of thirty thousand men and a fleet of fifty-one vessels under his command; that his object in coming was to “regulate the civil government of Louisiana, to direct the military movements against the rebellion in that State and in Texas, and to co-operate in the opening of the Mississippi by the reduction of Port Hudson,” which was on the east bank of the river twenty-five miles above Baton Rouge. As he straightway made the latter place his base of operations, and gradually brought there an army of twenty-five thousand men, Mooreville and all the surrounding country came within his grasp. Major Morgan and his fifty veterans took a hasty leave, Camp Pinckney was abandoned, and Confederate scouting parties were seldom seen at Rodney’s plantation and Ned’s, although it was an everyday occurrence for companies of blue-coats to stop at one place or the other and make inquiries about the “Johnnies” that were supposed to be lurking in the neighborhood. They never said “cotton” once, and this led Ned Griffin to remark that perhaps the new general had driven the speculators away from Baton Rouge and did not intend to allow any trading in his department.
“Don’t say that out loud, or you will give me the blues again!” exclaimed Rodney. “If it gets to Lambert’s ears, good-by cotton.”
“I didn’t think of that,” answered Ned, frightened at the bare suggestion of such a misfortune. “It will be much more to our interest to make Lambert believe, if we can, that traders will be thicker than dewberries the minute Port Hudson and Vicksburg are taken. That will make him hold his hand if anything will.”
As to Lambert, he “showed up” as often as he stood in need of any supplies, and sometimes loitered about for half a day, as if waiting for the boys to question him concerning a matter that, for reasons of his own, he did not care to touch upon himself. He would have given something to know what they thought of the “phantom bushwhackers” and their methods, but Rodney and Ned never said a word to him about it. The negro guide, who was more frightened than hurt, quickly recovered from his injuries, and within a day or two after he was taken to his master’s house ran away to the freedom he knew was awaiting him in Baton Rouge, and that made one less to tell where the cotton was concealed.
“I suppose the next bushwhacker will be a fellow about my size,” was what Rodney often said to himself. “I have half a mind to pounce on Lambert the next time he comes here and take him to Baton Rouge, but I don’t know whether that would be the best thing to do or not, and my father can’t advise me.” Then he would recall the Iron Duke’s famous ejaculation, and adapt it to his own circumstances by adding, “Oh, that a Union man or the end would come!”
Since he was so positive that a Union man was the friend he needed, it would seem that Rodney ought not to have been at a loss to find him right there in the settlement. If there were any faith to be put in what he saw and heard every time he went to Mooreville and Baton Rouge, there were no other sort of men in the country—not one who had ever been a Confederate or expressed the least sympathy for those who openly advocated secession. According to their own story, scraps of which came to Rodney’s ears now and then, Mr. Randolph and Tom had done little but talk down secession and stand up for the Union ever since Fort Sumter was fired upon, and Mr. Biglin, the red-hot rebel who put the bloodhounds on the trail of the escaped prisoners Rodney was guiding to the river, declared that his well-known love for the old flag had nearly cost him his life. He was glad to see Banks’ army in Baton Rouge, he said, for now he could speak his honest sentiments without having his sleep disturbed by the fear that his rebel neighbors would break into his house before morning and hang him to the plates of his own gallery. The country was full of cowardly, hypocritical men like these, and what troubled Rodney and Ned more than anything else was the fact that they seemed to have more influence and be on closer terms with the Federals than did the honest rebels who had ceased to fight because they knew they were whipped. Rodney’s friend, Mr. Martin, who lived in Baton Rouge and kept a sharp eye on these “converted rebels,” whose hatred for the Union and everybody who believed in it was as intense and bitter as it had ever been, told him that Mr. Biglin and others like him were using every means in their power and making all sorts of false affidavits to secure trade permits, and seemed in a fair way to get them too. Indeed, so certain were they that they would succeed in their efforts, that they were going out some day to look at the cotton in the Mooreville district, and see what the prospects were for hauling it out. They were even engaging teams to do the work. They were not to have military protection, Mr. Martin said, but that was scarcely necessary, for the Union cavalry had swept the country of Home Guards and conscript soldiers for a hundred miles around.
“But the Union cavalry hasn’t cleared the country of the bushwhackers who shot Mr. Randall’s nigger,” said Ned Griffin, who always had a cheering word to say when Rodney was the most disheartened. “If Mr. Martin’s story is true, I hope Biglin will come himself and give them a fair chance at him.”
And Mr. Biglin did come himself, although Rodney thought he was too much of a coward to venture so far into the country. He and half a dozen other civilians rode into the yard one day and asked Rodney for a drink of water, but that was only done to give them a chance to draw from him a little information about cotton. Rodney greeted them in as friendly a manner as he thought the occasion called for, and conducted them around the house to the well.
“I tell you it seems good to get out in the fresh air once more, and to know that while here I am in no danger of being gobbled up by a conscript officer and hustled away to fight under a flag I have always despised,” said Mr. Biglin, putting his hands into his pockets and walking up and down in front of the well. “So you have turned overseer, have you, Rodney?”