CAPTAIN ROACH LAYS DOWN THE LAW.
As soon as the Baton Rouge men with their lowering looks and big
revolvers were fairly out of sight of the house Captain Tom, feeling
much the worse for the exciting ordeal through which he had just
passed, went into his mother's room and flung himself down on the
lounge with the air of a man who had nothing in the world to live for.
There wasn't another captain in the Confederacy, he told himself, whose
ambition to do something great for his country had been balked and
defeated at every turn as his had been ever since he took command of
the Home Guards. In no single instance that he could think of had his
men conducted themselves as he thought they ought, or as he was sure
Captain Hubbard's Rangers would have conducted themselves if they had
been situated as the Home Guards were, and it was a sad disappointment
and trial to him. Already he repented of his rash promise to turn his
company over to the enrolling officer, for by such a proceeding he
would place himself right where he was before the Governor honored him
with his commission—that is to say, without any standing at all in the
community. Now he had influence and he was not ignorant of the fact. It
was very gratifying to his vanity to have men who were his superiors
in every point of view, who had seldom invited him to their houses or
treated him with anything more than ordinary civility—it was very
gratifying to have such men go out of their way to speak to him, and to
see them listen attentively while he discussed the issues of the hour,
and told how the war ought to be conducted on the Confederate side. The
most of these men in their hearts despised him, and Captain Tom knew
it; but they were aware that through his intimacy with Captain Roach he
was able to hasten or postpone their conscription, just as the humor
seized him, and for this reason thought it prudent to treat him with
some show of respect. But if he gave his company over to the enrolling
officer, or if Captain Roach were relieved and a new and stricter man
put in his place——
"Ow! _Ow!_" yelled the persecuted and furious captain of the Home
Guards when these dispiriting reflections passed through his mind;
and with the words he sprang from the lounge to the middle of the
room, where he swung his arms and danced about like one demented. "No
matter what I decide to do I am in a fix. But I'll never give up my
company—never in this world. I am the biggest toad in the puddle now
and I am going to stay that way, or else I'll go to Baton Rouge and
curry favor with the Yankees, as other good Confederates have done to
keep out of trouble. Jeff Davis can't reach inside their lines and
take me by the collar and drag me into his army. And as for Roach, if
he gets up on his dignity and says ugly things to me on account of
Lambert's foolishness, I'll let him know who he is talking to. I'll
report him myself for—for incompetency and general worthlessness. He's
about as fit to be an enrolling officer as Adam's off ox. At any rate
he shall never sit at my mother's table again, and he can bet on that."
At this moment Mrs. Randolph, who had done so much to help Captain Tom
through his trying interview with the Baton Rouge committee, hastened
into the room looking very much excited and distressed.
"My dear," said she nervously, "I am afraid we are going to have more
trouble. There is a score or more of Home Guards in the road coming
toward the house, and they are talking loudly and shaking their fists
at one another as if they are very angry."
"I don't care if they are," shouted Captain Tom. "I am mad too, as I
have good reason to be. Stand by me and see how I will talk to them."
Money would not have induced Captain Randolph to go out on the gallery
alone to meet his mutinous soldiers, and even with his fearless mother
at his side to support and encourage him he felt like running back into
the house when he saw them coming through the gate and heard their
loud, angry voices. Whether they intended to do him personal injury
Tom never knew for certain, though he afterward heard it hinted that
they did; but he was much gratified and relieved to observe that they
ceased all hostile demonstrations when they saw his mother standing
by his side on the gallery; and that emboldened him to go on with the
programme he had laid out for himself.
"You are a pretty lot of soldiers—a very pretty lot indeed," was
the way in which he went at them. "I am heartily ashamed of you
and disgusted with myself to think I ever consented to act as your
commanding officer. Do you know that you have done us and our glorious
cause more injury than Farragut ever did? Men have been shot to death
in the Army of the Centre for doing less than you have done, and now
I am going to put you where you will be served in the same way the
first time you misbehave yourselves. I shall stand your foolishness no
longer. The field is the place for you, and there's where you are going
as soon as Captain Roach can send you."
"Cap'n Roach can't send us there, nor you neither," shouted Lambert,
who of course was expected to act as spokesman for the Home Guards.
"We are swore into the service of the State, we are, and Confedrit
officers can't touch us. Didn't Bob Hubbard's Rangers——"
"I can send you to the front to pay you for what you did yesterday, and
I will," interrupted Captain Tom. "There are no such useless things as
States troops any longer, and I am glad of it. Ask Captain Roach and
he will tell you that you are here only because I asked him to let you
stay, and that if the camp of instruction we are waiting for had been
established I could have sent you there any day I pleased. I have been
standing between you and him all along, and this is the way you repay
me, you ungrateful blackguards! I'll teach you to play the part of
fools without my orders."
