THE NIGHT EXPEDITION IN THE MAGNOLIA
Levi Bedford walked into the library not a little excited with
curiosity; for Titus Lyon had spent the whole afternoon on the bridge
with the planter, who had been closeted with the two boys for some time.
It was evident to him that something unusual had occurred. Noah was
seated in a great arm-chair which usually faced his desk, but he had
turned it around. The overseer walked up to this chair, and planted
himself in front of it with a respectful look of inquiry on his round
face.
"I am in doubt, Levi, and I have sent for you," Mr. Lyon began. "As you
are aware, I have never talked politics with you, and have not known to
which party you belong."
"I don't belong to any party," replied Levi with a very broad smile on
his face. "My party is the plantation and the family. I look out for
them, and I don't bother my head much about anything else."
"I suppose you have relatives in Tennessee?" suggested the planter.
"Second or third cousins very likely; but I don't know anything about
them, and I don't lie awake nights thinking of them. My father died
before I was twenty-one; I had no sisters, and my only brother went to
California twenty years ago, and I haven't heard from him in ten years."
"I don't mean to meddle with your affairs, Levi, but the time has come
when every man, must declare himself."
"I should think it had, Mr. Lyon; and this afternoon I thought I was
going to have a chance to strike for your side of the house. I was ready
to do it, for two or three times I thought you were in peril. I don't
know what you were talking about, only it was something very stirring,"
replied Levi with his usual smile.
"I don't think I was in any danger, but I am very much obliged to you
for looking out for me. Now things have come to such a pass that I must
put a direct question to you: Are you a Union man or a Secessionist?"
"I am a Union man now from the crown of my foot to the sole of my head,"
laughed Levi. "But it wouldn't be anything more than honest and square,
Major Lyon, for me to say that I haven't been so many months. Colonel
Lyon was a Union man; but he didn't have it half as bad as you have it.
Some of his neighbors thought he was too tender with his people; but he
and Colonel Cosgrove were pretty well matched on politics."
"He is a strong Union man, though he is in favor of neutrality if it can
be carried out, which is utterly impossible," added the planter.
"About the only thing in the row that set me to thinking and made me mad
was that such a set of reckless scallawags have run the machine on the
other side. There is hardly a man of any standing among them. I know
that your brother, who is nothing but a Northern doughface, is one of
the principal leaders among them, and--"
"We haven't any time to talk about this matter now, Levi," interposed
Noah Lyon, looking at his watch. "I see that you are all right, for you
are a Union man, and you do not approve the course of the violent party
in this county, and the time has come for the boys and me to do
something."
The planter proceeded in rather hurried speech to state the situation,
and to describe the discovery the boys had made that afternoon. The
overseer evidently had a very strong desire to express his mind in
regard to Titus Lyon; but with great effort he restrained himself, and
listened almost in silence to the narrative of the speaker.
"I am with you in this matter, Major Lyon, on its merits, though I like
to be on your side; but these ruffians who are trying to make civil war
in the State of Kentucky must be checked," he replied, when the planter
had hurried through his statement. "I am sorry that brother of yours
used any of the money the colonel left him to buy arms and ammunition to
help drag the State out of the Union. I will work day and night to
euchre him and the rest of them."
"You are just the right man in the right place, Levi Bedford!" exclaimed
Mr. Lyon. "We have no time now to decide what we will do with these
warlike implements, only to get possession of them. It is quarter-past
nine now, and I have my plan for the beginning. While we are carrying it
out we can settle what is to be done with the arms."
"I know just where that sink-hole and cavern are, and all we have to do
to get there is to follow the creek," added the manager.
"The flatboat is near the place, and we can move the boxes in that, as
the conspirators conveyed them from the road," replied Mr. Lyon. "But
there are only four of us, two men and two boys. The cannons must weigh
six or seven hundred pounds apiece, and we shall want more help."
"Well, we have help enough, and we can take a dozen of the people with
us, if we want as many as that," added Levi. "I know something about
these things, for when I kept stable in my State I used to belong to an
artillery company."
"Can the negroes be trusted? We must keep our operations a profound
secret."
"In this business you can trust them a great deal farther than you can a
white man," said the overseer, as he took a piece of paper from the desk
and wrote down the names of some of the hands. "How many do you want,
Major Lyon?"
"Half a dozen; we can't accommodate more than that. Put in the boatmen,
for there is a deal of boating to be done."
Levi revised his list and then handed it to the planter.
"General, Dummy, Rosebud, Woolly, Mose, Faraway," Mr. Lyon read from the
list. "I should say you had picked out just the men we need. They are
all used to the boats, and they are among the toughest and strongest
hands on the place. Yon must put them under oath, if need be, to be as
secret as death itself. I will leave all that to you. Now, have them at
the lower boat pier just as soon as possible, and we will be there."
"I will have them there in fifteen minutes," replied Levi, as he
hastened to execute his mission.
"Now, boys, go to the pier, and get the Magnolia in condition to go up
the creek," continued Mr. Lyon.
"The Magnolia!" exclaimed Deck. "Why, she--"
"We have no time to argue any question, Dexter," interposed the father.
