THE success of the Ku Klux Klan was so complete, its organisers were dazed. Its appeal to the ignorance and superstition of the Negro at once reduced the race to obedience and order. Its threat against the scalawag and carpet-bagger struck terror to their craven souls, and the “Union League,” “Red Strings,” and “Heroes of America” went to pieces with incredible rapidity.
Major Stuart Dameron, the chief of the Klan in Campbell county was holding a conference with the Rev. John Durham in his study.
“Doctor, our work has succeeded beyond our wildest dream.”
“Yes, and I thank God we can breathe freely if only for a moment, Major. The danger now lies in our success. We are necessarily playing with fire.”
“I know it, and it requires my time day and night to prevent reckless men from disgracing us.”
“It will not be necessary to enforce the death penalty against any other man in this county, Major. The execution of Tim Shelby was absolutely necessary at the time and it has been sufficient.”
“I agree with you. I’ve impressed this on the master of every lodge, but some of them are growing reckless.”
“Who are they?”
“Young Allan McLeod for one. He is a dare devil and only eighteen years old.
“He’s a troublesome boy. I don’t seem to have any influence with him. But I think Mrs. Durham can manage him. He seems to think a great deal of her, and in spite of his wild habits, he comes regularly to her Sunday School class.”
“I hope she can bring him to his senses.”
“Leave him to me then a while. We will see what can be done.”
Hogg’s Legislature promptly declared the Scotch-Irish hill counties in a state of insurrection, passed a militia bill, and the Governor issued a proclamation suspending the writ of Habeas Corpus in these counties.
Fearing the effects of negro militia in the hill districts, he surprised Hambright by suddenly marching into the court house square a regiment of white mountain guerrillas recruited from the outlaws of East Tennessee and commanded by a noted desperado, Colonel Henry Berry. The regiment had two pieces of field artillery.
It was impossible for them to secure evidence against any member of the Klan unless by the intimidation of some coward who could be made to confess. Not a disguise had ever been penetrated. It was the rule of the order for its decrees to be executed in the district issuing the decree by the lodge furthest removed in the county from the scene. In this way not a man or a horse was ever identified.
The Colonel made an easy solution of this difficulty, however. Acting under instructions from Governor Hogg, he secured from Haley and Perkins a list of every influential man in every precinct in the county, and a list of possible turncoats and cowards. He detailed five hundred of his men to make arrests, distributed them throughout the county and arrested without warrants over two hundred citizens in one day.
The next day Berry hand-cuffed together the Rev. John Durham and Major Dameron, and led them escorted by a company of cavalry on a grand circuit of the county, that the people might be terrified by the sight of their chains. An ominous silence greeted them on every hand. Additional arrests were made by this troop and twenty-five more prisoners led into Hambright the next day.
The jail was crowded, and the court house was used as a jail. Over a hundred and fifty men were confined in the court room. Rev. John Durham was everywhere among the crowd, laughing, joking and cheering the men.
“Major Dameron, a jail never held so many honest men before,” he said with a smile, as he looked over the crowd of his church members gathered from every quarter of the county.
“Well, Doctor, you’ve got a quorum here of your church and you can call them to order for business.”
“That’s a fact, isn’t it?”
“There’s old Deacon Kline over there who looks like he wished he hadn’t come!” The Preacher walked over to the deacon.
“What’s the matter, brother Kline, you look pensive?”
The deacon laughed. “Yes, I don’t like my bed. I’m used to feathers.”
“Well, they say they are going to give you feathers mixed with tar so you won’t lose them so easily.”
“I’ll have company, I reckon,” said the deacon with a wink.
“The funny thing, deacon, is that Major Dameron tells me there isn’t a man in all the crowd of two hundred and fifty arrested who ever went on a raid. It’s too bad you old fellows have to pay for the follies of youth.”
“It is tough. But we can stand it, Preacher.” They clasped hands.
“Haven’t smelled a coward anywhere have you, deacon?”
“I’ve seen one or two a little fidgety, I thought. Cheer ’em up with a word, Preacher.”
Springing on the platform of the judge’s desk he looked over the crowd for a moment, and a cheer shook the building.
“Boys, I don’t believe there’s a single coward in our ranks.” Another cheer.
“Just keep cool now and let our enemies do the talking. In ten days every man of you will be back at home at his work.”
“How will we get out with the writ suspended?” asked a man standing near.
“That’s the richest thing of all. A United States judge has just decided that the Governor of the state cannot suspend the rights of a citizen of the United States under the new Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution so recently rammed down our throats. Hogg is hoisted on his own petard. Our lawyers are now serving out writs of Habeas Corpus before this Federal judge under the Fourteenth Amendment, and you will be discharged in less than ten days unless there’s a skunk among you. And I don’t smell one anywhere.” Again a cheer shook the building.
An orderly walked up to the Preacher and handed him a note.
“What is it?”
“Read it!” The men crowded around.
“Read it, Major Dameron, I’m dumb,” said the Preacher.
