BREAKING THE MULE.
What Mr. Sprague was talking about when Leon and his companions went in
to eat their suppers was whether or not it would be a good plan to send
a party of cavalrymen, say a dozen or more, down to the little creek
that separated the two counties to bring them warning of a Confederate
force which was coming to subdue them; for Mr. Sprague was certain that
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 one
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 it. 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.
“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 there, 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 mule 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.”
“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 of 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 themselves, 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 here 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 anything
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, but 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 his plate—for the rebels had helped him most
bountifully—and held his rifle in a way that was intended to present
arms. But then the Secretary didn’t know whether the motion was properly
executed or not. He touched his hat, however, and after bidding the
rebels good-morning and lifting his hat once more out of respect to the
woman who sat at the head of the table, he turned again to the sentry.
“I would like to see all the men who are on guard with you,” said he.
“They are around here, I suppose?”
“Oh, yes, sir; they are around here,” said the sentry. Then lifting his
voice he called out: “All you guards turn out. The Secretary of War
wants you. Come a-lumbering!”
The men came in a hurry, three of them, some bareheaded, some swinging
on their bullet-pouches as they hastened through the bushes, and all
eager to see what the Secretary of War wanted. Like the good soldiers
they were, they concluded that there was some business to engage in, and
they were impatient to do it. But when they found out what he wanted
they were just as pleased, all the same. Mr. Sprague told them in so
many words that the rebels were all right, and from this time they were
released from all sentry duty. The rebels were just as free in their
camp as they were themselves.
“Colonel, I want to shake your hand for that,” said the owner of the
lean-to, and as he spoke he got up from the table and came out. “Now I
want all of you boys to understand one thing. You have done nothing but
call me ‘Johnny’ ever since I have been in camp, and now I want you to
stop it. My name is Roberts, and I am as good a Union man as the best of
you. If you don’t believe it, wait until we get into a fight and I will
show you.“
All this was said in a perfectly good-natured way, and the guards, on
being sent back to their lean-tos, promised that they would address him
as Roberts ever afterward. They had called him “Johnny” because they did
not know any other name for him.
“Now, Dawson, I am going to start for home,” said Leon. “Come with me
and I will get your horse and weapons for you.”
When Leon and Dawson turned away the former was surprised to see
standing at his side another boy, Newman by name, who was enough like
Carl Swayne to have been his brother, except in one particular. Newman
did not proclaim himself so much in favor of the secessionists as Carl
did, but in every other way, so far as meanness was concerned, they were
a good team. Leon was not the only one about there who believed that
Newman was a rebel at heart, and that if he had his way he would have
arrested every Union man in the county. He noticed that Newman did not
go with them when they assaulted the train—he had something else that
demanded his immediate attention; but he noticed, too, that when the
expedition came back Newman had as much to say as anybody. There was one
thing about Newman that did not look exactly right to Leon. In the early
part of the year, when there was a good deal of talk about the secession
of Jones county, this Newman’s father had piled all his worldly goods
into a one-horse wagon and started for Mobile; but in two months’ time
he came back. There was more fighting going on there than there was in
Jones county, he said, and as he was a man of peace and did not believe
in contests of any kind, he thought he and his family had better come
back and stay in their own house until the trouble was over. Mind you,
that was the story he told; whether or not it was the truth remains to
be seen.
“Well, Leon, we got ’em, didn’t we?” was the way in which Newman began
the conversation.
“Got whom?” inquired Leon, and he was not very civil about it, either.
He wished that Newman would keep to his own side of the walk and let him
alone.
“Why, the rebels, of course,” said Newman. “You have got one them with
you right now.”
“How many of them did you capture?” inquired Leon, poking his elbow into
Dawson’s ribs when he saw that he was about to reply.
“I captured one, but I let him go. You know the President said we wasn’t
going to take any prisoners.”
“Yes, I know. But what made you let him go?”
“Oh, he told me such a funny story about his wife being sick, and all
that, that I couldn’t bear to keep him captive. So I just told him to
clear out.”
“And you let him take his weapons with him?”
“Of course,” replied Newman; and then finding that Leon was getting onto
rather dangerous ground he changed the subject, for he had come there to
ask a favor. “Say, Leon, do you suppose that your father would give me
one of them muels that we captured yesterday? I reckon I’ve got as much
right to them as he has.”
“Well, I reckon you haven’t,” replied Leon, indignantly.
“Just because he’s a high officer, do you think he has more right to
property that we capture than them that takes it?” asked Newman, getting
mad in his turn. “He gave Tom Howe a muel, and Tom didn’t do any more
than I did.”
“What’s the use of telling such an outrageous falsehood? You was not
there. Did you see me?”
“Yes, I saw you.”
“What did I do? Did you see me when I ran from this man, and he followed
after me, swinging his sword in his hand?”
