CHAPTER XI.
BEN MAKES A FAILURE.
“But, captain,” said Tom Allison, who was delighted by this prompt and emphatic indorsement of his friend’s plan, “are you sure the thing can be done without bringing suspicion upon any of us? You have a lot of property that will burn, and so has Mark’s father’s and mine. Remember that. Are you positive that Buffum can be trusted, and has he courage enough to take him through?”
“Nobody aint a-going to get into no trouble if you uns do like I tell you and go and send Buffum up here to me,” replied Beardsley. “Am I likely to disremember that I’ve got a lot of things left that will burn as easy as my dwellin’ house did? and do you reckon I’d take a hand in the business if I wasn’t sure it would work? Your Uncle Lon has got a little sense left yet. And I’ll pertect you uns too, if you will keep still tongues into your heads and let me do all the talkin’. You’ll find Buffum down to his house if you go right now. I seen him pikin’ that-a-way acrosst the fields when I rode up from Nashville not more’n two hours ago. Tell him I want to see him directly, and then watch out. Somethin’s goin’ to happen this very night.”
“Who do you think will be captured first?” asked Mark.
“Marcy Gray, of course,” replied Tom. “He must be first, or at least one of the first, for by the time two or three foragers have been captured on two or three different nights, the rest of the refugees will become suspicious and change their way of sending out foragers.”
“S’pos’n they do,” exclaimed Beardsley. “Won’t Buffum be right there in their camp, to take notus of every change that is made, and as often as he comes home can’t he slip up here and post me? Now, you hurry up and tell Buffum I want to see him directly.”
As Beardsley emphasized his words by turning away from the fence and hastening toward the place where he had dropped his hoe, the boys did not linger to ask any more questions, but jumped their horses over the ditch and started in a lope for Buffum’s cabin.
“I almost wish we had gone straight to Buffum’s in the first place and kept away from Beardsley,” said Mark as they galloped along. “It is bound to end in the breaking up of that band of refugees, and when it is done, Beardsley will claim all the honor, and perhaps declare that the plan originated in his own head.”
“And he’ll have to stand the brunt of it if things don’t work as we hope they will,” added Tom. “If he lisps it in his daughter’s presence it will get all over the State in twenty-four hours, and then there’ll be some hot work around here.”
Half an hour’s riding brought the boys to Buffum’s cabin, which stood in the middle of a ten-acre field that had been planted to corn, and so rapidly did they approach it that they caught the owner in the act of dodging out of the door with a heavy shot-gun in his hands. Believing that he had been fairly surprised and was about to fall into the hands of Confederate troopers, the man’s cowardly nature showed itself. He leaned his gun against the cabin and raised both hands above his head in token of surrender; but when he had taken a second look and discovered that he had been frightened without good reason, he snatched up his gun again and aimed it at Tom Allison’s head.