9309
O you are the only lady member of the secret gang that stole my prisoner!” the sheriff said, laughingly. “The boys told me all about it.”
“I wasn't taken in till they had done all the work,” Helen smiled. “I was only an honorary addition, elected more to keep my mouth shut than for any other service I could perform.”
“Oh,thatwas it!” Braider laughed. “Well, they certainly put the thing through. I've mixed up in a lot of hair-raising scrapes in my time, but that kidnapping business was the brightest idea ever sprung from a man's head. This fellow Dwight is a corker. Did he tell you what he went through last night?”
“Not a thing,” replied Helen; “the truth is, I have an idea he was trying to mislead me.”
“Well, he certainly was if he didn't tell you he had the hardest fight for his life and that nigger's that ever a man made. You noticed how hoarse he was, didn't you? That is due to it. The poor chap was up all last night and drove the biggest part of to-day. I'll bet, strong as he is, he's as limber as a dish-rag.”
“Then he really had trouble?” Helen breathed, heavily.
“Trouble! And he didn't mention it to you? Young men in this day and time certainly play their cards peculiar. When I was on the carpet we boys had a way of making the most to women folks of everything we did, and it was generally the loudest talker that won the game. But here I find this 'town dude,' as the country people call his sort, actually trying to make you think he went to Chattanooga last night in a Pullman car. Good Lord, it gives me the all-overs to think of it! I heard all about it. I met a man who was along, and he told me the whole thing from start to finish.”
“What was it?” Helen asked, breathlessly.
“Why,” answered Braider, casting a glance towards Dwight's as if fearful of being overheard, “I didn't know it, but somehow the mob had got wind of what Carson intended to do, and, bless you, they were waiting for him near the State line primed and cocked. The boy's enemies had fixed him. They had worked the mob up to the highest pitch of fury with all sorts of tales against Pete. They had produced men who had really heard the nigger threaten to harm Johnson, and they themselves testified that Carson was saving the nigger only to capture black voters as their friend and benefactor. The mob was mad as Tucker at him for tricking them the other night, and they certainly had it in for him.”
“They were mad at Carsonpersonally, then?” Helen said.
“Werethey? They were ready to drink his blood. They halted the buggy, took them both out, and tied them.”
“Tied Car—” Helen's voice died away, and she stood staring at Braider unable to speak.
“Yes, they tied them both and led them off into the woods. They then fastened Pete to a stump and piled sticks and brush around him and told Carson they were going to make him see them burn the boy alive and when that was done they intended to silence his tongue by shooting him dead in his tracks.”
Helen covered her face with her hands and stifled a groan.
“His power of gab saved him, Miss Helen,” Braider went on. “It saved them both. It wasn't any begging, either; that wouldn't have gone with that sort of gang. With his hands and feet tied he began to talk—that's what ails his throat now—and the man that confessed it to me said such rapid fire of words and argument never before rolled from human lips. He told them he knew they would kill him; that they were a merciless band of desperadoes; but he was going to fire some truths at them that they would remember after he was gone, I'm no talker, Miss Helen. I can't possibly repeat what the man told me. He said at first Carson couldn't get their attention, but after awhile, when they were getting ready to apply the match, something in Dwight's voice caught their ear and they paused. He talked and talked, until a man behind him, in open defiance, cut the cords that held his hands. Later another cut his feet loose, and then Carson walked boldly up to Pete and stood beside him, and although a growl of fury was still in the air he kept talking. The man that told me about it said Carson first picked up one of the sticks around the prisoner and hurled it from him to emphasize something he said, then another and another, until the mob saw him kicking the sticks away and roaring out an offer to fight the whole bunch single-handed. Gee whiz! I'd have given ten years of my life to have heard it. He hadn't a thing to say in favor of Pete's general character; he said the boy was an idle, fun-loving, shiftless fellow, but he was innocent of the crime charged against him and he should not die like a dog. He spoke of the fine characters of Pete's mother and father and of the old woman's grief, and then, Miss Helen, he said something aboutyou, and the man that told me about it said that one thing did more to soften and quell the crowd than anything else.”
“He said something aboutme?” Helen cried. “Me?”
