“I am not exactly on a cotton-burning expedition either,” continued the captain, after he had drained the gourd which one of his men brought him, filled with water fresh from the well, “but I am ordered to look around and find it, so that I can tell whether or not it will pay the government to send out wagons to haul it in. But if it is in such a bad place that we can’t get it out, of course we shall have to burn it to keep the enemy from profiting by it. I understand that there is a good deal of cotton hidden about here somewhere, but I hope yours is where nobody will find it.”

“I haven’t a bale to bless myself with,” replied Rodney.

“Perhaps not, but your father has; several of them,” said the officer with a smile. “But I tell you it will go against the grain for us to touch anything that belongs to you, after what you did for some of our escaped prisoners.”

“Then why can’t you give us a chance to take it inside your lines and sell it?” inquired Rodney. “If it is the policy of the Federal government to drain the South of cotton, don’t you see that every bale we put into your hands will be one bale less for the Confederates?”

“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.”

“If by money you mean something besides Confederate rags, I must tell you that it is what you will not see until every rebel has laid down his arms and quit fighting the government, because all cotton brought within our lines has to be purchased on contracts for payment at the close of the war——”

“Then go ahead with your burning expedition,” said Rodney, who thought he had never heard anything quite so preposterous. “You’ll get mighty little cotton about here on those terms.”

“——at the close of the war,” continued the captain, paying no heed to the interruption, “because, if paid for in coin or green-backs, the money would be sure, sooner or later, to find its way into the rebel treasury. Your authorities will not steal their own money, for they know how worthless it is; but they’ll steal ours, and use it too, every chance they get. I suppose that darky out there at the bars can show me where the cotton is concealed?”

“He knows where every bale of it is,” answered Rodney. “He helped hide it.”

“He declares he don’t want to go to Baton Rouge with us, but if he acts as my guide I shall have to take him along, or you fellows who lose cotton will kill him.”

“And no doubt you will kill him if he refuses to act as your guide, so he is bound to be killed any way you fix it,” said Rodney in disgust. “He’ll not be harmed if he stays at home after you leave, and nobody knows it better than he does. Ask him and see.”

“Prepare to mount!” shouted the captain, thinking his men had wasted time enough at the well. “By the way,” he added, in a lower tone, “who’s your company, and why did he dig out in such haste when I rode up to the door? He’s a reb, I know it by the cut of his jib.”

“He’s a conscript I know, but he’s a deserter as well, and as good a Union man as you are. He was in pretty bad shape when I found him running from the hounds, but he is able to travel now, and if you will leave him here a few days longer he will be glad to take refuge inside your lines,” whispered Rodney, believing that the surest way for his patient to escape trouble was to give the captain opportunity to parole him then and there. “He hasn’t done any fighting, and never means to if he can help it.”

“Then he can stay and welcome, for all I care,” replied the captain. “I never run a man in as a prisoner unless I have reason to think he is dangerous.”

“Where did you find Mr. Randall’s black man, and how did you come to pick him up for a guide?” inquired Rodney.

“I don’t know that I ought to tell you, but didn’t one of your neighbors lose some cotton a while ago? His name is Randolph, and he wants us to look out for a worthless fellow named Lambert, who, he thinks, burned the cotton for him. He told me to go quietly up to Randall’s and ask for Mose, and I would find in him a good guide; but I was in no case to speak Randolph’s name in anybody’s hearing, and you see what pains I have taken not to do it. But I don’t care. It’s spite work on Randolph’s part.”

“Of course it is,” answered Rodney, who was so discouraged that he had half a mind to say that he would return to the army, and stay there until one side or the other was whipped into submission. “Mr. Randolph will work against everyone in the settlement now.”

“Very likely. Misery loves company, you know; and perhaps there are more men working against you than you think for. Do you know this Lambert, and has he any cause to be down on you?”

“I do know him, but he hasn’t the shadow of an excuse to be at enmity with me or any of my family,” said Rodney in surprise. And then it was on the end of his tongue to add that Lambert was working for him—standing guard over his cotton to see that no one troubled it, but he afterward had reason to be glad that he did not say it.