Lieutenant Lambert rubbed his hands nervously together, shaking his
head and swearing softly to himself the while, and fairly ached to make
a suitable rejoinder; but the presence of Tom's mother, of whom he had
always stood somewhat in awe, restrained him.
"We uns thought you was dead set agin the Yankees, and that you would
be sorter glad to see them sailors made to stay on their boats," one of
the Home Guards ventured to say at length.
"What business had you to think anything of the kind?" demanded Captain
Tom. "A soldier's whole duty is to obey. He is nothing but a machine
and his captain does his thinking for him. If I had wanted you to go to
the city and fire on those gunboats I should have led you there myself.
Lambert, you alone are to blame for this miserable state of affairs,
and I will tell you for your satisfaction that you have killed your
chances for a lieutenant's commission deader than a smelt. I'll never
recommend you to the Governor."
"By gum! I won't stand no such talk as that!" yelled Lambert.
He sprang into the air and knocked his heels together, dashed his hat
upon the ground and placed his foot upon the lower step, as if he were
about to rush up to the gallery where Tom was standing. The latter's
face grew as white as a sheet, but he could not think of yielding
ground to a mutinous subordinate while his mother was looking on. In an
instant the sword that hung at his side flashed from its scabbard.
"I haven't drawn it without a cause," said he, shaking the weapon over
the railing almost in Lambert's face, "and I warn you that I shall not
sheathe it with dishonor. That is my motto, and I shall live up to it,
no matter what happens to me. Any more such actions on your part will
shut you up in the guard-house on a bread and water diet."
It is not likely that the sight of Tom's sword or the threat which he
could not have carried out had any effect upon Lieutenant Lambert,
who was a noted rough and tumble fighter, but a glance at the face of
the resolute woman who stood quietly on the porch above cowed him at
once. Mrs. Randolph did not say a word, nor did she move an inch when
Lambert acted as though he was about to charge up the steps, but there
was something in her eye that brought the angry man to his senses. He
backed away from the steps, picked up his hat, and remarked that he
had always supposed a first lieutenant had a right to harass the enemy
in any way he could; but he was rebuked and silenced before he had
uttered half a dozen words because he forgot his manners and addressed
his commanding officer by his Christian name.
Captain Tom was not slow to improve the advantage he had gained, and
the way he scolded, threatened, and even insulted the Home Guards would
have made a regular soldier open his eyes. He showed them that they
did wrong when they followed Lambert to Baton Rouge without orders
from their captain, and drew so harrowing a picture of the dangers and
privations of the army life to which they had doomed themselves by
their acts of disobedience and folly that he frightened the bravest of
them; and when he thought he had impressed them sufficiently he wound
up by declaring that nothing short of a solemn promise on their part
to do better in future would induce him to break the agreement he had
made with the Baton Rouge men. If they would take orders from him and
nobody else he would stand between them and all harm.
"And mark my words, this is the very last warning I shall give you,"
said Captain Tom in conclusion. "The last one of you ought to be
court-martialled and shot."
To his great surprise and his mother's, Lieutenant Lambert stepped
forward, assumed the position of a soldier as near as he could get it,
touched his battered hat respectfully, and said:
"We'll do it, cap'n, and there's my hand on to it, if Miss Randolph
will take it. From this time on you're boss and don't nary one of you
forget it."
Lambert's object was to restore himself to the favor of Tom's mother;
and so he went on to declare, with some emphatic language to make it
more binding, that he spoke for the company and would take it upon
himself to see that the promise was kept. He was sure he had succeeded
in his object when Mrs. Randolph smiled and shook hands with him over
the railing, but all the same Lambert meant something very different
from what he said. Captain Tom made a life-long enemy when he drew
his sword on his second officer, and all the latter wanted was an
opportunity to show it. Tom then dismissed his men with the assurance
that he would do the best he could for them, and went into the house
congratulating himself on having won a complete victory.
"I have had the narrowest escape of my life this morning," were the
first words he said to his mother. "The next time I come so near to
going into the army I shall go; and that will be the last you will
ever see of Tom Randolph. Didn't I bring Lambert to time when I drew
my sword on him? He's had an idea that he could run things to suit
himself, but I think I showed him his mistake. Of course it will not be
safe for me to go near Baton Rouge, for I believe the citizens would
mob me; but I can't be sent to a conscript camp so long as I have men
to command, and that is what I am figuring on now."
