A Rebellion in Dixie by Harry Castlemon (best books to read in life .TXT) 📕

those men would be along before a great while. The rebels were not the men to stand still and allow themselves to be robbed of $500,000.

“Their scouts will be a long ways ahead of the main body, and by the time they get here we can be safe in the swamp,” said Mr. Sprague. “The cavalrymen are all good shots, and by the time they get through with 130one fire there won’t be so many of them to follow up our men.”

“They will shoot them down, I suppose?” said Mr. Knight.

“Of course they will have to take their chances on that. While all the rest of them are asleep one of them can be standing guard.”

“I think it would be a good plan. We’ll send cavalrymen down there every morning to relieve them. Perhaps you had better detail some guards for to-morrow morning. But do you say you captured that train without firing a shot?”

“It is the truth,” said Mr. Sprague. “One of the soldiers said it was the prettiest surprise he every saw. The men were all prompt, and they obeyed my whistle just like clock-work.”

The next morning when Leon awoke and stretched himself on the bench which served him in lieu of a bed he felt like a new man. He was not accustomed to spending so many hours in the saddle, his long ride of the day before had wearied him, and when he went to slumber he “slept for keeps,” as he expressed 131it. He got up, and, after washing his hands and face, went out on the porch and saw a party of a dozen men gathered about a tree a short distance away. There was a white mule in the party, and three or four men were fussing around her.

“Tom has got to work to break the ‘muel,’ as lie calls it, from kicking,” said Leon, “and I am going down to see how it is done. He thinks he has got a prize there, and I hope he has.”

When Leon got up with the crowd he found that the mule had been securely fastened to a tree, and that there were two men engaged in holding her head up. You may have noticed that when a mule wants to kick she always puts her head down, and by holding her head up it was impossible for her to kick Tom, who, by bringing her tail around by her side, was busy in tying a stone that weighed two or three pounds, and was wrapped up in a thick rag so that it would not bruise her heels, fast to the end of it. Leon saw through the plan at once, and he laughed heartily.

132“There, now, I reckon we’re all right,” said Tom, as he took a finishing knot in the string with which the stone was tied. “Kick, now, and we will see how you will come out. Let go her head, boys.”

When Tom said this he raised the stone and let it down against the mule’s heels with a sounding whack, and the men let go their hold and backed away. In an instant you could not have told where that mule belonged. Her heels were in the air all the time; but no matter how high the stone went, it always came down, and the further it went, it came back to its place and punished her heels severely. Sometimes she seemed as if she would kick herself over her head, she stood up so straight. The men stood around and laughed heartily, until the mule, after trying in vain to rid herself of the contrivance, stopped her kicking and turned around and looked at it. She seemed to know that it was fast to her, and after looking first on one side and then on the other, and trying with more energy than before to throw off the useless appendage, which she knew did not belong 133there, she drew her haunches under her, looked at Tom and broke out into a faint bray, as if begging him to take it off.

“There, sir, she is done with her kicking for all time,” said one of the men.

“Tom,” said Leon, “don’t go near her. You know how treacherous a mule can be.”

The man promptly stepped up to the mule, undid the stone, lifted her tail, and did other pranks which would have led even a mule who did not know how to kick to lay back her ears.

“I said I would break her of kicking in less than two days, and we have broken her in less than half an hour,” said Tom, gleefully. “Now watch me and see me ride to camp.”

Tom mounted in regular Texas fashion, placing his left hand upon the mule’s shoulder and throwing his right leg over her back, and with a “G’lang there, muel!” went down the road at a furious pace. She loped beautifully, and Tom wasn’t even moved, although he rode bare-back. Leon was satisfied that he had got a prize, after all.

“Now all he wants is to go around that 134mule forty times a day, lifting her tail and patting her, and she won’t kick him,” said the man who undid the stone. “I just know, for I’ll bet on it.”

When Leon had seen the mule broken and Tom ride away, he turned his steps toward the camp of the rebels to see how they were getting on. There was another sentry on guard this time, and he was engaged in a favorite occupation, sitting on a log with his rifle beside him, smoking a cob pipe and warming his hands at the fire. The two rebels were standing in the door of the lean-to, and they greeted Leon heartily. After exchanging a few words with them Leon said:

“I am going to speak to father about you to-day, and I think he will let you out. I am going home this morning, and I want Dawson to ride with me.”

“If he lets me out I will go and be glad of the chance,” said Dawson. “But what are you going home for?”

“To let my mother know that I shan’t be home to-night. I reckon we are going down after your mother.”

135“By George! That’s the best news I have heard since I have been a prisoner,” exclaimed Dawson. “You will see father here in less than a week, and you don’t want to let him get into any fight where the rebels are. He don’t take any prisoners.”