"Take your overcoats; and you are to be as secret as the rest of us. Ask
your mother to come into the library, but don't stop to talk, my son."
The boys left the room, and Mrs. Lyon immediately presented herself in
the library.
"What in the world is going on here to-night, Noah?" asked the good
woman. "Ever since the boys came in you have been closeted in here as if
you were planning something."
"So we are, Ruth, for the boys made a great discovery on their trip up
the creek," answered the planter hurriedly. "That story about the arms
and ammunition which Titus and Amelia came down here to disclaim and
deny was all as true as gospel, for the boys have found them."
In five minutes more Mr. Lyon told his wife all that it was necessary
for her to know, and charged her to be secret and silent. She seemed to
be alarmed; but he assured her that there was no danger in the
enterprise in which they were to engage. It was absolutely necessary
that the arms and munitions should be removed beyond the reach of the
conspirators. He asked her to bring him three lanterns without letting
any one see them, which she did at once. With these in his hands, the
planter left the house without going into the sitting-room.
Deck and Artie reached the boat-pier without speaking a word, and they
ran half the way. The Magnolia was moored out in the creek; and taking
the canoe, which was used as her tender when the sailboat was in
service, as it had not been since the death of the colonel, she was
towed alongside the pier. They went to work baling her out, of which she
was in great need, though she had been well cared for in her idleness by
the boatmen of the place.
The Magnolia had not been built for a sailboat. Site was long and narrow
for her length, about thirty feet, and was provided with rowlocks for
six oars. Before they had finished baling her out the General and Dummy
reached the wharf. They were great strapping negroes, fully six feet
tall, and the weight of each could not have been much below two hundred
pounds, though they were not of aldermanic build.
When they saw what the boys were doing,--for Levi had not given them
even a hint as to the nature of the service in which they were to be
employed,--they seized the buckets, and soon cleared the well of water.
Levi was the next to put in an appearance, just as Deck was telling the
two men to take the mast out of her, an order which the manager
countermanded.
"We may want the mast and sail," interposed Levi; "for the wind is fresh
from the south-west to-night, and I don't believe in doing any more work
with the oars than is necessary."
"But we have no boatman, and none of us know how to manage the sail,"
argued Deck. "It would be a bad time to get upset, and we have no time
to indulge in fooling, Levi."
"The mast and sail are not in the way in the boat. I am no boatman, and
I never tried to handle the Magnolia, for the colonel was the only
person on the place who ever learned the trick of doing that; but I
often sailed in her up and down the river, and I used to think I could
do it if I tried," replied the manager, as the other four negroes came
upon the pier.
"Oh, well, if you can handle her with a sail, that's another thing,"
answered Deck, yielding the point.
"Here, Rosebud, unlock the boathouse, and bring out six oars, the
biggest ones, and all the boathooks you can find," said Levi, as he
looked the boat over.
No one said a word about the mission upon which they were to embark,
leaving the planter to do all the talking when he came. General and
Dummy were the biggest of the six men who had been selected; but the
other four were stalwart fellows. Their names were rather odd, the
family thought when they first heard them; but not one of them bore the
one his mother had given him in his babyhood, for the colonel had
rechristened the whole of them on the plantation to suit his own fancy.
Some circumstance, or something in their appearance, had doubtless
suggested the names; but after they were given they clung to their
owners as though they had been recorded in a church. The General was a
quick-witted fellow, which inclined him to take the lead when anything
was to be done. Woolly had a tremendous mop of hair on his head. Dummy
was a preacher in the shanty which served as a church at the Big Bend;
and perhaps because he was always studying his sermons, he never spoke a
word unless the occasion required it; but Levi, who had heard him
preach, said he could talk fast enough in his pulpit, and delivered a
more sensible sermon than some white clergymen to whom he had listened.
Rosebud, like the overseer, always had a smile on his face, and could
hardly do or say anything without laughing. Mose did not swear
profanely, but "by Moses;" and everything was as true, as high, as big,
as handsome, as "Moses in de bulrushes." "Faraway" had been a pet word
with the one to whom the planter had given this name. They were all
reliable servants, and were devoted to their past and present masters.
No king, prince, or potentate had ever been as big a man in their
estimation as the colonel; and they had transferred this homage to the
"major," as they were inclined to call Mr. Lyon after they heard the
overseer use this title.
Levi placed the men in the boat, each with his oar, and then headed it
up the creek. The boys took their places in the stern-sheets, and the
overseer handled the tiller lines. These arrangements were no sooner
completed than the planter appeared, and took his place with the boys.
The rowers were sitting with the oars upright; for the General, who was
the stroke oarsman, had learned either from pictures in the illustrated
papers their former master used to give the hands when he had done with
them, or from some person more experienced than himself, some of the
forms used in boating.
"Drop your oars!" said Levi, and they all fell into the water together.
"Ought to say 'let fall,' Mars'r Levi," added General.
"No talk, General. Now gather up, and pull away!" continued Levi.
General would have given him the proper form, "Give way!" but Levi was
not in the humor to be instructed, and the rower said no more. The men
pulled their oars with a will, and the implements bent under their
vigorous stroke. The planter had run all the way from the mansion, and
was out of breath, so he was silent for a time.