Slouch hats added to these butternut garments completed their costume, and thus accoutered they set out on a tramp whose duration was an uncertainty. Their plan was to walk from Rolla to Ironton and back again. The distance between the two points was about a hundred miles, and they intended to take a different road on their return from the one followed on the outward journey.
Ironton was then the terminus of the Iron Mountain Railway, and was held by a garrison of Union troops. Colonel Wyman, who commanded the Thirteenth Illinois, then stationed at Rolla, promised to write to the commander of the post at Ironton and inform him of the proposed journey of the youths, so that their story would not be discredited on their arrival there. It was thought best that they should carry no letters or papers of any kind which might compromise them in case of capture. So they took nothing except sufficient money to pay their expenses on the way, and this was supplied by the commander of the post. The paper money of the state of Missouri was preferred to anything else by the inhabitants of the region through which they were to pass, and therefore they carried nothing which bore the stamp of the United States government, with the exception of a few small pieces of silver coin and some of the local “shin-plasters” that were then in circulation.
The story that they were to tell in case they were questioned was that they had come from the northern part of Missouri and were on their way to visit friends near Ironton. They would freely admit that they had come through Rolla, and Colonel Wyman gave them permission to tell all they knew about the garrison there, except to give a guess as to the number of troops at the post. To all questions as to the number of soldiers at Rolla, they were to reply that they “did n't know, but thought there were five or six thousand.”
The fact was a reinforcement was expected in a few days, but this was unknown to the youths, and therefore the colonel was quite willing the boys should give whatever information they could, and in saying that they did n't know the number of soldiers at the post they would be strictly within the lines of truth. On their part they were to learn all they could about what the secessionists were doing in the region between Rolla and Ironton, and to what extent it was sending recruits to the rebel forces in the field.
The only baggage either of them carried was an overcoat, if an overcoat can be called baggage. Jack wanted to add a tooth-brush and a cake of soap to his outfit, but the proposal was vetoed by Harry.
“Don't you see,” said Harry, “you'd be giving yourself away at once? These fellows here don't use soap, or so rarely that it is an exception; and as for tooth-brushes, I don't believe a quarter of the people have ever heard of'em. Suppose they search us or see us using soap and tooth-brushes; they'd know right off that we were not of their kind.
“And did n't you hear about how soap-boxes caused a lot of ammunition to be seized?” Harry added.
“No; what was that?”
“It was about the time of the Camp Jackson affair, when the state authorities were laying their plans for taking the state out of the Union and getting ready to fight. The Union commanders at St. Louis were trying to stop the shipment of arms and ammunition to the interior of the state, and all packages of goods going in that direction were examined. At first only the outside of the packages was looked at, but one day something happened to require a more careful inspection.
“The examining officers found some boxes labeled 'soap' on a steamboat bound for Lexington, on the Missouri river. Had there been only one or two boxes he would not have been suspicious, but when he found more than one hundred boxes he 'smelt a mouse.' He naturally wondered why the people in that part of Missouri could want so much soap, and from wondering he ordered some of the boxes opened.