"Got yer deed, is yer, ter stop me payin" my missy her rent fum de lan" my chillun wucks? Yu"se er smart boy, you is--let"s hear de deed!"
Aleck edged away a little, and said with a bow:
"Dar"s de paper wid de big mark er de Gubment."
Aunt Cindy sniffed the air contemptuously.
"What is it, honey?" she asked of Margaret.
Margaret read in mock solemnity the mystic writing on the deed:
_To Whom It May Concern_:
As Moses lifted up the brazen serpent in the wilderness for the enlightenment of the people, even so have I lifted twenty shining plunks out of this benighted n.i.g.g.e.r! Selah!
As Uncle Aleck walked away with Aunt Cindy shouting in derision, "Dar, now! Dar, now!" the bow in his legs seemed to have sprung a sharper curve.
CHAPTER VI
A WHISPER IN THE CROWD
The excitement which preceded the first Reconstruction election in the South paralyzed the industries of the country. When demagogues poured down from the North and began their raving before crowds of ignorant negroes, the plow stopped in the furrow, the hoe was dropped, and the millennium was at hand.
Negro tenants, working under contracts issued by the Freedman"s Bureau, stopped work, and rode their landlords" mules and horses around the county, following these orators.
The loss to the cotton crop alone from the abandonment of the growing plant was estimated at over $60,000,000.
The one thing that saved the situation from despair was the large grain and forage crops of the previous season which thrifty farmers had stored in their barns. So important was the barn and its precious contents that Dr. Cameron hired Jake to sleep in his.
This immense barn, which was situated at the foot of the hill some two hundred yards behind the house, had become a favourite haunt of Marion and Hugh. She had made a pet of the beautiful thoroughbred mare which had belonged to Ben during the war. Marion went every day to give her an apple or lump of sugar, or carry her a bunch of clover. The mare would follow her about like a cat.
Another attraction at the barn for them was Becky Sharpe, Ben"s setter.
She came to Marion one morning, wagging her tail, seized her dress and led her into an empty stall, where beneath the trough lay sleeping snugly ten little white-and-black spotted puppies.
The girl had never seen such a sight before and went into ecstasies. Becky wagged her tail with pride at her compliments. Every morning she would pull her gently into the stall just to hear her talk and laugh and pet her babies.
Whatever election day meant to the men, to Marion it was one of unalloyed happiness: she was to ride horseback alone and dance at her first ball.
Ben had taught her to ride, and told her she could take Queen to Lover"s Leap and back alone. Trembling with joy, her beautiful face wreathed in smiles, she led the mare to the pond in the edge of the lot and watched her drink its pure spring water.
When he helped her to mount in front of the hotel under her mother"s gaze, and saw her ride out of the gate, with the exquisite lines of her little figure melting into the graceful lines of the mare"s glistening form, he exclaimed:
"I declare, I don"t know which is the prettier, Marion or Queen!"
"I know," was the mother"s soft answer.
"They are both thoroughbreds," said Ben, watching them admiringly.
"Wait till you see her to-night in her first ball dress," whispered Mrs.
Lenoir.
At noon Ben and Phil strolled to the polling-place to watch the progress of the first election under negro rule. The Square was jammed with shouting, jostling, perspiring negroes, men, women, and children. The day was warm, and the African odour was supreme even in the open air.
A crowd of two hundred were packed around a peddler"s box. There were two of them--one crying the wares, and the other wrapping and delivering the goods. They were selling a new patent poison for rats.
"I"ve only a few more bottles left now, gentlemen," he shouted, "and the polls will close at sundown. A great day for our brother in black. Two years of army rations from the Freedman"s Bureau, with old army clothes thrown in, and now the ballot--the priceless glory of American citizenship. But better still the very land is to be taken from these proud aristocrats and given to the poor down-trodden black man. Forty acres and a mule--think of it! Provided, mind you--that you have a bottle of my wonder-worker to kill the rats and save your corn for the mule. No man can have the mule unless he has corn; and no man can have corn if he has rats--and only a few bottles left----"
"Gimme one," yelled a negro.