“A military order from the dirty rascal. Berry, commanding the mountain bummers, forbidding the Rev. John Durham to speak during his imprisonment!”
A roar of laughter followed this announcement.
“That’s cruel! It’ll kill him!” cried deacon Kline as he jabbed the Preacher in the ribs.
In a few minutes, the Preacher was back in his place with five of the best singers from his church by his side. He began to sing the old hymns of Zion and every man in the room joined until the building quivered with melody.
“Now a good old Yankee hymn, that suits this hour, written by an an old Baptist preacher I met in Boston the other day!” cried the Preacher.
“My country ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing!”
Heavens, how they sang it, while the Preacher lined it off, stood above them beating time, and led in a clear mighty voice! Again the orderly appeared with a note.
“What is it now?” they cried on every side.
Again Major Dameron announced “Military order No. 2, forbidding the Rev. John Durham to sing or induce anybody to sing while in prison.”
Another roar of laughter that broke into a cheer which made the glass rattle. When the soldier had disappeared, the Rev. John Durham ascended the platform, looked about him with a humourous twinkle in his eye, straightened himself to his full height and crowed like a rooster! A cheer shook the building to its foundations. Roar after roar of its defiant cadence swept across the square and made Haley and Perkins tremble as they looked at each other over their conference table with Berry.
“What the devil’s the matter now?” cried Haley.
“Do you suppose it’s a rescue?” whispered Perkins.
“No, it’s some new trick of that damned Preacher. I’ll chain him in a room to himself,” growled Berry.
“Better not, Colonel. He’s the pet of these white devils. Ye’d better let him alone.” Berry accepted the advice.
Five days later the prisoners were arraigned before the United States judge, Preston Rivers, at Independence. Not a scrap of evidence could be produced against them. Governor Hogg was present, with a flaming military escort. He held a stormy interview with Judge Rivers.
“If you discharge these prisoners, you destroy the government of this state, sir!” thundered Hogg.
“Are they not citizens of the United States? Does not the Fourteenth Amendment apply to a white man as well as a negro?” quietly asked the judge.
“Yes, but they are conspirators against the Union. They are murderers and felons.”
“Then prove it in my court and I’ll hand them back to you. They are entitled to a trial, under our Constitution.”
“I’ll demand your removal by the President,” shouted Hogg.
“Get out of this room, or I’ll remove you with the point of my boot!” thundered the judge with rising wrath. “You have suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus to win a political campaign. The Ku Klux Klan has broken up your Leagues. You are fighting for your life. But I’ll tell you now, you can’t suspend the Constitution of the United States while I’m a Federal judge in this state. I am not a henchman of yours to do your dirty campaign work. The election is but ten days off. Your scheme is plain enough. But if you want to keep these men in prison it will be done on sworn evidence of guilt and a warrant, not on your personal whim.”
The Governor cursed, raved and threatened in vain. Judge Rivers discharged every prisoner and warned Colonel Berry against the repetition of such arrests within his jurisdiction.
When these prisoners were discharged, a great mass meeting was called to give them a reception in the public square of Independence. A platform was hastily built in the square and that night five thousand excited people crowded past the stand, shook hands with the men and cheered till they were hoarse. The Governor watched the demonstration in helpless fury from his room in the hotel.
The speaking began at nine o’clock. Every discordant element of the old South’s furious political passions was now melted into harmonious unity. Whig and Democrat who had fought one another with relentless hatred sat side by side on that platform. Secessionist and Unionist now clasped hands. It was a White Man’s Party, and against it stood in solid array the Black Man’s Party, led by Simon Legree.
Henceforth there could be but one issue, are you a White Man or a Negro?
They declared there was but one question to be settled:—
“Shall the future American be an Anglo-Saxon or a Mulatto?”
These determined impassioned men believed that this question was more important than any theory of tariff or finance and that it was larger than the South, or even the nation, and held in its solution the brightest hopes of the progress of the human race. And they believed that they were ordained of God in this crisis to give this question its first authoritative answer.
The state burst into a flame of excitement that fused in its white heat the whole Anglo-Saxon race.
In vain Hogg marched and counter-marched his twenty thousand state troops. They only added fuel to the fire. If they arrested a man, he became forthwith a hero and was given an ovation. They sent bands of music and played at the jail doors, and the ladies filled the jail with every delicacy that could tempt the appetite or appeal to the senses.
Hogg and Legree were in a panic of fear with the certainty of defeat, exposure and a felon’s cell yawning before them.
Two days before the election, the prayer meeting was held at eight o’clock in the Baptist church at Ham-bright. It was the usual mid-week service, but the attendance was unusually large.
After the meeting, the Preacher, Major Dameron, and eleven men quietly walked back to the church and assembled in the pastor’s study. The door opened at the rear of the church and could be approached by a side street.
“Gentlemen,” said Major Dameron, “I’ve asked you here to-night to deliver to you the most important order I have ever given, and to have Dr. Durham as our chaplain to aid me in impressing on you its great urgency.”
“We’re ready for orders, Chief,” said young Ambrose Kline, the deacon’s son.
