Kitabı oku: «True To His Colors», sayfa 4

CHAPTER V

THE PAID SPY

It must not be supposed that the students who did not side with Rodney Gray were entirely deceived by the demonstration that had taken place in the corridor. Noisy political discussions were of too common occurrence to attract the attention of Marcy and his friends, the most of whom were sitting quietly in their rooms, and they gave no heed to what was going on below until the shuffling of feet announced that there was a fight in progress. Then they rushed out in a body, but a single glance at the boys who were struggling in the hall was enough to show them that their services were not needed. The combatants were all secessionists. There were a few "neutrals" among them – Dixon for one – who were trying to restore order, and who finally succeeded in getting them out of the building, but there was no Union boy there who was in want of assistance.

"What's in the wind now, do you reckon?" said Tom Percival, whose father had cast his ballot against secession with one hand, while holding a cocked revolver in the other. "That's a put-up job, and there's something behind it."

"I believe you're right, Tom," said Marcy. "Let's follow them and see what they are going to do."

There was right where he and his friends made a mistake. They went to the parade ground and looked on while the colonel read Rodney and a few others a severe lecture, and Dick Graham was left free to carry out his part of the programme. Then they went back to their dormitories fully satisfied that if Rodney had hoped to gain anything by getting up that fight, he had failed to accomplish his object. When Marcy opened his door he was surprised to find Dick sitting at the table with a paper in his hand.

"What are you doing here, you rebel?" he demanded.

"Rebel yourself," replied Dick. "You stand ready to go back on your State and I don't. But what is the use of this nonsense? You and I understand each other. Look at that."

"Dick, where did you get it?" exclaimed Marcy, when his visitor drew the flag from under his coat.

"I found it on the colonel's bureau and took it and welcome," answered

Dick.

"When did you do it?"

"Just now."

"Where was the orderly?"

"He was at his post; but he didn't have anything to do with it, and will be as surprised as anybody when he finds that the flag is gone. We got a ladder and went in at the window."

"We? Who?"

"I did. You don't expect me to tell you who held the ladder while I went up, do you?"

"We knew that that fight was a put-up job, but of course we couldn't imagine what it was got up for. If we had seen or heard anything to set us on the right track, you never would have got your hands on that flag."

"Don't you suppose we knew that?" demanded Dick. "Having no taste for a knockdown and drag-out, we were rather sly about it. But what's the difference? You know as well as I do that it was bound to come down sooner or later, and perhaps it would have been lowered by some one who would not have been as careful of it as I have been. Imagine, if you can, what would have been done to it if the news had come that this State had joined the Confederacy! There hasn't been an ugly finger laid on it since I got it."

Marcy took a turn about the room and then faced his visitor and looked at him in silence.

"I am sure I don't know what to make of you," he said, at length. "Which side are you on? I don't believe you know yourself."

"Haven't I told you time and again that I'm neutral?" demanded Dick.

"You see Missouri – "

"You never saw two dogs fight in the street without wanting one or the other of them to whip," interrupted Marcy. "There can't be such a thing as a neutral in times like these. You are opposed to the flag, and yet you don't want to see it in possession of those who would insult or destroy it. You handle it as though you loved it."

"I did once, and I don't hate it now, or anybody who stands up for it," answered Dick, thoughtfully. "I am going to give it to you on one – "

"I wondered why you brought it in here," said Marcy. "I shall be glad to have the flag, and to-morrow morning we'll – "

"Good-night," said Dick, getting upon his feet.

"Hold on. What have I said or done to send you away in such a hurry?"

"What will you do to-morrow morning?" asked Dick, in reply.

"We'll run the colors up where they belong, and stand by to see that they stay there. What else should we do?"

"That's what I thought you were going to say; but you must promise that you'll not think of it, or you can't have the flag. You see," continued Dick confidentially, "I am not exactly hand and glove with Rodney and his crowd, but I come pretty near to believing as they do, and that was one reason I offered to steal the flag. If I hadn't done it, they would have hauled it down by force, or tried to, and that might have raised a sure-enough row; no sham about it."