“Then he is jealous, or I should say envious, of you, because you are rich and he is poor,” said the captain, reining his horse about in readiness to follow his men, who were now riding toward the bars. “If he and his friends can sell your cotton so that they can pocket the money they’ll do it——”

“But they can’t. He shan’t,” exclaimed Rodney, who was utterly confounded. “He hasn’t brains enough to carry out such a bare-faced cheat, nor the power, either; though no doubt his will is good enough.”

“Randolph says it is; and he says further, that when Lambert finds that he can’t make anything out of that cotton, he’ll burn it. But I must be riding along. I’ll be back before dark, and if this deserter of yours would be glad of my escort, I’ll take him to Baton Rouge with me. What would your Home Guards do to you if they should jump down on you and find him here under your roof?”

“It’s a matter I don’t like to think of,” answered Rodney, “and I shall feel safer if you take him away. Good-by; but I can’t wish you good luck. I wish I had never seen you,” he added under his breath, “for you have robbed me of all my peace of mind. So Lambert is a traitor, is he? and my plan for gaining his good will hasn’t amounted to shucks. I’ll tell father about it the first thing in the morning, and would do it to-day if I didn’t want to see that captain when he returns.”

The deserter came out of his hiding-place when summoned, and eagerly promised to be on hand to accompany the Federal soldiers to Baton Rouge. He didn’t know what he would do for a living when he got there, he said, but it would be a great comfort to know that he would not be forced into the army to fight against the old flag. Rodney was too down-hearted to say anything encouraging, but he gave him a short note to Mr. Martin, who would see that he did not suffer while he was looking for employment. Then he walked out on the porch, for he wanted to be alone, and at that moment Ned Griffin rode into the yard.

“O Rodney!” he exclaimed. “Did that cotton-burning expedition stop here, and do you know that there’s the very mischief to pay? That nigger of Randall’s will never show them where his master’s cotton is hidden, but he’ll take them as straight as he can to yours and Walker’s. I tell you that cotton is gone up unless we do something.”

“Have you any suggestions to make?” asked Rodney.

“Let’s engage all the teams we can rake and scrape and haul it somewhere else,” said Ned at a venture.

“What good will that do? It’s in as fine a hiding-place now as there is in the country, and where are the wagons to come from? And the harness? It is all I can do to find gears for eight plough-mules.”

Ned rode away to turn his horse into the stable-yard, spent a long time in taking a drink at the well, and finally came back and sat down on the porch.

“What do you think of that scoundrel Lambert, anyway?” he inquired.

“That my plan for getting on his blind side did not work as well as we thought it was going to. He has got even with Tom Randolph for drawing a sword on him, and now he intends to get square with my father for threatening him with a nigger’s punishment.”

“I was with the mob that night,” said the young overseer angrily, “heard every word that was said, and know that your father never threatened Lambert with anything. He defended him and Tom as well, and sent me to warn them that they had better clear out while the way was open to them. And the last time I saw Lambert he pretended to be grateful to Mr. Gray for what he said and did that night. Oh, the villain!”

But it did no good to rail at Lambert for his perfidy, nor yet to discuss the situation, for the one was safely out of their reach, and talking and planning only served to show them how very gloomy and perplexing the other was. It was simply exasperating to know that they were utterly helpless, but that was the conclusion at which they finally arrived. Time might make all things right, or it might reduce Mr. Gray to poverty; and all they could do was to wait and see what it had in store for them.

Ned Griffin had been in Rodney’s company about two hours when one of the hounds suddenly gave tongue, and the whole pack went racing down to the bars. There was no one in sight, but after listening a moment the boys heard the tramping of a multitude of hoofs up the road in the direction in which the Federal soldiers had disappeared with Mr. Randall’s field-hand for a guide. As the boys arose to their feet the leading fours of the column came into view.

“Sure’s you live that’s them,” whispered Ned. “But what brought them back so soon?”