“You are to call out every troop of the Klan in full force the night before the election. You are to visit every negro in the county, and warn every one as he values his life not to approach the polls at this election. Those who come, will be allowed to vote without molestation. All cowards will stay at home. Any man, black or white, who can be scared out of his ballot is not fit to have one. Back of every ballot is the red blood of the man that votes. The ballot is force. This is simply a test of manhood. It will be enough to show who is fit to rule the state. As the masters of the eleven township lodges of the Klan, you are the sole guardians of society to-day. When a civilised government has been restored, your work will be done.”
“We will do it, sir,” cried Kline.
“Let me say, men,” said the Preacher, “that I heartily endorse the plan of your chief. See that the work is done thoroughly and it will be done for all time. In a sense this is fraud. But it is the fraud of war. The spy is a fraud, but we must use him when we fight. Is war justifiable?
“It is too late now for us to discuss that question. We are in a war, the most ghastly and hellish ever waged, a war on women and children, the starving and the wounded, and that with sharpened swords. The Turk and Saracen once waged such a war. We must face it and fight it out. Shall we flinch?”
“No! no!” came the passionate answer from every man.
“You are asked to violate for the moment a statutory law. There is a higher law. You are the sworn officers of that higher law.”
The group of leaders left the church with enthusiasm and on the following night they carried out their instructions to the letter.
The election was remarkably quiet. Thousands of soldiers were used at the polls by Hogg’s orders. But they seemed to make no impression on the determined men who marched up between their files and put the ballots in the box.
Legree’s ticket was buried beneath an avalanche. The new “Conservative” party carried every county in the state save twelve and elected one hundred and six members of the new Legislature out of a total of one hundred and twenty.
The next day hundreds of carpet-bagger thieves fled to the North, and Legree led the procession.
Legree had on deposit in New York two millions of dollars, and the total amount of his part of the thefts he had engineered reached five millions. He opened an office on Wall Street, bought a seat in the Stock Exchange, and became one of the most daring and successful of a group of robbers who preyed on the industries of the nation.
The new Legislature appointed a Fraud Commission which uncovered the infamies of the Legree régime, but every thief had escaped. They promptly impeached the Governor and removed him from office, and the old commonwealth once more lifted up her head and took her place in the ranks of civilised communities.
NELSE was elated over the defeat and dissolution of the Leagues that had persecuted him with such malignant hatred. When the news of the election came he was still in bed suffering from his wounds. He had received an internal injury that threatened to prove fatal.
“Dar now!” he cried, sitting up in bed, “Ain’t I done tole you no kinky-headed niggers gwine ter run dis gov’ment!”
“Keep still dar, ole man, you’ll be faintin’ ergin,” worried Aunt Eve.
“Na honey, I’se feelin’ better. Gwine ter git up and meander down town en ax dem niggers how’s de Ku Kluxes comin’ on dese days.”
In spite of all Eve could say he crawled out of bed, fumbled into his clothes and started down town, leaning heavily on his cane. He had gone about a block, when he suddenly reeled and fell. Eve was watching him from the door, and was quickly by his side. He died that afternoon at three o’clock. He regained consciousness before the end, and asked Eve for his banjo.
He put it lovingly into the hands of Charlie Gaston who stood by the bed crying.
“You keep ’er, honey. You lub ’er talk better’n any body in de work, en ’member Nelse when you hear ’er moan en sigh. En when she talk short en sassy en make ’em all gin ter shuffle, dat’s me too. Dat’s me got back in ’er.”
Charlie Gaston rode with Aunt Eve to the cemetery. He walked back home through the fields with Dick.
“I wouldn’ cry ’bout er ole nigger!” said Dick looking into his reddened eyes.
“Can’t help it. He was my best friend.”
“Haint I wid you?”
“Yes, but you ain’t Nelse.”
“Well, I stan’ by you des de same.”
THE following Saturday the Rev. John Durham preached at a cross roads school house in the woods about ten miles from Hambright. He preached every Saturday in the year at such a mission station. He was fond of taking Charlie with him on these trips. There was an unusually large crowd in attendance, and the Preacher was much pleased at this evidence of interest. It had been a hard community to impress. At the close of the services, while the Preacher was shaking hands with the people, Charlie elbowed his way rapidly among the throng to his side.
“Doctor, there’s a nigger man out at the buggy says he wants to see you quick,” he whispered.
“All right, Charlie, in a minute.”
“Says to come right now. It’s a matter of life and death, and he don’t want to come into the crowd.”
A troubled look flashed over the Preacher’s face and he hastily followed the boy, fearing now a sinister meaning to his great crowd.
“Preacher,” said the negro looking timidly around, “dc Ku Klux is gwine ter kill ole Uncle Rufus Lattimore ter night. I come ter see ef you can’t save him. He aint done nuthin’ in God’s work ’cept he would’n’ pull his waggin clear outen de road one day fur dat redheaded Allan McLeod ter pass, en he cussed ’im black and blue en tole ’im he gwine git eben wid ’im.”
