"No doubt. Yet we may have too much of even a good thing. The League is here to run this country. The business of the military is to keep still and back them when they need it."
"We"ve the strongest council here to be found in any county in this section," said Gilbert with pride.
"Just so. The League meets once a week. We have promised them the land of their masters and equal social and political rights. Their members go armed to these meetings and drill on Sat.u.r.days in the public square. The white man is afraid to interfere lest his house or barn take fire. A negro prisoner in the dock needs only to make the sign to be acquitted. Not a negro will dare to vote against us. Their women are formed into societies, sworn to leave their husbands and refuse to marry any man who dares our anger. The negro churches have pledged themselves to expel him from their membership. What more do you want?"
"There"s another side to it," protested the Captain. "Since the League has taken in the negroes, every Union white man has dropped it like a hot iron, except the lone scallawag or carpet-bagger who expects an office. In the church, the social circle, in business or pleasure, these men are lepers. How can a human being stand it? I"ve tried to grind this h.e.l.lish spirit in the dirt under my heel, and unless you can do it they"ll beat you in the long run! You"ve got to have some Southern white men or you"re lost."
"I"ll risk it with a hundred thousand negro majority," said Howle with a sneer. "The fun will just begin then. In the meantime, I"ll have you ease up on this county"s government. I"ve brought that man back who knocked you down. Let him alone. I"ve pardoned him. The less said about this affair, the better."
As the day of the election under the new regime of Reconstruction drew near, the negroes were excited by rumours of the coming great events.
Every man was to receive forty acres of land for his vote, and the enthusiastic speakers and teachers had made the dream a resistless one by declaring that the Government would throw in a mule with the forty acres.
Some who had hesitated about the forty acres of land, remembering that it must be worked, couldn"t resist the idea of owning a mule.
The Freedman"s Bureau reaped a harvest in $2 marriage fees from negroes who were urged thus to make their children heirs of landed estates stocked with mules.
Every stranger who appeared in the village was regarded with awe as a possible surveyor sent from Washington to run the lines of these forty-acre plots.
And in due time the surveyors appeared. Uncle Aleck, who now devoted his entire time to organizing the League, and drinking whiskey which the dues he collected made easy, was walking back to Piedmont from a League meeting in the country, dreaming of this promised land.
He lifted his eyes from the dusty way and saw before him two surveyors with their arms full of line stakes painted red, white, and blue. They were well-dressed Yankees--he could not be mistaken. Not a doubt disturbed his mind. The kingdom of heaven was at hand!
He bowed low and cried:
"Praise de Lawd! De messengers is come! I"se waited long, but I sees "em now wid my own eyes!"
"You can bet your life on that, old pard," said the spokesman of the pair.
"We go two and two, just as the apostles did in the olden times. We have only a few left. The boys are hurrying to get their homes. All you"ve got to do is to drive one of these red, white, and blue stakes down at each corner of the forty acres of land you want, and every rebel in the infernal regions can"t pull it up."
"Hear dat now!"
"Just like I tell you. When this stake goes into the ground, it"s like planting a thousand cannon at each corner."
"En will the Lawd"s messengers come wid me right now to de bend er de creek whar I done pick out my forty acres?"
"We will, if you have the needful for the ceremony. The fee for the surveyor is small--only two dollars for each stake. We have no time to linger with foolish virgins who have no oil in their lamps. The bridegroom has come. They who have no oil must remain in outer darkness." The speaker had evidently been a preacher in the North, and his sacred accent sealed his authority with the old negro, who had been an exhorter himself.
Aleck felt in his pocket the jingle of twenty gold dollars, the initiation fees of the week"s harvest of the League. He drew them, counted out eight, and took his four stakes. The surveyors kindly showed him how to drive them down firmly to the first stripe of blue. When they had stepped off a square of about forty acres of the Lenoir farm, including the richest piece of bottom land on the creek, which Aleck"s children under his wife"s direction were working for Mrs. Lenoir, and the four stakes were planted, old Aleck shouted:
"Glory ter G.o.d!"
"Now," said the foremost surveyor, "you want a deed--a deed in fee simple with the big seal of the Government on it, and you"re fixed for life. The deed you can take to the courthouse and make the clerk record it."
The man drew from his pocket an official-looking paper, with a red circular seal pasted on its face.
Uncle Aleck"s eyes danced.
"Is dat de deed?"
"It will be if I write your name on it and describe the land."
"En what"s de fee fer dat?"
"Only twelve dollars; you can take it now or wait until we come again.
There"s no particular hurry about this. The wise man, though, leaves nothing for to-morrow that he can carry with him to-day."
"I takes de deed right now, gemmen," said Aleck, eagerly counting out the remaining twelve dollars. "Fix "im up for me."
The surveyor squatted in the field and carefully wrote the doc.u.ment.
They went on their way rejoicing, and old Aleck hurried into Piedmont with the consciousness of lordship of the soil. He held himself so proudly that it seemed to straighten some of the crook out of his bow legs.
He marched up to the hotel where Margaret sat reading and Marion was on the steps playing with a setter.
"Why, Uncle Aleck!" Marion exclaimed, "I haven"t seen you in a long time."
Aleck drew himself to his full height--at least, as full as his bow legs would permit, and said gruffly:
"Miss Ma"ian, I axes you to stop callin" me "uncle"; my name is Mr.
Alexander Lenoir----"
"Until Aunt Cindy gets after you," laughed the girl. "Then it"s much shorter than that, Uncle Aleck."
He shuffled his feet and looked out at the square unconcernedly.
"Yaas"m, dat"s what fetch me here now. I comes ter tell yer Ma ter tell dat "oman Cindy ter take her chillun off my farm. I gwine "low no mo"
rent-payin" ter n.o.body off"n my lan"!"
"Your land, Uncle Aleck? When did you get it?" asked Marion, placing her cheek against the setter.
"De Gubment gim it ter me to-day," he replied, fumbling in his pocket, and pulling out the doc.u.ment. "You kin read it all dar yo"sef."
He handed Marion the paper, and Margaret hurried down and read it over her shoulder.
Both girls broke into screams of laughter.
Aleck looked up sharply.
"Do you know what"s written on this paper, Uncle Aleck?" Margaret asked.
"Cose I do. Dat"s de deed ter my farm er forty acres in de land er de creek, whar I done stuck off wid de red, white, an" blue sticks de Gubment gimme."
"I"ll read it to you," said Margaret.
"Wait a minute," interrupted Marion. "I want Aunt Cindy to hear it--she"s here to see Mamma in the kitchen now."
She ran for Uncle Aleck"s spouse. Aunt Cindy walked around the house and stood by the steps, eying her erstwhile lord with contempt.