“There’s one thing about it,” the latter continued after a little pause, “if we get whopped I won’t be the only poor man there is in Louisiany, tell your folks.”
With this parting shot he turned his mule about and rode out of the yard. And Rodney, angry as he was, let him go. He knew now just what he had to expect from the ex-Home Guard and made the mental resolution that, if his father would consent, he would be prepared to make a prisoner of Lambert the next time he met him.
“Something of the sort must be done, and before long, too,” thought Rodney when he went to bed that night, “or the first thing we know our cotton will go the way Mr. Randolph’s did. If the cotton was mine I would promise to hand Lambert a few hundred dollars as soon as it was sold, but then he is so treacherous I couldn’t put any faith in his promises. I wish he had kept away from here to-day. His visit worried me more than Lincoln’s proclamation.”
Rodney intended to go home and lay the matter before his father as soon as he had seen the hands fairly at work in the morning; but just as he arose from his breakfast Mr. Gray rode into the yard, accompanied by a stranger whose appearance and actions attracted Rodney’s attention at once and amused him not a little. He sat on a bare-back mule (Mr. Gray’s fine horses and saddles had disappeared with Breckenridge’s men), with his shoulders humped up, his head drawn down between them, his arms stiffened and his hands braced firmly against the mule’s withers, and his broad back bent in the form of an arch. He wore a blue flannel suit, a black slouch hat, a flowing neck-handkerchief tied low on his breast, and finer shoes and stockings than Rodney himself had been in the habit of wearing of late. He had a sharp blue eye, a bronzed face, a heavy blond mustache, and gazed about him with the air of one who might know a thing or two, even if he didn’t know how to ride a mule bare-back. Rodney hastened down the steps to welcome his father, and then looked inquiringly at the young man in blue, who placed his clenched hands on his hips and stared hard at Rodney.
“De oberseer he gib us trouble,
An’ he dribe us round a spell;
We’ll lock him up in de smokehouse cellar,
Wid de key frown in de well.
De whip is los’, de hand-cuff broken,
An’ ole moster’ll have his pay;