"I am quite sure it would," assented Marcy.

"That's what I was afraid of, and I think it a good plan to put the fighting off as long as we can. I haven't anything against the flag and never shall have, not even when Missouri – "

"Never mind Missouri," Marcy interposed. "Tell me why you are going to give me the flag."

"Simply because I know you think a good deal of it, and will take care of it," answered Dick. "It will be something to be proud of one of these days, I tell you. After we rebels get the licking we are bound to get in the end – "

"If you are so sure of it, why do you favor secession?" inquired Marcy.

"Who? Me? I don't favor it. I never so much as hinted at such a foolish thing, because a blind man ought to see what is going to come of it. Before the thing is over our niggers will all be gone, our homes will be in ruins, our fields grown up to briers, and we'll be as poor as church mice. You'll see. I say that the Southern States ought to stay in the Union; but if they are resolved that they won't do it, the government at Washington has no shadow of a right to compel them. That's me, and that's why I tell you that when Missouri – "

"Why don't you give me the flag, if you are going to?" said Marcy. "Some of the teachers might come in, and how should I account for your presence here?"

"In any way you please. I am not particular. Hold on a bit," said Dick, as Marcy tried to take the colors from his hand. "I must have your promise first. You must say, in so many words, that you will not attempt to hoist it in the morning, and further, that you will not let anyone know I gave it to you. A certain fellow wants to shove it in the stove – "

"That's my cousin," interrupted Marcy.

"And another wants to show it to his girl, who told him to-day, in my presence, that if he had the pluck she had given him credit for, the colors would have come down long ago."

"That's Bob Cole," said Marcy.

"I was taught never to tell names, and tales, too. I knew that if I gave the flag to either of those fellows I would never see it again. I have marched and drilled under it for almost four years, and shouldn't like to hear that it been abused in any way; but if you and I live to see the end of the terrible times that I believe are coming upon us, I should like to hear that it had been run up again. That's why I am going to give it to you; but I must have your promise first."

"It's a bargain, and there's my hand on it," answered Marcy, without hesitation. "That flag shall never go up to the top of the academy staff again if I can help it, and while I remain in this school I'll never say you gave it to me. Now hand it over, so that I can hide it before anybody comes in."

Dick was rather surprised at the promptness with which the required promise was given. Almost without knowing it he handed Marcy the flag, and saw him place it in his trunk and turn the key upon it.

"Say," he exclaimed, when he found his tongue, "what are you up to?"

"I am going to leave the flag there until I can think of some good hiding-place for it," replied Marcy.

"That isn't what I mean, and you know it. I didn't think you would be so very willing to make the promise, and I am afraid there is something back of it."

"I have said all you asked me to say, have I not? Well, I assure you I shall remember it, for I am not in the habit of breaking my word. The next time these colors float it will be in a breeze that is untainted by any secession rag, I bet you. Then, whether you are living or dead, I shall think of you, Dick. You and I have always been friends and I know we shall continue to be so, no matter where we are or what flag waves over us."

"You don't owe me any thanks," said Dick hastily, and in, rather a husky voice. "I don't want the old thing, for I may have to fight against it someday; but I didn't want to see Rodney and his crowd trample it under their feet before they destroyed it. You're right, we shall always be friends, no matter – dog-gone State Rights anyhow. That's me. Good-night."

"Just one word more before you go," said Marcy. "Where did Rodney get the secession flag he has been prancing around with ever since he came from town?"

"It came through the post-office, but who sent it I don't know. You ought to have heard the fellows whoop and yell when he took it out of the package."

"Does he labor under the delusion that he is going to run it up on the tower in the morning?" continued Marcy.

"You can't prove that by me," was Dick's response. "Good-night."

"Yes, I can prove it by you," thought Marcy, as his visitor went out, closing the door behind him. "Your face and your actions said plainly enough that that is what Rodney means to do; but I'll bet you he will be astonished when to-morrow comes. He and his crowd must take us for a lot of dunderheads."