“How do you know this?”
“I wuz huntin’ in de woods en hear a racket en dim’ er tree. En de Ku Kluxes had der meetin’ right under de tree. En I hear ev’ry word.”
“Who was leading the crowd?”
“Dat Allan McLeod, en Hose Norman.”
“Where are they going to meet?”
“Right at de cross-roads here at de school house at mid-night. Dey sont er man atter plenty er licker en dey gwine ter git drunk fust. I was erfeered ter come ter de meetin’ case I see er lot er de boys in de crowd. Fur de Lawd sake, Preacher, do save de ole man. He des es harmless ez er chile. En I’m gwine ter marry his gal, en she des plum crazy. We’se got five men ter fight fur ’im but I spec dey kill ’em all ef you can’t he’p us.”
“Are you one of General Worth’s negroes?”
“Yassir. I run erway up here, ’bout dat Free’mens Bureau trick dey put me up ter, but I’se larned better sense now.”
“Well, Sam, you go to Uncle Rufus and tell him not to be afraid. I’ll stop this business before night.”
The negro stepped into the woods and disappeared.
“Charlie, we must hurry,” said the Preacher springing in his buggy. He was driving a beautiful bay mare, a gift from a Kentucky friend. Her sleek glistening skin and big round veins showed her fine blood.
“Well, Nancy, it’s your life now or a man’s, or maybe a dozen. You must take us to Hambright in fifty minutes over these rough hills!” cried the Preacher. And he gave her the reins.
The mare bounded forward with a rush that sent four spinning circles of sand and dust from each wheel. She had seldom felt the lines slacken across her beautiful back except in some great emergency. She swung past buggies and wagons without a pause. The people wondered why the Preacher was in such a hurry. Over long sand stretches of heavy road the mare flew in a cloud of dust. The Preacher’s lips were firmly set, and a scowl on his brow. They had made five miles without slackening up.
The mare was now a mass of white foam, her big-veined nostrils wide open and quivering, and her eyes flashing with the fire of proud ancestry. The slackened lines on her back seemed to her an insufferable insult! “Doctor, you’ll kill Nancy!” pleaded Charlie.
“Can’t help it, son, there’s a lot of drunken devils, masquerading as Ku Klux, going to kill a man to-night. If we can’t reach Major Dameron’s in time for him to get a lot of men and stop them there’ll be a terrible tragedy.”
On the mare flew lifting her proud sensitive head higher and higher, while her heart beat her foaming flanks like a trip hammer. She never slackened her speed for the ten miles, but dashed up to Major Dameron’s gate at sundown, just forty-nine minutes from the time she started. The Preacher patted her dripping neck.
“Good, Nancy! good! I believe you’ve got a soul!” She stood with her head still high, pawing the ground.
“Major Dameron, I’ve driven my mare here at a killing speed to tell you that young McLeod and Hose Norman have a crowd of desperadoes organised to kill old Rufus Lattimore to-night. You must get enough men together, and get there in time to stop them. Sam Worth overheard their plot, knows every one of them, and there will be a battle if they attempt it.”
“My God!” exclaimed the Major.-“You haven’t a minute to spare. They are already loading up on moonshine whiskey.”
“Doctor Durham, this is the end of the Ku Klux Klan in this county. I’ll break up every lodge in the next forty-eight hours. It’s too easy for vicious men to abuse it. Its power is too great. Besides its work is done.”
“I was just going to ask you to take that step, Major. And now for God’s sake get there in time to-night. I’d go with you but my mare can’t stand it.”
“I’ll be there on time. Never fear,” replied the Major, springing on his horse already saddled at the door.
The Preacher drove slowly to his home, the mare pulling steadily on her lines. She walked proudly into her stable lot, her head high and fine eyes flashing, reeled and fell dead in the shafts! The Preacher couldn’t keep back the tears. He called Dick and left him and Charlie the sorrowful task of taking off her harness. He hurried into the house and shut himself up in his study.
That night when the crowd of young toughs assembled at their rendezvous it was barely ten o’clock.
Suddenly a pistol shot rang from behind the school-house, and before McLeod and Lis crowd knew what had happened fifty white horsemen wheeled into a circle about them. They were completely surprised and cowed. Major Dameron rode up to McLeod.
“Young man, you are the prisoner of the Chief of the Ku Klux Klan of Campbell county. Lift your hand now and I’ll hang you in five minutes. You have forfeited your life by disobedience to my orders. You go back to Hambright with me under guard. Whether I execute you depends on the outcome of the next two days’ conferences with the chiefs of the township lodges.”
The Major wheeled his horse and rode home. The next day he ordered every one of the eleven township chiefs to report in person to him, at different hours the same day. To each one his message was the same. He dissolved the order and issued a perpetual injunction against any division of the Klan ever going on another raid.
There were only a few who could see the wisdom of such hasty action. The success had been so marvellous, their power so absolute, it seemed a pity to throw it all away. Young Kline especially begged the Major to postpone his action.