“Yes; no names was mentioned, but they knew who he meant,” Braider went on. “Carson spoke of your family and of the close bond of human sympathy between it and all the blacks that had once belonged to your folks, and said that the daughter of that house, the most beautiful womanly character that had ever blessed the South, was praying at that moment for the safety of the prisoner, and if they carried out their plans she would shed tears of sorrow. 'Your intentions are good,' Carson said. 'You are all sincere men acting, as you see it, in the interests of the women of the South. Listen to this gentlewoman's prayer uttered through my mouth to-night for mercy and human justice.'
“It fairly swept them off their feet, Miss Helen. The man that told me about it said he never saw a more thoroughly shamed lot of men in his life; he said they released Pete and led the horses around and stood like mile-posts with nothing to say as Carson drove away. The man that told me said he'd bet ninety per cent, of the gang would vote for Dwight this fall. But I must be going; if that young buck knew I'd been telling you all this he'd givemea tongue-lashing, and I don't want any of his sort in mine.”
Helen waited for about ten minutes alone on the grass—waited for Carson. When he finally came out and hurried towards her, he found her with her handkerchief pressed over her eyes.
“Why, what is the matter, Helen?” he asked, in sudden concern.
She remained silent for a moment, and then with glistening eyes she looked up at him as he stood pale and disturbed, the plaster still marking his wound and gleaming in the starlight.
“Why didn't you tell me?” she asked, laying her hand tenderly on his arm, her voice holding cadences of ineffable sweetness.
“Oh, Braider's been talking to you, I see!” Dwight said, with a frown of displeasure.
“Why, didn't you tell me, Carson?” she repeated, putting her disengaged hand on his arm and raising her appealing face till it was close to his.
He shrugged his shoulders, still frowning, and then said, flushing under her urgent gaze: “Because, Helen, you've already seen and heard too much of this awful stuff. It really is not fit for a gentle, sensitive girl like you.”
“Oh, Carson,” she cried, her suffused face held even closer to his, “you are the dearest, sweetest boy in the world!” and she turned and left him, left him alone there in his fatigue, alone under the starlight to fight as he had never fought before the deathless yearning for her.
9315
WO weeks went by. Great changes had come over the temper of the insurgent mountain people. They had gradually come to accept the rescue of Pete Warren as a chance bit of real justice that was as admirable as it was unusual and heroic. A sufficient number of men had come forward and testified to Sam Dudlow's ante-mortem confession to exculpate Carson's client, and some who had a leaning towards Dwight's cause politically were hinting, on occasion, that surely a man who would take such a plucky stand for the rights of a humble negro would not be a mere figure-head in the legislature of the State. At all events, there was one man who ground his teeth in secret rage over the subtle turn of affairs, and that man was Wiggin. He still busied himself sowing the seditious seed of race hatred wherever he found receptive soil, but, unfortunately for his cause, in many places where unbridled fury had once ploughed the ground a sort of frost had fallen. Most men whose passions are unduly wrought undergo a certain sort of relapse, and Wiggin found many who were not so much interested in their support of him as formerly when an open and defiant enemy was to be defeated.
Wiggin was puzzled more about Jeff Braider than any one of his former supporters. Braider was too good a politician to admit that he had in any way aided Carson Dwight by a betrayal of the plot against him, for that was exactly the sort of thing Wiggin could hold out to his constituents as the act of a man disloyal to his official post, for, guilty or innocent, the prisoner should have been held, as any law-abiding citizen would admit. As to Pete's guilt Wiggin's opinion was unchanged, and he made no bones of saying so; he believed, so he declared, that Pete was Dudlow's accomplice, and the dastardly manner of his release was a shame and a disgrace to any white man's community.
As for Jeff Braider, he was in such high feather over the success of his swerving towards the right in the nick of time that he refrained from drink and wore better clothing. He liked the situation. He felt, now, that he could serve his country, his God, and himself with a clear conscience, for Carson Dwight looked like a winner and they had agreed to work together.