Half an hour later, and before Captain Tom had finished telling his
mother and himself that he was well out of the scrape into which his
officious lieutenant had brought him, one of the Home Guards rode into
the yard with a note from Captain Roach, in which the latter requested
Tom to come to his office at once on business of the last importance.
The young man was frightened again; but the idea of talking over
matters with Captain Roach while his mother was not by to support him
was not to be entertained for a moment. He passed the note over to her
after he had read it, and said almost fiercely to the bearer:
"Tell Captain Roach that he has forgotten himself—that I am his
senior; and if he is so anxious to see me he must come where I am. At
the present time I am not dancing attendance upon him or anybody else."
"One moment, my dear," Mrs. Randolph interposed. "A written invitation
demands the courtesy of a written reply. Permit me to answer the
captain. I will show you the note before sending it away."
His mother went into the house and Captain Tom said to the Home Guard,
who sat on his horse at the foot of the steps:
"Have you any idea what Roach wants of me?"
"I reckon it's something or 'nother about them men from Baton Rouge,
who acted like they wanted to bu'st things," replied the messenger.
"Looks to me like the cap'n feels sorter shook up over what they said
to him, and that he's got himself into some kind of a muss that nobody
but you can help him out of. He talks like he's going to send we uns to
camp. Can you shet him off on that, do you reckon?"
"It depends entirely upon the way you Home Guards conduct yourselves
from this time on," answered Captain Tom impressively. "Roach would
have conscripted you long ago if I hadn't stood your friend, and he may
do it yet if you follow Lambert on any more of his crazy expeditions."
"I didn't foller," said the man hastily, "and I don't want you to think
I did. I was to home all the blessed time. I aint caring to bother the
Yankees so long as they let me be. And Lambert, he won't go off that
away agin. He was purty bad skeared last night."
"What at?" inquired Tom.
"Why, don't you know? Some of our folks went down to the river
yesterday to see what all that shooting was about, and when they come
back and told what Lambert had been a-doing, ole man Gray and the rest
of 'em was that mad that they talked of hanging Lambert up to a tree
and licking you like you was a nigger."
Captain Tom reeled as if the man had struck him with the handle of the
heavy riding whip he carried in his hand, and grasped at the veranda
railing for support.
"I am telling you nothing but the gospel truth," continued the
messenger, not a little surprised at the effect his words had produced
upon his commanding officer, "and I thought you had had time to hear
all about it. They was a tol'able mad lot of men down to the hotel last
night, and when I seen 'em going on I was mighty glad I hadn't went
with Lambert and the rest."
"Do you mean to say that old man Gray dared to talk of whipping _me_?"
exclaimed Tom, who could hardly believe his ears. "Wasn't it Lambert he
spoke of?"
"No, it was you; and he wasn't the only one who spoke of it, nuther,"
replied the Home Guard. "They was all mad, I tell you, and some of them
was for hanging Lambert."
"I wish to goodness they had," said Captain Tom, speaking before he
thought. "That is to say, I wish they had done something to him before
he brought me into all this trouble. Was that what frightened him?"
"You're mighty right, and he took to the bresh as soon as he got wind
of it. But he come out this morning and we all have promised to stand
by him. If they put a ugly hand on one of the company we uns allow to
burn them out."
"That's the idea!" cried Tom, who never would have thought of such a
thing himself. "I see very plainly that we've got to do something to
protect ourselves. We are State troops, and if these cowardly citizens
drive us to it we will treat them as we would the armed enemies of our
country if we could only get at them. We'll begin on old man Gray and
never let up until we've destroyed everything he's got. No man who
dares to threaten me and those who serve under me shall hold up his
head as high—— Sh! Here comes my mother. Don't say a word in her
hearing, but tell Lambert I'll see him after a while and arrange a plan
of operations with him."
Just then Mrs. Randolph came out on the porch with the note she had
written, and which she presented for Tom's approval. It was not written
in his name, but in her own. She said she regretted that her son did
not feel able to accept the captain's kind invitation, owing to the
excitement and distress of mind into which he had been thrown by the
unfortunate occurrences of the last few hours, but if Captain Roach
would honor her by coming up to dinner at the usual hour she hoped he
would find Captain Randolph so far recovered that he would be able to
talk over with him the very important business to which Captain Roach
had referred in his note.