“It’s impossible Kline. The Klan has done its work. The carpet-baggers have fled. The state is redeemed from the infamies of a negro government, and we have a clean economical administration, and we can keep it so as long as the white people are a unit without any secret societies.”
“But, Major, we may be needed again.”
“I can’t assume the responsibility any longer. The thing is getting beyond my control. The order is full of wild youngsters and revengeful men. They try to bring their grudges against neighbours into the order, and when I refuse to authorise a raid, they take their disguises and go without authority. An archangel couldn’t command such a force.”
Within two weeks from the dissolution of the Klan by its Chief, every lodge had been reorganised. Some of the older men had dropped out, but more young men were initiated to take their places. Allan McLeod led in this work of prompt reorganisation, and was elected Chief of the county by the younger element which now had a large majority.
He at once served notice on Major Dameron, the former Chief, that if he dared to interfere with his work-even by opening his mouth in criticism, he would order a raid, and thrash him.
When the Major found this note under his door one morning, he read and re-read it with increasing wrath. Springing on his horse he went in search of McLeod. He saw him leisurely crossing the street going from the hotel to the court house.
Throwing his horse’s rein to a passing boy, he walked rapidly to him and, without a word, boxed his ears as a father would an impudent child. McLeod was so astonished, he hesitated for a moment whether to strike or to run. He did neither, but blushed red and stammered, “What do you mean, sir?”
“Read that letter, you young whelp!” The Major thrust the letter into his hand.
“I know nothing of this.”
“You’re a liar. You are its author. No other fool in this county would have conceived it. Now, let me give you a little notice. I am prepared for you and your crowd. Call any time. I can whip a hundred puppies of your breed any time by myself with one hand tied behind me, and never get a scratch. Dare to lift your finger against me, or any of the men who refused to go with your new fool’s movement, and I’ll shoot you on sight as I would a mad dog.” Before McLeod could reply, the Major turned on his heels and left him.
McLeod made no further attempt to molest the Major, nor did he allow any raids bent on murder. The sudden authority placed in his hands in a measure sobered him. He inaugurated a series of petty deviltries, whipping negroes and poor white men against whom some of his crowd had a grudge, and annoying the school teachers of negro schools.
THE overwhelming defeat of their pets in the South, and the toppling of their houses of paper built on Negro supremacy, brought to Congress a sense of guilt and shame, that required action. Their own agents in the South were now in the penitentiary or in exile for well established felonies, and the future looked dark.
They found the scapegoat in these fool later day Ku Klux marauders. Once more the public square at Ham-bright saw the bivouac of the regular troops of the United States Army. The Preacher saw the glint of their bayonets with a sense of relief.
With this army came a corps of skilled detectives, who set to work. All that was necessary, was to arrest and threaten with summary death a coward, and they got all the information he could give. The jail was choked with prisoners and every day saw a squad depart for the stockade at Independence. Sam Worth gave information that led to the immediate arrest of Allan McLeod. He was the first man led into the jail.
The officers had a long conference with him that lasted four hours.
And then the bottom fell out. A wild stampede of young men for the West! Somebody who held the names of every man in the order had proved a traitor.
Every night from hundreds of humble homes might be heard the choking sobs of a mother saying good-bye in the darkness to the last boy the war had left her old age. When the good-bye was said, and the father, waiting in the buggy at the gate, had called for haste, and the boy was hurrying out with his grip-sack, there was a moan, the soft rush of a coarse homespun dress toward the gate and her arms were around his neck again.
“I can’t let you go, child! Lord have mercy! He’s the last!” And the low pitiful sobs!
“Come, come, now Ma, we must get away from here before the officers are after him!”
“Just a minute!”
A kiss, and then another long and lingering. A sigh, and then a smothered choking cry from a mother’s broken heart and he was gone.
Thus Texas grew into the Imperial Commonwealth of the South.
To save appearance McLeod was removed to Independence with the other prisoners, and in a short time released, with a number of others against whom insignificant charges were lodged.
When he returned to Hambright the people looked at him with suspicion.
“How is it, young man,” asked the Preacher, “that you are at home so soon, while brave boys are serving terms in Northern prisons?”
“Had nothing against me,” he replied.
“That’s strange, when Sam Worth swore that you organised the raid to kill Rufe Lattimore.”
“They didn’t believe him.”
“Well, I’ve an idea that you saved your hide by puking. I’m not sure yet, but information was given that only the man in command of the whole county could have possessed.”
“There were a half-dozen men who knew as much as I did. You mustn’t think me capable of such a thing, Dr. Durham!” protested McLeod with heightened colour.
“It’s a nasty suspicion. I’d rather sec a child of mine transformed into a cur dog, and killed for stealing sheep, than fall to the level of such a man. But only time will prove the issue.”
“I’ve made up my mind to turn over a new leaf,” said McLeod. “I’m sick of rowdyism. I’m going to be a law-abiding, loyal citizen.”
“That’s just what I’m afraid of!” exclaimed the Preacher with a sneer as he turned and left him.
