What do you say? Shall I put your name down?"
Tom's friend did not give a direct reply to this question. He evaded it; but when he had drawn away from Tom's side and reached another part of the grounds (the mounted drill was still going on), he said to himself:
"No, you need not put my name down. I'm going to be a regular soldier and not a Home Guard. There must be some patriotic rich man in this country who will do for me what Mr. Randolph promised to do, and I'm going to see if I can find him. By gracious? I believe I'll try Mr. Gray. They say he hasn't done much of anything for the company, but perhaps he will if he's asked."
No; Mr. Gray had not been buying votes for his son, for he did not believe in doing business that way. According to his ideas of right and wrong the company officers ought to go to those who were best qualified to fill them; and he didn't want Rodney to have any position unless the Rangers thought him worthy of it. But he was prompt to respond to all appeals for aid, and so it came about that in less than a week Tom Randolph's friends had all been received back into the company, and it was reported that six of them were to be mounted and armed at Mr. Gray's expense.
"That's to pay 'em for voting Rodney in for first duty sergeant," snapped Tom, when he heard the news. "I'd go without office before I would have my father do things in that barefaced way. And as for those who are willing to accept pay for their votes, they ought to be heartily ashamed of themselves."
"Never mind," said Mr. Randolph, soothingly. "There is no need that a young man in your circumstances should go into the army as private, and I don't mean that you shall do it. I'll make it my business to call on the governor and see if he can't find a berth for you."
"But remember that it must be a military appointment," said Tom. "No clerkship or anything of that sort for me."
While the Rangers were working hard to get themselves in shape for the field, Captain Hubbard and his lieutenants had received their commissions and been duly sworn into the State militia. Nothing was said, however, about swearing in the company, and when Captain Hubbard called the governor's attention to the omission the latter replied:
"General Lacey is the man to look after such matters as that. He's in New Orleans and you may be ordered to report to him there."
"How about our uniforms?" asked the captain.
"Do as you please about uniforms so long as you conform to the army regulations. Of course your arms and equipments will be furnished you, and the government will allow you sixty cents a day for the use of your horses."
The most of the Rangers thought this was all right, and Captain Hubbard at once called a business meeting of the company to decide upon the uniform they would wear when they went to New Orleans to be sworn in; but there was one among them who did not take much interest in the proceedings. He did not say a great deal during the meeting, but when he went home that night he remarked to his father:
"This partisan business is a humbug so far as this State is concerned."
"What makes you say that?" inquired Mr. Gray.
"Just this," answered Rodney. "Why didn't the governor swear us in himself instead of telling us that we must wait for General Lacey to do it? The General is a Confederate, not a State officer, and when he musters us in it will be into the Confederate service."
This was not a pleasing prospect for the restless, ambitious young fellow, who had confidently looked for something better, but he had gone too far to back out. He had told his comrades that he intended to share then fortunes, whatever they might be, and this was the time to make good his words. If he had worked his men hard before, he worked them harder now, devoting extra time and attention to the officers in order to get them in shape to command the grand drill and dress parade that was to come off as soon as their uniforms arrived.
In the meantime outside events were not overlooked. Everything pointed to war, and news from all parts of the Confederacy bore evidence to the fact that the seceded States were preparing for it, while the people of the North stood with their hands in their pockets and looked on. Finally the long-delayed explosion came, and the country was in an uproar from one end to the other. Fort Sumter was fired upon and compelled to surrender – fifty-one men against five thousand – and the Rangers shook hands and patted one another on the back and declared that that was the way they would serve the Yankees every time they met them. Then came President Lincoln's War Proclamation, followed by the accession of four States to the Confederacy, the blockade of the Southern sea-ports and President Davis's offer to issue letters of marque and reprisal. All this while the mails were regularly received, and Rodney Gray heard from every one of the Barrington boys who had promised to enlist within twenty-four hours after they reached home. They had all kept that promise except Dixon, the tall Kentuckian, and he was getting ready as fast as he could.
"I have been between a hoot and a whistle ever since I have been home," was what he wrote to Rodney Gray. "The State was divided against itself, and I couldn't tell until the 15th, (April) which way she was going; but now I know. When the Yankee President called for those seventy-five thousand volunteers our Governor replied: 'I say emphatically that Kentucky will furnish no troops for the wicked purpose of subjugating her sister Southern States. As Dick Graham used to say, 'That's me.' I go with the government of my State. Now, then, what have you done? I shall write the rest of the fellows to-day."
Billings, the South Carolina boy, reached home too late to take part in the bombardment of Fort Sumter. and he told Rodney that he was very sorry for it. Every one of the gallant five thousand who had fought for thirty-four hours to compel a handful of tired and hungry men to haul down their flag was looked upon as a hero, and Billings said he might have been a hero too, if he had only had sense enough to leave school a month earlier. But he was all right now. He was a Confederate soldier and ready to do and dare with the best of them.
Dick Graham, whose home you will remember was in Missouri, wrote in much the same strain that Dixon did. His State was in such a turmoil and seemed to be so evenly divided between Union and disunion, that Dick could not tell which way she was going until he saw Governor Jackson's answer to Lincoln's call for volunteers. "There can be, I apprehend, no doubt that these men are intended to make war upon the seceded States," said the Governor. "Your requisition, in my judgment, is illegal, unconstitutional and revolutionary in its objects, inhuman and diabolical and cannot be complied with. Not one man will the State of Missouri furnish to carry on such an unholy crusade."
"When I read those burning words," Dick wrote, with enthusiasm, "my mind was made up and I knew where I stood. I expected some such move on the Governors part, for when he came into office in January, he declared that Missouri must stand by the other slave States whatever course they might pursue. I kept my promise and enlisted in a company of partisans raised under the terms of the Military Bill, which makes every able-bodied man in the State subject to military duty. Price is our immediate commander, but we were required to take the oath to obey the Governor alone."
"There, now," exclaimed Rodney, when he read this. "What's the reason our Governor can't swear the Rangers in as well as the Governor of Missouri can swear his troops in? I believe he could if there wasn't something back of it."
"What do you think there is back of it?" inquired his father.
"I can't imagine, unless there is some sort of an arrangement existing between him and the Confederate authorities at New Orleans," replied Rodney. "The Governor lets on that he is strongly in favor of independent organizations, but he don't act as if he was."
Rodney showed Dick's letter to Captain Hubbard, who posted off to Baton Rouge with, it; but he got no satisfaction there. There had been no such Military Bill passed in Louisiana, the Governor said, and there was no need of it, the situation there and in Missouri was so different. The latter State was exposed to "invasion" (by