The result of this piece of strategy was that an open rupture between
Captain Tom and the conscript officer was avoided; and when the
latter, who had been so frightened and angered by the threats of the
Baton Rouge committee that he was several times on the point of doing
something desperate, came up to dinner "at the usual hour," he was
the same pleasant and agreeable fellow he had always been. But he
found Captain Tom lying on the sofa in dressing-gown and slippers, and
looking the picture of misery. Before he advanced to take the limp palm
that Tom languidly extended he stopped in the middle of the room and
asked if someone had been laying violent hands upon him. To be candid
he thought it would be a good thing for Tom if the citizens would shake
him up a little.
"No, sir," was the very dignified reply. "Physical pain would not do a
Randolph up in this way. It is purely mental anguish; and my honor has
been touched. I little thought that I should ever permit living men to
talk as those Baton Rouge ruffians talked to me this morning without
promptly calling them to account for it. But my Home Guards were
clearly in the wrong when they fired upon that boat without my orders,
so what could I say or do?"
Captain Roach, who had had plenty of time to cool off and recover his
courage since he wrote that note, smiled pleasantly, gave Tom's hand a
cordial shake, pulled up a chair, and said that the committee had been
quite as savage with himself as they had been with his friend Tom, and
that he had thought it the part of wisdom to comply with their demands
when he saw that they carried revolvers in their coat-pockets, and were
in just the right mood to use them. He said that he had conscripted all
the Home Guards except Tom, as he had agreed to do, because he did not
see how he could help himself. It would be very little trouble for the
Baton Rouge people, with the aid of Rodney Gray's father and a score of
others whose names the captain could mention, to keep watch of the way
things were done at the enrolling office, and if he failed to keep his
promise they would be sure to find it out; but he had conscripted the
Home Guards conditionally. If they would behave themselves in future
and take orders from their captain instead of their first lieutenant
he would not send them to camp until the last minute, and not at all if
he could help it; but the first man who kicked out of the traces would
be the first to be sent to the front. Lambert and the rest understood
this perfectly, and had agreed to be bound by his decision.
"That's the idea!" cried Captain Tom, delighted to learn that at last
he had his refractory men right where he wanted them. "That's the way
to bring mutineers to time. There will be no more trouble of this kind,
I assure you, for I talked to some of my troops very plainly this
morning, and made Lambert knuckle in a way that would have surprised
you if you could have seen it. Of course I shall have to steer clear
of Baton Rouge, but I don't care much for that; although I confess it
nettles me to feel that I cannot go and come when I please, as I have
always been in the habit of doing."
Mrs. Randolph remained in the room long enough to assure herself that
the relations existing between Captain Roach and her son had not been
strained by the events of the morning, and then, bestowing an approving
smile upon each, she arose and went out; whereupon Captain Tom got upon
his feet and carefully closed the door behind her.
"Say!" he whispered when he came back and resumed his position on the
sofa, "did you know that the town was in possession of a mob last
night, and that some Yankee sympathizers among them had the impudence
to threaten me and my man Lambert?"
"I know all about it," replied Captain Roach, an expression of anxiety
settling on his face. "But they were not Yankee sympathizers, for men
of that stamp would not dare open their heads in this community. They
were as good Confederates as you or I."
"Don't you believe any such stuff," exclaimed Tom. "There isn't a word
of truth in it. I know that Rodney Gray is a lowdown private in our
army (he isn't considered worthy of a commission), but his father's
loyalty has always been suspected, and last night he proposed that his
gang of blackguards should whip me and hang Lambert. Now I tell you
that a man who talks that way about me——"
"Somebody has told you what isn't so," interrupted Captain Roach. "Such
a proposition was made last night, but Mr. Gray would not hear to it.
He and a few others talked it down on the spot."
"Well, it's a good thing for old Gray that he did, and if he knows when
he is watching his own interests he will take pains to keep it talked
down," said Captain Tom fiercely. "I was ready for him, and if you
hadn't told me what you have he would have lost some of his buildings
this very night."
The enrolling officer had seldom been so surprised and startled. He
looked fixedly at Tom to see if he was in earnest, and then cried out
in alarm:
"Do you know what you are saying? Are you crazy?"
"I know what I am saying and I am not crazy," was Tom's answer. "I have
been threatened with a nigger's punishment, and I never will rest easy
until the man who proposed the thing suffers for it."
"But you don't know who proposed it and neither do I."
"No matter. I'll make it my business to find out."
"And if you succeed are you going to burn some buildings?"
"I am, most decidedly."
"You have fully made up your mind to that, have you?"
"I have."
"Please present my compliments to your mother when she returns, and
say to her that I could not stop to dinner," exclaimed Captain Roach,
rising to his feet and reaching for his cap.
"What is the matter with you? Where are you going in such a hurry?" Tom
almost gasped.