Rodney hadn’t the least idea, but suggested that possibly the negro guide had missed his way.

“If he did he missed it on purpose; but that’s a thing he could not be hired to do for fear the Yankees would shoot him,” replied Ned. “He may have given them the slip.”

“Never in this world,” answered Rodney emphatically. “When that darky left my bars he was riding double with one of the troopers, and there was a guard on each side of him. If he tried to run, he is dead enough now.”

The boys ran to the bars to wait for the captain, who rode at the head of the column, to approach within speaking distance, and when he did the words he addressed to them almost knocked them over. He appeared to be as pleasant and good-natured as usual, but some of the men behind him looked ugly.

“Why didn’t you tell me that that cotton down there in the swamp is guarded by a battalion of phantom bushwhackers?” said he.

“A battalion of what?” exclaimed Rodney, as soon as he could speak.

“Bushwhackers. Sharpshooters,” replied the captain.

“Home Guards?” inquired Ned.

“I don’t know about that, but I judge that they have your cotton under their protection, for all they tried to do was to kill the darky so that he couldn’t show us where it was. The men who rode in the rear of the line never heard the whistle of a bullet, although they sung around me and the nig pretty lively; and when the nig dropped they ceased firing on the instant. We charged the woods in every direction, but never saw one of them, nor did they make the least attempt to ambush us, as they could have done if they had felt like it.”

Rodney Gray had seldom been so astonished. He looked hard at the captain and did not know what to say. The whole thing was a mystery he could not explain on the spur of the moment. The captain sat on his horse in front of the bars while he talked, but the line passed on until the rear fours came up and halted. Then the boys saw that there was a rude litter slung between two of the horses, and that the form of Mr. Randall’s unfortunate field-hand was stretched upon it. Rodney walked up to the litter at once, but Ned timidly held back. There was a crimson stain on the bandage the negro wore about his head, and Ned could not endure the sight of blood.

“Oh, he isn’t dead,” said the captain, “but he’s too badly hurt to go any farther just now. Besides, we can’t move as rapidly as we would like as long as we have him with us, and I would take it as a favor if you will care for him until his master can be sent for.”

“Throw down those bars, Ned,” said Rodney, looking back over his shoulder as he started on a run for the house. “Bring him along and I will have a place fixed for him. Phantom bushwhackers!” he said to himself. “Now who do you suppose they were? Not Lambert and his gang certainly, for they haven’t the pluck to do such a thing; but I can think of no others who would be likely to turn bushwhackers. Now’s your chance for freedom and safety,” he added, pausing long enough to shake hands with the deserter and help him down from the porch. “Be ready to mount behind one of those Yanks when you get the word, and good luck to you.”

Rodney’s first care was to see that the wounded guide was made as comfortable as circumstances would permit, and his second to send one of his own field-hands to bring Mr. Randall and a doctor. After that, when he had answered a farewell signal from the deserter, and the last of the Federal column had disappeared down the road, he and Ned went back to the porch, and sat down to talk the matter over.

“I am as frightened now as I ever was in the army,” said Rodney honestly. “I never could stand a mystery.”

“There’s no mystery about this business,” replied Ned. “The Yanks lost their guide, and had sense enough to give up the search and come back. That’s all there is of it.”

“But who shot him?”

“Lambert and his crowd, and nobody else,” answered Ned positively. “If they were Home Guards, why were they so careful that their bullets should miss everyone except the darky? They didn’t want to hurt the soldiers; they only wanted to send them back, and they took the only method they could to do it.”

“Well, if it was Lambert, and he is determined to protect that cotton for his own profit, how am I going to haul it from the swamp myself if I ever have a chance to move it?” demanded Rodney. “Will he not be likely to bushwhack me too?”

“By gracious!” gasped Ned, sinking back in his chair, “this is a very pretty mess, I must say. I never once thought of such a thing; but if that’s his game, he’ll bushwhack you or anybody else who tries to move that cotton. However,” he added a moment later, his face brightening as a cheering thought passed through his mind, “what’s the odds? We are not ready to move the cotton yet, and until we are let’s take comfort in the thought that no one who wants to steal it, be he Union or rebel, will dare venture near it. Perhaps by the time you are ready to sell it, Lambert will have been bushwhacked himself. How do you intend to treat him from this time on?”