“Eh? Oh, yes, I saw you,” said Newman, looking surprised. “He came
pretty near catching you, too, and he would if that man hadn’t come up
and poked a revolver in his face. Who was that, do you know?”
“Well, Newman, I don’t believe you can get a mule to ride during this
war,” said Leon, once more turning his steps towards the hotel. “You see
Tom wants to do something with this mule, and you don’t. You simply want
him to ride around, and when the fight comes you will be miles away.
That is, if you are on our side at all,” said Leon to himself. “I
wouldn’t be afraid to bet that you will stay around here and lead the
rebels to our place of concealment.”
Newman thrust his hands into his pockets, pushed his hat on the back of
his head, and looked after Leon as he walked away with the rebel by his
side.
“I’ll bet that boy lied to me when he spoke of that fellow being after
him with a sword,” said he, “and that he ever run from him a step. I am
no good for a spy. I haven’t got my wits about me. But his father will
give me one of those mules or I’ll know the reason why. It is most time
for the rebels to come up here, and when they do come, my fine lad, I’ll
have that horse of yours.”
“Who is that fellow, anyway?” asked Dawson, after they had left Newman
behind. “You don’t seem to like him very well.”
“Neither would you if you knew him as well as I do,” replied Leon. “Ever
since I got into a scrape with those logs that fellow has been down on
me, and said he didn’t see why I should come out all right when other
men had lost their lives in attempting the same thing.”
“You don’t bear him any ill-will for that, I hope?” said Dawson. “He
didn’t dare do it, although I don’t know what danger you got into.”
“I ran out on the logs and started a jam, and Tom Howe fell into the
water and I saved him. But that isn’t what I have against him,” said
Leon. “You see, Newman’s father has never said where he stood. When he
came back to this county, and found that we were in earnest in
threatening to secede, then he wanted an office, but the men were too
sharp to give it to him.”
“Ah! that’s the trouble, is it? Let him go in and serve as a private.
That’s what my father and I intend to do.”
“But he don’t want to serve as a private. He wants the position that
father holds, so that he can boss around the men and have nothing else
to do. Father would give it to him in a minute if he thought he was able
to fill it, but you see he don’t. And mind you, I don’t say this out
loud, but I believe it to be so, he says if he can’t be an officer he
will betray us all.”
“Ho-ho!” said Dawson, while a gleam of intelligence shot across his
face. “He is going to turn Benedict Arnold, is he? By gracious! You
fellows have something to contend with, haven’t you? A spy! Well, let
him come on and see how much he will make by it.”
“Now, don’t say that out loud,” said Leon earnestly, “for I don’t know
that it is so. I only judge him by his actions. Now, here’s the place
where your weapons were left. We’ll go up and see the President.”
“I don’t look fit to go into the President’s office,” said Dawson,
looking down at his clothes. “I want to get home and see my wardrobe, so
that I can get some clothes more befitting my station in life.”
“O come on,” said Leon, with a hearty laugh. “Ten to one you will find
the President with a pair of jean breeches on, and a pair of cowhide
boots. He is like all the rest of us, but then he will be glad to see
you, for you were a rebel once.”
“There’s where you make a mistake,” said Dawson. “I never was a rebel,
although I wear the clothes. Introduce me as a Union man forced into the
rebel army.”
At this moment Leon opened the door that gave entrance into the office
of the high dignitary of Jones county, where they found him leaning back
in his chair and conversing with three or four men. He was just such a
man as Leon said he was—to the manor born. He didn’t act as though he
considered himself better than other men simply because he was
President. Dawson took off his hat, while the other men did not remove
theirs. He followed Leon to a corner in which several stand of fire-arms
were stowed, and assisted him in picking out his own weapons. Leon gave
him the sword and revolver, and motioned him to buckle them around him,
while with the carbine in his hand he approached the President’s chair.
When he got through talking with the men he looked up to see what Leon
had to say.
“Mr. Knight, here’s a good man I have got for us,” said he. “His name is
Dawson, and although he wears the rebel uniform, he is as much of a
Union man as anyone here.”
“Howdy, Dawson,” said the President, nodding his head, “So you are
coming over to side with us, are you?”
“Yes, sir,” said Dawson. “I was obliged to go into the rebel ranks to
escape being hung.”
“He wants his horse and his weapons, too,” added Leon. “Father says he
is all right.”
“Let him have them,” said the President.
Leon promptly handed over the carbine. “He wants to go home to-night to
get his mother,” said he. “There are two of us, myself and Tom Howe,
going with him.”
“I heard all about it from your father,” said Mr. Knight. “Now, be
careful of yourself, Leon. If you should get captured it would drive the
first colonel I have got crazy.”
The boy promised that he would look out for himself, and, with a salute
from Dawson, they opened the door and went down the stairs. They saw
that Mr. Sprague had already hitched the mules to the wagons and hauled
them down in front of the hotel where they could be examined by all the
principal men of the county. Before they had taken many steps they saw
Newman walk up to the Secretary of War and accost him.