"Forty acres and a mule, your old masters to work your land and pay his rent in corn, while you sit back in the shade and see him sweat."
"Gimme er bottle and two er dem pictures!" bawled another candidate for a mule.
The peddler handed him the bottle and the pictures and threw a handful of his labels among the crowd. These labels happened to be just the size of the ballots, having on them the picture of a dead rat lying on his back, and above, the emblem of death, the crossbones and skull.
"Forty acres and a mule for every black man--why was I ever born white? I never had no luck, nohow!"
Phil and Ben pa.s.sed on nearer the polling-place, around which stood a cordon of soldiers with a line of negro voters two hundred yards in length extending back into the crowd.
The negro Leagues came in armed battalions and voted in droves, carrying their muskets in their hands. Less than a dozen white men were to be seen about the place.
The negroes, under the drill of the League and the Freedman"s Bureau, protected by the bayonet, were voting to enfranchise themselves, disfranchise their former masters, ratify a new const.i.tution, and elect a legislature to do their will. Old Aleck was a candidate for the House, chief poll-holder, and seemed to be in charge of the movements of the voters outside the booth as well as inside. He appeared to be omnipresent, and his self-importance was a sight Phil had never dreamed. He could not keep his eyes off him.
"By George, Cameron, he"s a wonder!" he laughed.
Aleck had suppressed as far as possible the story of the painted stakes and the deed, after sending out warnings to the brethren to beware of two enticing strangers. The surveyors had reaped a rich harvest and pa.s.sed on.
Aleck made up his mind to go to Columbia, make the laws himself, and never again trust a white man from the North or South. The agent of the Freedman"s Bureau at Piedmont tried to choke him off the ticket. The League backed him to a man. He could neither read nor write, but before he took to whiskey he had made a specialty of revival exhortation, and his mouth was the most effective thing about him. In this campaign he was an orator of no mean powers. He knew what he wanted, and he knew what his people wanted, and he put the thing in words so plain that a wayfaring man, though a fool, couldn"t make any mistake about it.
As he bustled past, forming a battalion of his brethren in line to march to the polls, Phil followed his every movement with amused interest.
Besides being so bow-legged that his walk was a moving joke he was so striking a negro in his personal appearance, he seemed to the young Northerner almost a distinct type of man.
His head was small and seemed mashed on the sides until it bulged into a double lobe behind. Even his ears, which he had pierced and hung with red earbobs, seemed to have been crushed flat to the side of his head. His kinked hair was wrapped in little hard rolls close to the skull and bound tightly with dirty thread. His receding forehead was high and indicated a cunning intelligence. His nose was broad and crushed flat against his face. His jaws were strong and angular, mouth wide, and lips thick, curling back from rows of solid teeth set obliquely in their blue gums.
The one perfect thing about him was the size and setting of his mouth--he was a born African orator, undoubtedly descended from a long line of savage spell-binders, whose eloquence in the palaver houses of the jungle had made them native leaders. His thin spindle-shanks supported an oblong, protruding stomach, resembling an elderly monkey"s, which seemed so heavy it swayed his back to carry it.
The animal vivacity of his small eyes and the flexibility of his eyebrows, which he worked up and down rapidly with every change of countenance, expressed his eager desires.
He had laid aside his new shoes, which hurt him, and went barefooted to facilitate his movements on the great occasion. His heels projected and his foot was so flat that what should have been the hollow of it made a hole in the dirt where he left his track.
He was already mellow with liquor, and was dressed in an old army uniform and cap, with two horse pistols buckled around his waist. On a strap hanging from his shoulder were strung a half-dozen tin canteens filled with whiskey.
A disturbance in the line of voters caused the young men to move forward to see what it meant.
Two negro troopers had pulled Jake out of the line, and were dragging him toward old Aleck.