, which one of the
deck-hands had placed in the steamer's bow, threw a flickering light
upon half a dozen long-haired, roughly dressed men who had been brought
to the bank by the sound of the whistle, and who gazed in surprise when
they saw a stout negro coming off with Rodney's trunk on his shoulder,
followed by Rodney himself, who was leading the roan colt. It wasn't
often that a passenger was landed in that out-of-the-way place.

"Set the trunk down anywhere, Sam, and go aboard. A word with you,
Jeff," said the _Mollie Able's_ captain, beckoning to the tallest and
roughest looking man in the party. "Where's Price?"

"Dunno. Jeff Thompson has just been round behind the Cape pulling up the
railroad, but some of the Yankee critter-fellers went out there and run
him off," replied the long-haired Missourian. "Last I heared of Price he
was down about the Arkansas line."

(The "Cape" referred to was the town of Cape Girardeau, and the
"critter-fellers" were the Union cavalry which at that time garrisoned
the place. The "Arkansas line" was the southwestern part of Missouri
where Price raised his army, which grew in numbers the nearer he marched
with it to the Missouri River).

"That's bad news for my young friend here," said the captain of the
_Mollie Able_. "Springfield is off in that direction, and that's right
where he wants to go. He is one of Price's men, and is anxious to find
his commander. Say, Jeff, you take care of him and see him safely on his
way, and I'll make it all right with you when I stop for my next load of
wood."

"It's all right now, cap'n," answered Jeff. "He'll be safe as long as he
stays here, seeing that he's a friend of your'n, but when he gets back
in the country--I dunno; I dunno."

The steamboat captain didn't know either, but he couldn't stop to talk
about it. He had done the best he could to keep Rodney out of the
clutches of that Yankee cotton-factor in St. Louis, and now the boy must
look out for himself. He gave the latter's hand a hasty shake, told him
to keep a stiff upper lip and give a good account of himself when he met
the Lincoln invaders in battle, and shouted to the deck-hands to "let go
and haul in." The steamer gave him a parting salute from her whistle as
she backed out into the river, Captain Howard and his friends on the
boiler deck waved their hands to him, and Rodney was left alone with the
wood-choppers. A Northern boy would not have been at all pleased with
the situa