Helen Warren, after her impulsive leaning towards her first sweetheart that night in the garden, had permitted herself to undergo the keenest suffering which was due to her strangely unsettled mind. Was she strictly honest? she asked herself. She had openly encouraged a good man to hope that she would finally become his wife, and the letters she was receiving from him daily were of the tenderest, most appealing nature, showing that Sanders' love for her and faith in her fair dealing were too deeply grounded to be easily uprooted. Besides, as he perhaps had the right to do, the Augusta man had spoken of his hopes to his mother and sister, and those sympathetic ladies had written Helen adroit letters which all but plainly alluded to the “understanding” as being the forerunner of a most welcome family event.
Many times had the poor girl seated herself to respond to these communications, and found herself absolutely unequal to the performance in the delicate spirit that the occasion demanded. The window of her room, at which her writing-desk stood, looked out over the garden at Dwight's, and the very spot where she had left Carson that memorable night was in open view. How could she throw herself into anything, yesanythingpertaining to her compact with Sanders while the ever-present thrill and ecstasy of that moment was permeating her? What had it really meant—that ecstatic yearning to kiss the lips so close to hers, the lips which had quivered in dumb adoration and despair as he strove to keep from her ken the suffering he had undergone in her service?
One day she rebelled against the painful, almost morbid, state of indecision that was on her and firmly decided that there was but one honorable course to pursue and that was in every way to be true to her tacit promise to the absent suitor, and in a spasm of resolution she was about to set herself to the correspondence just mentioned when Mam' Linda was announced. The old woman had just returned from a visit to Chattanooga to see her son and in addition to news of his well-being she had many other things to say. The letters would have to wait, Helen told herself, and her old nurse was admitted. Linda remained two hours, and Helen sat the while in a veritable dream as the old woman gave Pete's version of Carson Dwight's conduct before the mob on the lonely mountain road. And when Linda had gone, Helen turned to her desk. There lay the white sheets fluttering in the summer breeze, mutely beckoning her back to stem reality. Helen stared at them and then with a little cry of pain she lowered her head to her folded arms and wept—not for Sanders in his complacent, epistolary hopefulness, but for the one who had bravely borne more than his burden of pain, and upon whom she had resolved to put still more. Helen told herself that it would not be the first timeidealhappiness had not been a factor in a sensible marriage. The time would come, in her life, as it had in the lives of so many other women, when she would look back on her present feeling for Carson, and wonder how she ever could have fancied—but, no, that would be unfair to him, to his wealth of spirituality, to his gentleness, his courage to—to Carsonjust as he was, to Carson who must always, always be the same, different from all living men. Yes, he was to go out of her life. Out of her life—how strange! and yet it would be so, for she would be thewifeof——
She shuddered and sat staring at the floor.
9319
IGGIN was no insignificant opponent; he held weapons as powerful as fire applied to inflammable material. The papers were filled with accounts of race rioting in all parts of the South, and in his speeches on the stump, through the length and breadth of the county, he kept his particular version of the bloody happenings well before his hearers.
“This is a white man's country,” was the key-note of all his hot tirades, “and the white man is bound to rule.” He accomplished one master-stroke. There was to be a considerable gathering of the Confederate, veterans at an annual picnic at Shell Valley, a few miles from Springtown, and by no mean diplomacy Wiggin had, by shrewdly ingratiating himself into the good graces of the committee of arrangements, managed to have himself invited as the only orator of the occasion. He meant to make it the greatest day of the campaign, and in some respects, as will be seen he did.
The farmers came from all parts of the county in their best attire, in their best turnouts, from plain, springless road-wagons to glittering buggies. The wood which stretched on all sides from the spring was filled with vehicles, horses, mules, and even oxen.
The grizzled veterans, battered as much by post-bellum hardship and toil as by war, came with their wives, sons, and daughters, and brought baskets to the rich contents of which any man was welcome. A crude platform had been erected near the spring under the shadiest trees, and upon this the speaker of the day was to hold forth. Behind the little impromptu table holding a glass pitcher of water and a tumbler, erected for Wiggin's special benefit, were a number of benches made of undressed boards. And to these seats the wives and daughters of the leading citizens were invited.