And his fears were soon confirmed. Within a month the Independence Observer contained a dispatch from Washington announcing the appointment of Allan McLeod a Deputy United States Marshal for the District of Western North Carolina, together with the information that he had renounced his allegiance to his old disloyal associates, and had become an enthusiastic Republican; and that henceforth he would labour with might and main to establish peace and further the industrial progress of the South.
“I knew it. The dirty whelp!” cried the Preacher, as he showed the paper to his wife.
“Now don’t be too hard on the boy, Doctor Durham,” urged his wife. “He may be sincere in his change of politics. You never did like him.”
“Sincere! yes, as the devil is always sincere. He’s dead in earnest now. He’s found his level, and his success is sure. Mark my words the boy’s a villain from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet. He has bartered his soul to save his skin, and the skin is all that’s left.”
“I’m sorry to think it. I couldn’t help liking him.”
“And that’s the funniest freak I ever knew your fancy to take, my dear,—I never could understand it.”
When McLeod had established his office in Hambright, he made special efforts to allay the suspicions against his name. His indignant denials of the report of his treachery convinced many that he had been wronged. Two men alone, maintained toward him an attitude of contempt, Major Dameron and the Preacher.
He called on Mrs. Durham, and with his smooth tongue convinced her that he had been foully slandered. She urged him to win the Doctor. Accordingly he called to talk the question over with the Preacher and ask him for a fair chance to build his character untarnished in the community.
The Preacher heard him through patiently, but in silence. Allan was perspiring before he reached the end of his plausible explanation. It was a tougher task than he thought, this deliberate lying, under the gaze of those glowing black eyes that looked out from their shaggy brows and pierced through his inmost soul.
“You’ve got an oily tongue. It will carry you a long way in this world. I can’t help admiring the skill with which you are fast learning to use it. You’ve fooled Mrs. Durham with it, but you can’t fool me,” said the Preacher.
“Doctor, I solemnly swear to you I am not guilty.”
“It’s no use to add perjury to plain lying. I know you did it. I know it as well as if I were present in that jail and heard you basely betray the men, name by name, whom you had lured to their ruin.”
“Doctor, I swear you are mistaken!”
“Bah! Don’t talk about it. You nauseate me!” The Preacher sprang to his feet, paced across the floor, sat down on the edge of his table and glared at McLeod for a moment. And then with his voice low and quivering with a storm of emotion he said, “The curse of God upon you—the God of your fathers! Your fathers in far-off Scotland’s hills, who would have suffered their tongues torn from their heads and their skin stripped inch by inch from their flesh sooner than betray one of their clan in distress. You have betrayed a thousand of your own men, and you, their sworn chieftain! Hell was made to consume such leper trash!” McLeod was dazed at first by this outburst. At length he sprang to his feet livid with rage.
“I’ll not forget this, sir!” he hissed.
“Don’t forget it!” cried the Preacher trembling with passion as he opened the door. “Go on and live your lie.”
MRS. DURHAM, the Doctor wants you,” said Charlie when McLeod’s footfall had died away.
“Charlie, dear, why don’t you call me ‘Mama’—surely you love me a little wee bit, don’t you?” she asked, taking the boy’s hand tenderly in hers.
“Yes’m,” he replied hanging his head.
“Then do say Mama. You don’t know how good it would be in my ears.”
“I try to but it chokes me,” he half whispered, glancing timidly up at her. “Let me call you Aunt Margaret, I always wanted an aunt and I think your name Margaret’s so sweet,” he shyly added.
She kissed him and said, “All right, if that’s all you will give me.” She passed on into the library where the Preacher waited her.
“My dear, I’ve just given young McLeod a piece of my mind. I wanted to say to you that you are entirely mistaken in his character. He’s a bad egg. I know all the facts about his treachery. He’s as smooth a liar as I’ve met in years.”
“With all his brute nature, there’s some good in him,” she persisted.
“Well, it will stay in him. He will never let it get out.”
“All right, have your way about it for the time. We’ll see who is right in the long run. Now I’ve a more pressing and tougher problem for your solution.”
“What is it?”
“Dick.”
“What’s he done this time?”
“He steals everything he can get his hands on.”
“He is a puzzle.”
“He’s the greatest liar I ever saw,” she continued. “He simply will not tell the truth if he can think up a lie in time. I’d say run him off the place, but for Charlie. He seems to love the little scoundrel. I’m afraid his influence over Charlie will be vicious, but it would break the child’s heart to drive him away. What shall we do with him?”
The Preacher laughed. “I give it up, my dear, you’ve got beyond my depth now. I don’t know whether he’s got a soul. Certainly the very rudimentary foundations of morals seem lacking. I believe you could take a young ape and teach him quicker. I leave him with you. At present it’s a domestic problem.”
“Thanks, that’s so encouraging.”
Dick was a puzzle and no mistake about it. But to Charlie his rolling mischievous eyes, his cunning fingers and his wayward imagination were unfailing fountains of life. He found every bird’s nest within two miles of town. He could track a rabbit almost as swiftly and surely as a hound. He could work like fury when he had a mind to, and loaf a half day over one row of the garden when he didn’t want to work, which was his chronic condition.