Leon next bent his steps toward the hotel to get his breakfast. In the living-room he met the landlord, who had three or four men around him, and was talking gleefully of the manner in which the wagon-train had been captured the day before.

“To think that our boys never fired a shot, and there were twenty-five of them rebels who were hired to defend it,” said he. “Now here’s Leon,” he added, taking the boy’s right hand in his own, throwing his left arm around his shoulder, and affectionately drawing him up to his side. “Who would think that this boy would watch over his father? He gets close up to his side, and if anyone pops him over he is going to see about it.”

“You will have to get away from this place, Mr. Faulkner,” said Leon. “Your house is right on the main road, and the first party 136of rebels who come in here will set fire to it.”

“I know all about that,” said Mr. Faulkner, with a laugh. “I expect everything I have got will go up in smoke. But you see they won’t burn anything but the house. Your father is going to lend me some of the wagons as soon as they are unloaded, and I am going to pile on everything I have got and take them all up to the swamp. I should like to see the rebels get them out of there.”

“So would I,” said Leon.

“I can’t give you as good a breakfast as I could once,” added Mr. Faulkner. “Bacon, eggs, corn-bread and coffee—I am almost out of coffee, now that I think of it. I shall be all out if you haven’t got some in those wagons you captured yesterday. Go on and get your breakfast, the whole of you. There’s many a better man than you and I dare be who is living on worse food, and he’s just as good a Union man as though he stood in our ranks.”

Leon went into the dining-room and found his father and Mr. Knight sitting there by 137themselves, and he concluded that it was a good time to talk to them about the rebels who were kept under guard.

“I have been thinking about them all the morning,” said Mr. Sprague, when Leon had explained things to him, “and I don’t see the need of keeping them under guard any longer; do you, Knight?”

“No, I don’t. I say let them out.”

“Well, I will go back with you and turn them loose,” said Mr. Sprague. “That will be the way we’ll work it. As fast as any rebels come in here and say they are on our side we’ll take their weapons and horses away from them, if they have any, and hold them until they prove that they are just as they should be.”

“Well, what do you say to my going down to Dawson’s house after his mother?” said Leon.

“What do you think about it, Knight?”

“Why I say let the boy go. He has proved long ago that he knows how to handle himself in a tight place; yesterday, for instance; and he will be just as safe as he would be 138here in camp. By the way, Leon, we have given your father a new title. He says the Secretary of War is too long for him, and so we have promoted him to Colonel. He likes that better. Maybe if you conduct yourself all right he will make you aid-de-camp.”

We are sorry to say that Mr. Knight did not pronounce this word correctly, and if there had been some boys like you, who are fresh from their books, they would have seen a good many other words whose spelling bothered him. But he knew one thing that had evidently slipped the President’s mind. If his father had been promoted to colonel, Leon thought that was being promoted backwards. But then this thing would not last more than a year or two, and it did not make much difference to him what people said about it. He got no money for the position he held, none of the officers got any, and he was willing to do what he could for the sake of the county.

“I don’t care if my father never promotes me to anything,” said Leon. “If he will let me stay close by him, so as to be on hand if 139anything happens to him, I shall be satisfied.”

The party having finished their breakfast arose from the table at the same time, and Mr. Sprague went out with Leon to call upon the rebels. On the way he talked more plainly to Leon than he had ever done before.

“I shan’t appoint you aid-de-camp,” said Mr. Sprague.

“I know why,” said Leon. “If you should do a thing like that, the fellows who are not as high in authority as you are would think that you were giving me a place to keep me out of danger. I don’t want anybody to think that of me.”

“Well, yes; that has something to do with it. But you would be in just as much danger there as you would anywhere else. I don’t want you hanging around me all the time. The men think you are doing it on purpose to shield me.”

“I confess that that is what I was thinking of.”

“Don’t do it any more. Of course I shall be in the thickest of the fight, if we have any, 140but I don’t want you to be there. That’s the reason I am giving my consent to allow you to go down after Dawson’s mother.”

“Do you say I may go?” exclaimed Leon, joyfully.

“Yes; but I want you first to let your mother know we are safe and what is the reason we don’t come home.”

“I’ll go and get Tom and Dawson to go with me. By the way, Tom has got his mule broken.”

“So that he won’t kick?” asked Mr. Sprague, in surprise.

“Yes, sir; and he broke him in less than half an hour.”

Leon then went on to tell how Tom had operated to break the mule, and when he described her kicking he made his father laugh heartily. By this time they had reached the lean to and found the two rebels enjoying their breakfast. They arose to their feet as Mr. Sprague approached, knowing that the Secretary of War had much authority over their prisoners, but he motioned them to keep their seats. Even the sentry got up, put down