Marcy waited until he thought Dick had had time to reach his own room, and then he opened the door and went out into the hall. He was gone about half an hour, and when he came back he was smiling all over, and rubbing his hands together, as if he felt very well satisfied with what he had done during his absence. Then he drew a chair to the table, turned up the lamp, and devoted himself to another reading of the letters and papers he had that day received from home. While he was thus engaged some things were happening a few miles away that eventually came very near raising a "sure-enough fight" at the academy, and opened the eyes of the "citizens and voters of Barrington" to the fact that they had not done a wise thing when they employed some of the most worthless members of the community to keep watch of those who did not wear red, white, and blue rosettes and hurrah for President Davis.

About the time the Missouri boy and his comrades made their successful raid on the commandant's room, one of the paid spies of whom Mr. Riley had spoken during his conversation with Dick Graham went to the post-office in Barrington and was handed a letter addressed to himself. An ordinary observer would have seen at a glance that the writing on the envelope was disguised, but Bud Goble, who seldom saw writing of any sort, did not notice it. He straightened up as if he had grown an inch or more when he found that he had a correspondent who was respectful enough to address him as "Mister," and rose immensely in his own estimation when he opened the letter and with much difficulty spelled out the following:

"This is verry privat and perticlar bisness and i wouldnt think of speaking to nobody but you about it who are one of the most promnent and respeckted sitizens of barington."

This was nothing but the truth, according to Mr. Goble's way of thinking; but up to this time he had never met any one whose opinions agreed with his own. If the business to which his correspondent referred was so very "private and particular," it would never do, he thought, to read the letter there in the post-office, while there were so many men standing around; so he straightway sought the privacy of his own dwelling – a little tumble-down log cabin with a dirt floor and stick chimney, which was situated in the outskirts of the town.

"One of the most respected and prominent citizens of Barrington; that's what I be," muttered Bud Goble, as he stumbled along the dark road toward his domicile. "I always knowed it, but there's a heap of folks about here who have always been down on me, kase I haven't got any niggers of my own and have to work for a livin'; but I'm to the top of the heap now, an' what's more, I'll let some of 'em know it before I am many hours older. I wisht I knew what's into this letter, kase it's mighty hard work for me to read it. If it's anything about them babolitionists an' the doctering they're preachin' up among our niggers – Well, they'll not do it much longer, kase I am about ready to take some on 'em outen their beds at night an' lay the hickory over their backs. There's money into it, kase Mr. Riley an' the rest of the men that's onto the committee said so; an' I'm onto every job where there's an honest dollar to be made."

Bud Goble was a fair type of that class of people who were known to those among whom they lived as "white trash." Even the negroes, particularly those who belonged to wealthy planters, looked upon them with contempt. Too lazy to work, they lived from hand to mouth; and not one out of ten of the many thousands of them who went into the Confederate Army knew what they were fighting for. To save his life Bud Goble could not have told what all this excitement was about. He had a dim notion that somebody wanted to free the slaves, and the idea of such a thing made him furious; although it is hard to explain why it should, for, as Dick Graham said, he had never owned the price of a pickaninny. He had got it into his head that if the negroes were made free he would be brought down to their level and compelled to go to work, and that was something he could not bear to think of.

Bud Goble did not know what secession meant, but he was strongly in favor of it, because the majority of the wealthy and influential citizens in and around Barrington favored it; and taking his cue from them, he not only turned the cold shoulder upon those who were suspected of being on the side of the Union, but went further and became their deadly enemy. Mr. Riley and the other members of the Committee of Safety knew all this, and yet they employed him, the most vindictive and unreliable man in the neighborhood, to keep them posted in regard to what the Union men and free negroes were doing and saying. It is not to be supposed that men of their intelligence would put much faith in his reports, but they furnished an excuse for resorting to high-handed measures, and that was really what the committee wanted.

Meanwhile Bud Goble was making the best of his way homeward, guided by the blaze from a light-wood fire on the hearth which shone through the open door. It was not such a home as the most of us would care to go to at night, for it was the most cheerless place in the country for miles around. Even the humblest cabin in Mr. Riley's negro quarter, half a mile away, was a more inviting spot. And as for the family who occupied it – well, a benighted traveler, no matter how tired and hungry he might be, would have gone farther and camped in the woods rather than ask supper and lodging of them.