"I am going to my office, and the first hard work I shall do after I
get there will be to put it out of your power to ruin yourself and your
father and mother, as you seem bent on doing," answered the captain;
and there was a look of quiet determination on his face that Tom had
never seen there before. "Of course you do not intend to do this
incendiary work alone (you haven't got pluck enough for that," the
captain added to himself), "so I shall make all haste to send your men
into the army where they can't help you. They will be the death of you
if I don't."
"And must I let a man talk about whipping me as if I were a nigger and
never do or say the first thing about it?" cried Tom, throwing himself
back upon the pillow and covering his face with his hands. "I am not
made of that sort of stuff, and I did not think a Confederate officer
would advise me to such a cowardly course."
"What would you call a thing in the shape of a man who would sneak up
on another's property, in the dead of night when there was no one to
oppose him, and touch a match to it?" exclaimed Captain Roach hotly.
"Would you call him a coward or not?"
"I don't care," whined Tom. "I am bound to have revenge on the man who
dared to say that I ought to be whipped, and I won't give up my plan."
"You'll have to take the consequences; and if you don't promise right
here and now that you will be governed by me in future, I will go out
of this house and never enter it again; and you know well enough what
that means. I am not going to let you send me to the army in disgrace
if I can help it."
"Sit down a minute," said Tom, seeing that the captain stood ready to
carry out his threat to leave the house. "I don't see how the burning
of a cotton-gin or two will disgrace you or anybody else."
"Yes, you do; for I have explained it to you more than a hundred
times. Mr. Gray and some others are almost ready to report me now for
my failure to make you and your worthless men take your chances with
the other conscripts, and the minute somebody begins to lose property
that minute I shall be ordered away from here and into the army; and
wouldn't that put me in disgrace, I'd like to know?"
"What's the use of my being captain of the Home Guards if I can't call
upon my men to protect me?" cried Tom, who would have given something
to be alone for about five minutes so that he might have found relief
in a flood of tears.
"There isn't a bit of use in it," replied the enrolling officer
bluntly, "except that it keeps you out of the army with my help. Your
commission gives you no authority to call upon the members of a State
organization to avenge your supposed private wrongs."
"Well—why don't you sit down?" repeated Tom.
"I will when I have your promise, and not before. If you have laid your
plans to get me into a muss with the Governor, I must head you off if I
can."
"Then I will make no effort to wipe out the disgrace that has been put
upon me as long as you remain in town," said Tom very reluctantly. "But
after you leave I'll make some people I know of wish they had spoken of
Captain Randolph with more respect. Now sit down and act like yourself."
"You ought to go straight to Mr. Gray and thank him; for if he and
his friends had not stood by you last night you might have been badly
treated," answered Captain Roach, placing his cap on the table again
and resuming his seat by Tom's side. "You and I do not want to go into
the army, and you must see that, in order to keep out of it, it will be
necessary for you to follow a different course from the one you have
marked out for yourself. If I am reported for neglect of duty the jig
will be up with you."
"Then I must lie around and do nothing, must I?"
"Is there anything else you can do with safety? You can ride about the
country at the head of your Home Guards occasionally, just to let the
Union men see that you are keeping up your organization, and after I
receive word that the camp of instruction has been established, you
can take the conscripts there as fast as I can get them together; and
that's about all you can do."
"It's a dog's life compared with what I thought a partisan's life would
be," growled Tom, "and perhaps it isn't safe for me to ride about the
country. The threats that were made against me last night——"
"Will amount to nothing, I assure you," interrupted Captain Roach.
"The hot-heads who made them and who seemed to be so fierce for a fuss
are few in number, and have had time to recover their senses since
then. You can't find a man in town who will say that he was willing to
go with the rabble last night; and more than that, the order-loving
people in the community would not stand by and see a mob run things to
suit themselves. You saw Lambert this morning, didn't you? Well, he
goes around as freely as he ever did, and no one says a word to him."
Captain Tom thought of the compact that Lambert and the rest of the
Home Guards had made to stand by one another in case of trouble with
the citizens, but thought it best to say nothing about it to his friend
Roach. Of course he had to give the required promise over and over
again before the conscript officer became satisfied of his sincerity,
and he did it with apparent willingness; but all the while he was
telling himself that the men who had threatened to whip him as if he
were a nigger, no matter who they were, would hear from him some day,
and in a way they would not like. It took a great load off his mind
to know that he would not be mobbed as soon as he showed himself in
Mooreville. In fact it cured his "excitement and distress of mind" in
a very few minutes; and when his mother returned at the end of half an
hour he had discarded his gown and slippers, and was sitting up dressed
in his full uniform.