When the revival season set in for the negroes in the summer, the days of sorrow began for householders. Every negro in the community became absolutely worthless and remained so until the emotional insanity attending their meetings wore off.
Aunt Mary, Mrs. Durham’s cook, got salvation over again every summer with increasing power and increasing degeneration in her work. Some nights she got home at two o’clock and breakfast was not ready until nine. Some nights she didn’t get home at all, and Mrs. Durham had to get breakfast herself.
It was a hard time for Dick who had not yet experienced religion, and on whom fell the brunt of the extra work and Mrs. Durham’s fretfulness besides.
“I tell you what less do, Charlie!” he cried one day. “Less go down ter dat nigger chu’ch, en bus’ up de meetin’! I’se gettin’ tired er dis.”
“How’ll you do it?”
“I show you somefin’?” He reached under his shirt next to his skin, and pulled out Dr. Graham’s sun glass.
“Where’d you get that, Dick?”
“Foun’ it whar er man lef’ it.” He walled his eyes solemnly.
“Des watch here when I turns ’im in de sun. I kin set dat pile er straw er fire wid it!”
“You mustn’t set the church afire!” warned Charlie.
“Naw, chile, but I git up in de gallery, en when ole Uncle Josh gins ter holler en bawl en r’ar en charge, I fling dat blaze er light right on his bal’ haid, en I set him afire sho’s you bawn!”
“Dick, I wouldn’t do it,” said Charlie, laughing in spite of himself.
Charlie refused to accompany him. But Dick’s mind was set on the necessity of this work of reform. So in the afternoon he slipped off without leave and quietly made his way into the gallery of the Negro Baptist church.
The excitement was running high. Uncle Josh had preached one sermon an hour in length, and had called up the mourners. At least fifty had come forward. The benches had been cleared for five rows back from the pulpit to give plenty of room for the mourners to crawl over the floor, walk back and forth and shout when they “came through,” and for their friends to fan them.
This open place was covered with wheat straw to keep the mourners off the bare floor, and afford some sort of comfort for those far advanced in mourning, who went into trances and sometimes lay motionless for hours on their backs or flat on their faces.
The mourners had kicked and shuffled this straw out to the edges and the floor was bare. Uncle Josh had sent two deacons out for more straw.
In the meantime he was working himself up to another mighty climax of exhortation to move sinners to come forward.
“Come on ter glory you po, po sinners, en flee ter de Lamb er God befo de flames er hell swaller you whole! At de last great day de Sperit ’ll flash de light er his shinin’ face on dis ole parch up sinful worl’, en hit ’ll ketch er fire in er minute, an de yearth ’ll melt wid furvient heat! Whar ’ll you be den po tremblin’ sinner? Whar ’ll you be when de flame er de Sperit smites de moon and de stars wid fire, en dey gin ter drap outen de sky en knock big holes in de burnin’ yearth? Whar ’ll you be when de rocks melt wid dat heat, en de sun hide his face in de black smoke dat rise fum de pit?”
Moans and groans and shrieks, louder and louder filled the air. Uncle Josh paused a moment and looked for his deacons with the straw. They were just coming up the steps with a great armful over their heads.
“What’s de matter wid you breddern! Fetch on dat wheat straw! Here’s dese tremblin’ souls gwine down inter de flames er hell des fur de lak er wheat straw!”
The brethren hurried forward with the wheat straw, and just as they reached Uncle Josh standing perspiring in the midst of his groaning mourners, Dick flashed from the gallery a stream of dazzling light on the old man’s face and held it steadily on his bald head. Josh was too astonished to move at first. He was simply paralysed with fear. It was all right to talk about the flame of the Spirit, but he wasn’t exactly ready to run into it. Suddenly he clapped his hands on the top of his head and sprang straight up in the air yelling in a plain everyday profane voice, “God-der-mighty! What’s dat?”
The brethren holding the straw saw it and stood dumb with terror. The light disappeared from Uncle Josh’s head and lit the straw in splendour on one of the deacon’s shoulders. Aunt Mary’s voice was heard above the mourners’ din, clear, shrill and soul piercing.
“G-l-o-r-y! G-l-o-r-y ter God! De flame er de Sperit! De judgment day! Yas Lawd, I’se here! Glory! Halleluyah!”
Suddenly the straw on the deacon’s back burst into flames! And pandemonium broke loose. A weak-minded sinner screamed, “De flames er Hell!”
The mourners smelled the smoke and sprang from the floor with white staring eyes. When they saw the fire and got their bearings they made for the open,—they jumped on each others’ back and made for the door like madmen. Those nearest the windows sprang through, and when the lower part of the window was jammed, big buck negroes jumped on the backs of the lower crowd and plunged through the two upper sashes with a crash that added new terror to the panic.
In two minutes the church was empty, and the yard full of crazy, shouting negroes.