Jabe Parsons, being a man of importance as a land-owner and an old soldier, was instructed on his arrival in his rickety buggy to escort his wife, who was gorgeously arrayed in a new green-and-red checked gingham gown with a sunbonnet to match, to the front seat on the platform, and he obeyed with a sort of ploughman's swagger that indicated his pride in the possession of a wife so widely known and respected. Indeed, no woman who had arrived—and she had come later than the rest—had caused such a ripple of comment. Always liked for her firmness in any stand she took in matters of church or social life, since her Amazonian rescue of Pete Warren from the very halter of death she was even more popular. The women of the county had not given much thought to the actual guilt or innocence of the boy, but they wanted Mrs. Parsons—as a specimen of their undervalued sex—to be right in that instance, as she had always been about every other matter upon which she had stood flat-footed, and so they all but cheered her on this first public appearance after conduct which 'had been so widely talked about.
Really, if Wiggin could have had the reception Mrs. Parsons received from beaming eyes and faces he would have felt that his star, which had been rather below the horizon than above of late, had become a fixed ornament in the political heavens. But Wiggin gave no thought to her, and there's where he made a mistake. Women were beneath the notice of serious men, Wiggin thought, except as a means of controlling a husband's vote, and there he made another mistake. It would have been well for him if he could have noticed the fires of contempt in Mrs. Parsons' eyes as he made his way through the crowd, bowing right and left, and took his seat in the only chair on the platform, and proceeded, of course, to take a drink of water.
A country parson, while the multitude sat upon the grass, crude benches, buggy-cushions, or heaps of pine needles, opened the ceremonies with a long-winded prayer, composed of selections from all the prayers he knew by rote and ending with something resembling a benediction. Then a young lady was asked to recite a dramatic poem relating to the “Lost Cause,” and she did it with such telling effect that the gray heads of the old soldiers sank to their chests, and, in memory of camp-fire, battle-field, and comrades left in unmarked graves, the tears flowed down furrowed cheeks and strong forms were shaken by sobs.
It was into this holy silence that the unmoved, preoccupied Wiggin rose to cast his burning brand. Through curtains of tears he laid his fuse to hidden magazines of powder.
“I believe in getting right down to business,” he began, in a crisp, rasping voice that reached well to the outskirts of the crowd. “There's nothing today that is as important to you, fellow-citizens, as the correct use of the ballot. I am a candidate for your votes. I mean to represent you in the next legislature, and I don't intend to be foiled by the tricks, lies, and underhand work of a gang of stuck-up town men who laugh at your honest appearance and homely ways. God knows you are the salt of the earth, and when I hear men of that stamp making fun of you behind your backs it makes me mad. My father was a mountain farmer, and when men throw dirt on folks of your sort they throw it into the tenderest recesses of my being and it smarts like salt in a fresh cut.”
There was applause from a group in the edge of the crowd led by long, tall Dan Willis, and it spread uncertainly to other parts of the gathering.
“Hit 'em, blast 'em, hit 'em, Wiggin,” a man near Willis shouted; “hit 'em!”
“You bet I'll hit 'em, brother,” Wiggin panted, as he rolled up his coat-sleeve and pulled down his rumpled cuff. “That's what I'm here for. I'm here, by the holy stars, to show you people a few things which have been overlooked. I intend to go into the history of this case. I want you all to look back a few weeks. A gang of worthless negroes in Darley became so bad and openly defiant in their rowdyism that they were literally running the town. Whenever they would be hauled up before the mayor for disgraceful conduct some old slave-holder, who used to own them or their daddies, would come up and pay their fine and they'd be turned loose again. The black scamps became so spoiled that whenever country people would come in town they would laugh at them, imitate their talk, call them po' white trash, and push them off the sidewalks. Some of you mountain men stood it, God bless your Caucasian bones, just as long as human endurance would let you, and then you formed a secret gang that went into Darley one night and pulled their dives and gave them a lashing on their bare backs that brought about a reform. As every Darley man will tell you, it purified the very air. The negroes were put to work, and they didn't hover like swarms of buzzards round the public square. All of which showed plainly that the cowhide was the only corrective that the niggers knew about or cared a cent for. Trying them in a mayor's court was elevating them to the level of a white man, and they liked it.”
“You bet!” cried out Dan Willis, and a laugh went round which spurred Wiggin to further flights of vituperation.
