“Oh, I suppose you will fight, but it won’t do you any good. The Confederates can send twenty thousand men in here.”
“We don’t care if they send forty thousand,” replied the president. “Whatever you send we’ll fight.”
The men who were crowded in the church and gathered about the windows couldn’t stand it any longer. They broke out into loud applause, which continued for some minutes. When they got through, the officer evidently thought they were in earnest.
“We have a thousand men here, and when we get into the swamp we are willing to meet five thousand,” continued Mr. Knight. “You can’t conquer us.”
“What will you do for grub?”
“We’ll steal it,” shouted one of the men; and the answer was so droll and corresponded so entirely with the thoughts of the men who were standing around, that the whole assembly burst into laughter. Even the enrolling officers joined in.
“I suppose you can do that, of course,” said he, “but supposing the escort is too strong to be successfully attacked?”
“We don’t borrow any trouble on that score,” said Mr. Knight. “We haven’t got all the men we are going to have. You see how they are coming in now. But you are interrupting us, and we shall have to bid you good-bye. You see very plainly that you can’t raise any men here for the Confederate army. Another thing we’ll tell you, you are the first to come in, and you will be the last to go out.”
“Do you mean to say that you will kill any enrolling officers who come here?”
“That’s just what I mean to say. We don’t want them here.”
“Well,” said the official, rising to his feet, “we’ll go, but we won’t be the last officers to come in here. I will tell you that very plainly. You mustn’t think that the Confederates are going to allow you to have your own way in this matter. It beats anything I ever heard of.”
“We are aware of that, and that’s what makes us think we are going to go through with it. I will bid you good-bye, gentlemen.”
The men divided right and left to allow the rebels a chance to get out, and when they had passed out beyond the door the president proceeded to call the meeting to order.
“I am pleased with the way you obeyed my commands,” said Mr. Knight. “If you will obey as promptly as that, we are going to be hard to whip. The next thing is to elect a president.”
“I nominate Nathan Knight as president of the Jones County Confederacy,” shouted a man near the door.
“We ought to have a ballot for that,” said Mr. Knight.
“We don’t need no ballot. It takes too much time. Can I get a second to that?”
He could and he did. It seemed as if every man in the house seconded the motion. Mr. Sprague put the vote before the house, and it was carried unanimously. Mr. Knight did not stop to make a speech, but said the next vote would be for vice-president, and Mr. Sprague was nominated.
“Hold on, there,” shouted a voice. “We don’t want Mr. Sprague for vice-president. We want him for secretary of war. If there is any man who can put us fellows where we can do the most good in a fight Mr. Sprague is the chap.”
And so it was all through the convention. There wasn’t a ballot taken for anything, and no man thought of declining an office. By four o’clock the work was all done, and then Mr. Knight thought of something else.
“There is one thing more that I want the convention to decide on,” said he. “It is a ticklish piece of business, but we have got to do it. Jeff Davis has been making things very uncomfortable for our fellows out there in the Confederacy by telling them that they have got to light out or go into the army; now, what’s to hinder us from doing the same thing? There are many rebels about here – ”
“And I say let’s get rid of them,” said a voice. “I know one fellow who is going around all the time talking secession, and if the meeting says the word I’ll go to him and tell him he had better dig out. The county will be a heap happier if he ain’t in it.”
“Let’s all go in a body,” said another voice.
“That’s what I say,” said a chorus of half a dozen men.
“I think myself that would be the better way,” said the president. “If a lot of us get together and call upon a man, he will think we are in dead earnest. Give them time to take what they want, and then escort them out of the county. Don’t leave a rebel behind you. There being no further business, the convention stands adjourned, to meet again upon call.”
And where was Leon Sprague all this time? He was sitting in the front seat, where he could hear all that was going on. He felt proud when his father was elected secretary of war. He supposed, of course, that it was his business to post men in battle, but he learned better after a while. He was particularly anxious about escorting the rebels out of the county, and as soon as the convention adjourned he hurried out to find Tom Howe. As he was hurrying through the door, whom should he run against but Josiah – the “man who had seen a heap,” and who “got the best of half a dozen men.” He stood with his rifle hugged up close to him as if it were an old friend and he did not want to part from it.
CHAPTER III
“A WORD IN YOUR EAR.”
“Why, Josiah, I am glad to see you,” said Leon, advancing and shaking hands with the man. “The rebels haven’t raided you yet? Look here, what is your name? I forgot to ask you when I was up to your house.”
“Giddings – Josiah Giddings,” answered the man. “No, the rebels have not raided me yet, but I am mighty dubious about them.”
“Well, I want to make you acquainted with my father,” said Leon. “He will give your wife protection at his house. We have a negro cabin there that is much more comfortable than the one you live in now, for it doesn’t leak. And there is plenty of pasturage there for your horse and cow.”
Leon drew up alongside of Giddings and in a few minutes his father came out. The introduction was given, and after a few commonplace remarks Mr. Sprague inquired how he liked the resolutions.
“They ain’t strong enough,” said Giddings. “If you had two brothers in jail waiting for their death-warrant, I reckon you would put in more language than you did.”
“Where is that?” inquired Mr. Knight, who came out just at that moment.
“Up in Tennessee mountains. My brothers were engaged in bridge burning, and now they have got to suffer death for it.”
Leon waited just long enough to see that Giddings was in a fair way to make the acquaintance of the principal men of the county, and then hastened out to find Tom Howe. After looking all about, he discovered him sitting under the shade of an oak eating a lunch.
“Hallo, Leon; have some,” was the way in which he greeted the new-comer. “It’s mighty good, I tell you – chicken and apple pie.”
“A person to look at your lunch wouldn’t think that we Union fellows would be so hard up for grub,” said Leon, seating himself on the ground by Tom’s side. “You heard what that man said, in reply to the enrolling officer, that if we got short of provisions we would steal them? But I want to talk to you about driving those rebels away from here.”
“I know one who will get out of the county with once telling,” said Tom.
“Who is it?”
“Carl Swayne.”
“That’s just the fellow I was thinking of,” said Leon, spitefully. “He told me the other day that if we ran into the swamp it would not take him long to show them where we were.”
“And he told me that he wished I had been smashed up in that jam while I was about it, for then there would be one Union man less in the world,” said Tom. “I’ll never forget