Dick stepped from the gallery into the crowd as the last ones emerged, ran up to the pulpit and stamped out the fire in the straw with his bare feet. He looked around to see if they had left anything valuable behind in the stampede, and sauntered leisurely out of the church.
“Now dog-gone ’em let ’em yell!” he muttered to himself.
When Uncle Josh sufficiently recovered his senses to think, and saw the church still standing, with not even a whiff of smoke to be seen, instead of the roaring furnace he had expected, he was amazed. He called his scattered deacons together and they went cautiously back to investigate.
“Hit’s no use in talkin’ Bre’r Josh, dey sho wuz er fire!” cried one of the deacons.
“Sho’s de Lawd’s in heaben. I feel it gittin’ on my fingers fo I drap dat straw!” said another.
“Hit smite me fust right on top er my haid!” whispered Uncle Josh in awe.
They cautiously approached the pulpit and there in front of it lay the charred fragments of the burned straw pile.
They gathered around it in awe-struck wonder. One of them touched it with his foot.
“Doan do dat!” cried Uncle Josh, lifting his hand with authority.
They drew back, Uncle Josh saw the immense power in that heap of charred straw. Some of it was a little damp and it had been only partly burned.
“Dar’s de mericle er de Sperit!” he solemnly declared.
“Yas Lawd!” echoed a deacon.
“Fetch de hammer, en de saw, en de nails, en de boards en build right dar en altar ter de Sperit!” were his prophetic commands.
And they did. They got an old show case of glass, put the charred straw in it, and built an open box work around it just where it fell in front of the pulpit.
Then a revival broke out that completely paralysed the industries of Campbell county. Every negro stopped work and went to that church. Uncle Josh didn’t have to preach or to plead. They came in troops towards the magic altar, whose fame and mystery had thrilled every superstitious soul with its power. The benches were all moved out and the whole church floor given up to mourners. Uncle Josh had an easy time walking around just adding a few terrifying hints to trembling sinners, or helping to hold some strong sister when she had “come through,” with so much glory in her bones that there was danger she would hurt somebody.
After a week the matter became so serious that the white people set in motion an investigation of the affair. Dick had thrown out a mysterious hint that he knew some things that were very funny.
“Doan you tell nobody!” he would solemnly say to Charlie.
And then he would lie down on the grass and roll and laugh. At length by dint of perseverance, and a bribe of a quarter, the Preacher induced Dick to explain the mystery. He did, and it broke up the meeting.
Uncle Josh’s fury knew no bounds. He was heartbroken at the sudden collapse of his revival, chagrined at the recollection of his own terror at the fire, and fearful of an avalanche of backsliders from the meeting among those who had professed even with the greatest glory.
He demanded that the Preacher should turn Dick over to him for correction. The Preacher took a few hours to consider whether he should whip him himself or turn him over to Uncle Josh. Dick heard Uncle Josh’s demand. Out behind the stable he and Charlie held a council of war.
“You go see Miss Mar’get fur me, en git up close to her, en tell her taint right ter ’low no low down black nigger ter whip me!”
“All right Dick, I will,” agreed Charlie.
“Case ef ole Josh beats me I gwine ter run away. I nebber git ober dat.”
Dick had threatened to run away often before when he wanted to force Charlie to do something for him. Once he had gone a mile out of town with his clothes tied in a bundle, and Charlie trudging after him begging him not to leave.
The boy did his best to save Dick the humiliation of a whipping at the hands of Uncle Josh, but in vain.
When Uncle Josh led him out to the stable lot, his face was not pleasant to look upon. There was a dangerous gleam in Dick’s eye that boded no good to his enemy.
“You imp er de debbil!” exclaimed Uncle Josh shaking his switch with unction.
“I fool you good enough, you ole bal’ headed ape!” answered Dick gritting his teeth defiantly.
“I make you sing enudder chune fo I’se done wid you.”
“En if you does, nigger, you know what I gwine do fur you?” cried Dick rolling his eyes up at his enemy.
“What kin you do, honey? asked Uncle Josh, humouring his victim now with the evident relish of a cat before his meal on a mouse.
“Ef you hits me hard, I gwine ter burn you house down on you haid some night, en run erway des es sho es I kin stick er match to it,” said Dick.
“You is, is you?” thundered Josh with wrath.
“Dat I is. En I burn yo ole chu’ch de same night.”
Uncle Josh was silent a moment. Dick’s words had chilled his heart. He was afraid of him, but he was afraid to back down from what was now evidently his duty. So without further words he whipped him. Yet to save his life he could not hit him as hard as he thought he deserved.
That night Dick disappeared from Hambright, and for weeks every evening at dusk the wistful face of Charlie Gaston could be seen on the big hill to the south of town vainly watching for somebody. He would always take something to eat in his pockets, and when he gave up his vigil he would place the food under a big shelving rock where they had often played together. But the birds and ground squirrels ate it. He would slip back the next day hoping to see Dick jump out of the cave and surprise him.
And then at last he gave it up, sat down under the rock and cried. He knew Dick would grow to be a man somewhere out in the big world and never come back.