“Now to my next step in this history,” he thundered. “In that gang of soundly thrashed scamps there were two who were chums, as I could prove by sworn testimony. Those black fiends refused to submit passively. They skulked around making sullen threats and trying to incite race riot. Failing in this, what did they do? One of them, being hand in glove with Carson Dwight, who says he's going to beat me in this election, applied to him for a job and was sent out to Dwight's farm near to that of Abe Johnson, who is thought—by some—to have been the leader of the thrashing delegation. That nigger, Pete Warren, was promptly joined by his black pal, and Johnson and his wife, one of the best women in this State, were foully murdered in the dead hours of the night as they lay sleeping in their beds. Who did it?Iknow who did it.Youknow who did it. Fellow-citizens, those two niggers, with their backs still smarting and their tongues still wagging, were the devils who did the deed.”
Low muttering was heard throughout the crowd as men turned to one another to make comment on the statement. In its incipiency it meant no more, perhaps, than that reason, hard driven by rising emotion, was honestly striving to keep the equitable poise which had recently governed it, but it sounded to the thoughtless, inflammable element like sullen, swelling acquiescence to the bitter charges, and they took it up. Wiggin paused, drank from the tumbler, and watched his flashing fuse in its sinuous course through the assemblage.
Mrs. Parsons was near the edge of the platform, and Pole Baker, rising from the grass near by, where he had been coolly whittling a stick, stealthily approached her.
“Great goodness, Mrs. Parsons,” he whispered in her ear, “that skunk is cutting a wide swath to-day, sure! He could git up a lynching-bee right here in five minutes if he had any sort of material. The only thing of the right color is that old woman selling ginger-cakes and cider at the spring. Don't you think I'd better slip down and tell her to go home?”
“It might save the old thing's neck,” Mrs. Parsons answered, in the same half-amused spirit. “If he keeps on I don't think I'll be able to hold my seat. Why don't you say something?”
“Me? Oh, I ain't no public speaker, Mrs. Parsons. That oily gab of Wiggin's would twist me into a hundred knots, and Carson Dwight would cuss me out for making matters worse. I never feel like talking unless I'm drunk, and then I'm tongue-tied.”
“Well, I don't git drunk and I don't git tongue-tied!” grunted Mrs. Parsons; “and I tell you, Pole, if that fool keeps on I'll either talk or bust.”
“Well, don't bust—we need women like you right now,” Baker smiled. “But the truth is, if some'n' ain't done for our side this thing will sweep Carson Dwight clean out of the field.”
“Yes, because men are born fools,” retorted the woman. “Look at their faces, the last one of them right now is mad enough to lynch a nigger baby, and agalbaby at that.”
With a laugh, Pole went back to his seat on the grass for Wiggin was thundering again.
“What happenednext!” he demanded, bending over his table, a hand on each end of it, his keen, alert eyes sweeping like twin search-lights into the deeps of the countenances turned to him. “Why, just this and nothing more. Knowing that the jack-leg lawyers of that measly town would clog the wheels of justice for their puny fees, and hold those fiends over for other hellishness, some of you rose and took the law into your own hands. You jerked one to glory as quick as you laid hands on him, and part of you were hard on the track of his mate, when my honorable opponent, not wanting to lose the fee he was to get for pulling the case through, met the mob and managed, by a lot of grand-stand playing and solemn promises to see that the negro was legally tried, to put him in jail.
“Those promises he kept like the honorable gentleman he is,” Wiggin snorted, tossing back his hair in white rage and rolling up his sleeves again. “You know how he kept his word to the public. He organized a secret band of his dirty associates in town, dressed 'em up like White Caps, and they went to the jail and took the nigger out. Then they hid him in a cellar of a store where you all buy supplies, out of the goodness of your patriotic souls, and later sent him in a new suit of clothes to Chattanooga, where he is now engaged in the same sort of life that he was here, an idle, good-for-nothing, lazy tramp, who says he's as good as any white man that ever wore shoe-leather and no doubt thinks he will some day marry a white woman.”