"Now, Susie," exclaimed Mr. Goble cheerfully, addressing a slouchy, unkempt woman who sat in front of the fire with her elbows resting on her knees and a dingy cob pipe between her teeth, "punch up the blaze an' dish up a supper while I read my letter an' see what's into it."

"Who's been a-writin' a letter to you?" queried the woman, without changing her position.

"That's what I don't know till I read it. It's something about them babolitionists that our gover'ment has ordered to get outen here, I reckon. But I'm powerful hungry. I aint had a bite to eat sense I left in the mornin'."

"Well, then, where's the meal an' bacon I told you to fetch along when you come home?" inquired Mrs. Goble. "I told you plain as I could speak it that there wasn't a drop of anything to eat in the house; an' here's the young ones been a-howlin' for grub the whole day long."

"Land sakes, if I didn't forget all about it," said Goble regretfully. "But how on earth am I goin' to get grub when I aint got no money to pay for it? Our committee didn't give me no money to-day kase I didn't have nothing to tell 'em. 'Pears like all the traitors keep mighty glum when I'm around. See two or three of 'em talkin' together, an' they shet up the minute I begin to sidle up to 'em."

"You aint wuth shucks to work for that committee," replied his wife impatiently. "If I was a man an' had the job, I'd tell 'em something every hour in the day."

"How could you when there wasn't nothing to tell, I'd like to know?"

"I'd find plenty, I bet you. You haven't disremembered how them babolitionists an' the free niggers used to talk, about the time John Brown was makin' that raid of his'n, have you?"

"'Course I aint; but them's old stories now. They've kept mighty still tongues in their heads sense that time."

"No odds if they have. They was Union then, an' they're that same way of thinkin' now; an' the talk that would have hung 'em then, if our folks hadn't been jest the peaceablest people in the world, would get 'em into trouble now if it was brung up agin 'em."

"An' would you tell them stories all over agin if you was me?" exclaimed

Bud Goble.

"I wouldn't do nothing else."

"Jest as if they happened yisterday?"

"Toby sure. You want money, don't you? an' that there committee of yourn won't give you none 'ceptin' you can tell 'em sunthin', will they?"

"Now, that's an idee," exclaimed Mr. Goble, gazing admiringly at his wife. "I never onct thought of that way of doin'."

"You never think of nothing till I tell you what to do," said Mrs. Goble sharply. "You've had no end of good jobs that you could have made money on if you'd only worked 'em right, but you won't listen to what I tell you. I don't reckon you see how you could make money two ways outen the job you've got now, do you? You might go to all the Union folks, niggers an' whites, an' tell 'em that if they don't give you some clothes for your fambly to wear, an' grub for 'em to eat, you will have that there committee of yourn after 'em, mightn't you?"

"So I could," exclaimed Bud gleefully. "But I'll tell 'em I want money for keepin' still about what I've heard 'em say."

"You won't do nothing of the sort," said his wife almost fiercely. "If you get money, you'll set in to loafin' around Larkinses', an' I won't see none of it, nor any grub or clothes nuther. Look around the house an' into the cubboard an' see if you oughtn't to be ashamed of yourself for swillin' so much apple-jack. Get the grub, I tell you, an' give some on 'em a hint that you want an order on the store keeper to get me a new dress I've been needin' for the last six months. That's one way to make it pay. Then go to that committee an' tell 'em what you've heard them babolitionists an' free niggers say about John Brown bein' right in what he did, an' they'll give you sunthin' for bringin' 'em the news."

"But them old stories won't be news."

"No odds. They're what the committee wants, an' you're plumb blind that you can't see it."

Bud Goble placed his elbows upon his knees, fastened his eyes upon the glowing coals on the hearth, and took a minute or two to consider the matter. Then he got upon his feet and went out into the darkness without telling his wife where he was going or what he intended to do. But that did not trouble Mrs. Goble. She administered a hearty shake to one of the ragged children who querulously demanded to know why pap hadn't brung home sunthin to eat, and then filled a fresh pipe and lighted it with a brand from the fire.