“As an enemy with whom I cannot afford to be at outs,” replied Rodney. “If he does any work for me I shall pay him for it; and although I shall not try to put any soldiers on his trail, I’ll go into the woods myself and hunt him down like a wild hog the minute I become satisfied that he is trying to play me false. I came to this plantation on purpose to watch father’s cotton, and I really wonder if Lambert imagines he can spirit it away without my knowing anything about it.”

“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?”

“I believe that was what I told you on the day I saw you in Mr. Turnbull’s front yard,” was the answer. “I mean just before that darky of yours came up——”

“Yes, yes; I remember all about it now,” said Mr. Biglin hastily. And then he tried to turn the conversation into another channel, for fear that Rodney would go on to tell that the information that darky brought was what caused Mr. Biglin to put the hounds on the trail of the escaped Union prisoners. “Fine place you have here. A little rough, of course, but it’s new yet. And I presume it suits you, for, if I remember rightly, you always were fond of shooting and riding to the hounds. Have you any cotton?”

“Not a bale. Not a pound.”

Mr. Biglin looked surprised, and so did his companions. The former looked hard at the boy for a moment, and then changed the form of his inquiry.

“Oh, ah!” said he. “Has your father got any?”

“Perhaps you had better go and ask him,” replied Rodney.

“That’s just what we did not more than an hour ago, but he wouldn’t give us any satisfaction.”

“Then you have good cheek to come here expecting me to give you any,” said the young overseer, growing angry. “My father is quite competent to attend to his own business.”

“I suppose he is. Why, yes; of course; but what’s the use of cutting off your nose to spite your face? We know you have cotton and plenty of it; and since you can’t sell it yourselves——”

“Why can’t we?” interposed Rodney.

Mr. Biglin acted as though he had no patience with one who could ask so foolish a question.

“Because of your secession record,” said he. “You were in the Southern army, and your father is a rebel.”

“So are you,” said Rodney bluntly.

“I may have appeared to be at times in order to save my life, but I never was a secessionist at heart,” said Mr. Biglin loftily. “I don’t care who hears me say it, I am for the Union now and forever, one and—and undivided. And General Banks’ provost marshal, or whatever you call him, knows it.”

“If he believes it, he is the biggest dunderhead in the world and isn’t fit for the position he holds,” exclaimed Rodney. “I know you to be a vindictive, red-hot rebel, and since things have turned out as they have, I am sorry I did not tell the —th Michigan’s boys that you put the hounds on——”

“I never did it in this wide world,” protested Mr. Biglin, trying to look astonished, but turning white instead.

“Never did what?” inquired Rodney.

“Put hounds on anybody’s trail. You had better be careful what you say.”

“You don’t show your usual good sense in talking that way,” said one of the civilians. “Our friend has influence enough to make you suffer for it if he feels so inclined.”

“And I had influence enough to make his house a heap of ashes long ago if I had felt like it,” retorted Rodney. “I can prove every word I say any day and shall be glad of the chance.” And then he wondered what he would do if his visitors should take him at his word. He knew that he could not prove his assertions without mentioning the name of Mrs. Turnbull, and that was something he could not be made to do until he had her full and free consent.

“You are quite at liberty to tell what you know about me and my record during this war,” observed Mr. Biglin, as he swung himself upon his horse and turned the animal’s head toward the bars, “and you may have to tell it, whether you want to or not.”

With this parting shot, which he hoped would leave Rodney in a very uncomfortable frame of mind, Mr. Biglin rode away, followed by his friends, and passing through the bars turned up the road leading toward the swamp in which Mr. Gray’s cotton was concealed. No sooner had they disappeared than Ned Griffin, who was always on the watch and knew when Rodney had visitors he did not want to see, threw down the bars and rode into the yard.