The rising storm burst, and Wiggin stood above it calmly viewing it in all its subdued and open fury. Shouts of rage rent the air. Men with blanched faces, men with gleaming eyes, rose from their seats, as if a call to their manhood for instantaneous action had been sounded, and walked about muttering threats, grinding their teeth, and clinching their brawny hands.
“Ah, ha!” Wiggin bellowed; “I see you catch my idea. But I'm not through. Just wait!”
He paused to drink again, and Pole Baker, with a grave look in his honest eye approached the sculpturesque shape of Mrs. Parsons and nudged her.
“Did you ever in yore life?” he said; but staring him in the eyes steadily, the woman seemed not to hear what he was saying. Her lower lip was twitching and there was an expression of settled determination in her eyes. Baker, wondering, moved back to his place, for Wiggin had levelled his guns again.
“And the man that was at the head of it, what is he doing right now? Why he's leaning back in his rocking-chair in his law-office drawing a fat pension from his rich old daddy, taking in big fees for such legal work as that, and fairly splitting his sides laughing at you folks, who he calls a lot of sap-headed hillbillies, fit only for hopping clods and feeding hogs on swill and pussley weeds. Oh, that was a picnic—that trick he and those town rowdies put up on you! It was a gentle rebuke to you, and when he gets to the legislature he says he—”
“Legislature be damned!” Dan Willis roared, and the crowd took up his cry.
“Oh yes,you'llvote him in,” Wiggin went on, with a vast air of mock depression and reproach; “you think you won't now, but when he gets up and tells his side of it with a forced tear or two, your women folks will say, 'Poor boy!' and tell you what to do at the polls.”
Comprehensive applause greeted the speaker as he sat down. Hats were thrown in the air and Dan Willis organized and gave three resounding cheers.
9328
F the audience was surprised at what next happened, what may be said of the astounded candidate when he saw the powerful form of Mrs. Parsons rise from her seat near him and calmly stride with the tread of an angry man to the speaker's stand and take off her curtained bonnet and begin to wave it up and down to indicate that she wanted them to keep their places?
“I never made a speech in my life,” she gulped—“that is, not outside of an experience meetin'. But, people, ef this ain't an experience meeting I never went to one. Ef the Lord God had told me Hisse'f in a blazonin' voice from heaven that any human bein' could take such a swivelled-up, contemptible shape as the man that's yelled at you like a sick calf to-day, I never would have believed it. I've got a right to be heard. I couldn't set still. It would give me St. Vitus's dance to try it ten minutes longer. I've got a right to talk, because, friends and neighbors, this contemptible creature has, in a roundabout way, accusedmeof law-breaking, an'—”
“Why, madam!” Wiggin gasped, as he half rose and stared around in utter bewilderment. “I don't evenknowyou! I never laid eyes on you before this minute—”
“Well, take a good look at me now!” Mrs. Parsons hurled at him, “for I'm the woman that helped Pete Warren git away from the sheriff, when your sort were after the poor, silly nigger to lynch him for a crime he had nothin' to do with. If you are right in all your empty tirade this morning, I'm a woman unfit for the community I live in, and if I have to share that honor with a man of your stamp, I'll lynch myself on the first tree I come to.”
She turned from the astounded, suddenly crestfallen speaker to the open-mouthed audience.
“Listen to me, men, women, and children!” she thundered, in a voice that was as steady and clear in resonance as a bell. “If there was ever a crafty, spider-like politician on earth you have listened to him spout to-day. He's picked out the one big sore-spot in your kind natures and he's punched it, and jabbed it, and lacerated it with every sort of thorn he could stick into it, till he gained his aim in makin' you one and all so blind with rage at the black race that you are about to overlook the good in yore own.
“There are two sides to this matter, and you would be pore excuses for men if you jest looked at one side of it. Carson Dwight is the other candidate, and I don't know but one thing agin his character, and that is that he ever allowed his name to be put up along with this man's. It's a funny sort of race, anyway—run by a greyhound and a jack-rabbit.”
A ripple of amusement passed over many faces, and there were several open laughs over Wiggin's evident discomfiture. He started to rise, but voices from all parts of the gathering cried out: “Sit down, Wiggin! Sit down, it ain't yore time!”