Bud climbed the fence that ran between the road and the little barren pasture in which he permitted his pigs to roam (when he had any), worked his way through a narrow strip of woodland, and finally struck the lane leading from Mr. Riley's tobacco patch to the negro quarter a double row of whitewashed cabins in which the field-hands lived. A few minutes later, after making free use of a club with which he had taken the precaution to arm himself, and fighting his way through a battalion of coon dogs that assembled to dispute his progress, he opened the door of one of the cabins and entered without ceremony. If the occupants had been white folks, Bud wouldn't have done that; but who ever heard of a Southern gentleman knocking at a negro's door?

"What made you-uns set there like so many bumps on a log when you heard me comin'?" was the way in which he greeted Uncle Toby and his family, who were sitting in front of the fire resting after the labors of the day. "Why didn't you come out and shoo off them dogs of your'n? You'd best be mighty careful how you treat me, kase I'm a bigger man in this settle_ment_ nor you think I be. What's that you're shovin' out of sight behind your cheer? Let me have a look at it."

Uncle Toby was one of the most popular negro preachers in the county, and had been known to boast of the fact that he addressed a larger Sunday morning congregation than any white minister in Barrington. Bud Goble thought he was a dangerous nigger to have around, and often asked Mr. Riley why he did not "shut him up." But the planter only laughed and said that if old Toby could preach so much better than the Barrington ministers, he didn't think he ought to be deposed. So long as the darkeys who came into his grove of a Sunday had passes from their masters, it was all right; but there was something that was not all right, and it was the occasion of no little uneasiness and perplexity to Mr. Riley. By some hocus-pocus Toby had learned to read his Bible. There was nothing wrong in that, of course, but a darkey who could read his Bible would be likely to read papers as well; and from them, especially if they chanced to be Northern papers, he might imbibe some ideas that no slave had any business to entertain. It was said, and Bud Goble believed it, that Toby had a great deal to do with the "underground railroad" that had carried so many runaway negroes to freedom. You will be surprised when you hear that Bud was ignorant enough to take this expression literally. He really thought that some one had built a railroad under Barrington for the purpose of assisting discontented slaves to escape to Canada, and some of the wags at the military academy offered him a large sum of money if he would find it and conduct them to it, so that they might tear it up. Bud concluded that somewhere in the woods there must be a ladder or flight of stairs that led down to the railroad, and he spent days in looking for it. When Mr. Riley, taking pity on his ignorance, explained the matter to him, Bud was fighting mad; and ever since that time he had been watching for an opportunity to be revenged upon the boys who had played upon his credulity.

"Let me have a look at that there thing you was a-shovin' out of sight behine your cheer when I come in," repeated Bud, striding up to the fire-place and catching up the article that had caught his eye. "Looked to me like one of them 'sendiary papers, an' it is too. What business you got to be readin' like a white gentleman?" he added, slapping Toby on the head with the paper which he picked up from the floor.

"Oh, Marse Gobble," began Toby.

"'Tain't my name," howled Bud, who always got angry whenever anybody took liberties with his cognomen. "G-o don't spell Gob, does it? You can't read or spell alongside of me, but you know too much to be of any more use around here. Me and Mr. Riley b'long to the Committee of Safety, an' it's our bounden duty to take chaps like you out in the woods an' lick ye. What do you say to that?"

Old Toby was so very badly frightened that he could not say anything. He had been caught almost in the act of reading a copy of the New York Tribune, and what would Mr. Riley say and do when he heard of it? The latter was known far and wide as a kind master. He gave his slaves plenty to eat and wear and never overworked them; but he believed as most of his class did, and it wasn't likely that he would deal leniently with one of his chattels who would bring a paper like the Tribune on the plantation, and afterward spread discontent among his fellows by preaching in secret the doctrines he found in it. Bud easily read the thoughts that were passing in the old negro's mind, and told himself that Susie deserved a new dress in return for the suggestions she had given him. He saw his advantage and determined to push it.