“No, ithain'this time,” said Mrs. Parsons, unrolling her bonnet like a switchman's flag and waving it to and fro. “I started to tell you about Carson Dwight. He can't help bein' born in a rich family any more'n I could in a pore one, but I'm here to tell you that since I had the moral backbone to aid that nigger to git away I've thanked God a thousand times that I did that much to help genuine justice along. I could listen to forty million men like this candidate expound his views and it wouldn't alter me one smidgen in the belief that Carson Dwight has acted only as a true Christian would. He knew that nigger. He had known him, I'm told, from childhood up. He knew the sort of black stock the boy sprung from, an' the white family he was trained in, an' he simply didn't believe he was guilty of that crime. Believing that, thar wasn't but one honest thing for him to do, and that was to fight for the pore thing's rights. He knew that most of the racket agin the boy was got up by t'other candidate, and he set about to save the pore, beggin' darky's neck from the halter or his body from the burning brush-heap. Did he do it at a sacrifice? Huh, answer me that! Where did you ever see another politician on the eve of his election that would take up such a' issue as that, infuriating nearly every person who had promised to vote for him? Where will you find a young man with enough stamina to stand on a horse-block over the heads of hundreds of howling demons, and with one wound from a pistol on his brow, darin' 'em to shoot ag'in and holdin' on like a bull-dog to the pore cowerin' wreck at his feet?”
There was applause, slight at first, but increasing. There were, too, under Mrs. Parson's eye many softening faces, and into them she continued to throw her heart-felt appeal.
“You've been told this morning that Carson Dwight makes fun of us country people. I'll admit I saw him do it once, but it wasonlyonce. He made fun of a mountain chap over at Darley one circus day. The fellow had insulted a nice country gal, and Carson Dwight made alotof fun of him. He hammered the dirty scamp's face till it looked like a ripe tomato that the rats had been gnawin'.”
At this point there was laughter loud and prolonged.
“Now, listen,” the speaker went on. “I want you to hear something, and I don't want you ever to forget it. I got it straight from a truthful man who was there. The night you mountain men gathered from all sides like the rising of the dead on Judgment Day, and got ready to march to Darley to take that boy out of jail, the news reached Carson Dwight just an hour or so before the appointed time. He got a few friends together and told them if they cared for him to make one more effort to stop the trouble.
“Gentlemen, to some extent they was like you. They wasn't—I'm told—much interested in the fate of that nigger, one way or another, and so they sat thar in judgment over Carson Dwight, and tried to argue 'im down. I'm told by a respectable man who was thar” (and here Pole Baker lowered his head till his eyes were out of sight and continued to whittle his stick) “that nothin' feazed 'im. Pity was in his big, boyish heart, and it looked out of his eyes and clogged up his voice. They told him it meant ruination to all his political hopes, and that it would turn his daddy against him for good and all. But he said he didn't care. They held out agin him a long time, and then one thing he said won 'em over—one thing. Kin you imagine what that was, friends and neighbors? It was this: Carson Dwight said he loved you mountain men with all his heart; he said no better or braver blood ever flowed in human veins than yours; he said he knew youthoughtyou was right, but that you hadn't had the chance to discover what he had found out, and that was that Pete Warren was innocent and as harmless as a baby, and that—now, listen!—that he knew the time would come when you'd be convinced of the truth and carry regret for your haste to your graves. 'It is because,' he told them, 'I want to save men that I love from remorse and sorrow that I am in for this thing!' Fellow-citizens, that shot went home. Those worthless 'town dudes,' as they was called just now, saved you from committing a crime against yourselves an' God on high. Did any human bein' ever see a better illustration than that of the duty of enlightened folks to-day—the duty of them who, with divine sight, see great truths—to lead others in the right direction? As God Almighty smiles over you to-day in this broad sunlight, that gang in that store, headed by a new Joseph, was an' are the truest and best friends you ever had.”
There was no open applause, but Mrs. Parsons saw something in the melting faces before her that was infinitely more encouraging, and after a moment's pause, and leaning slightly on the table, she went on: “Before I set down, I want to say one word about this big race question, anyway. I'm just a plain woman, but I read papers an' I've thought about it a lot. We hear some white folks say that the education the niggers are now gettin' is the prime cause of so much crime amongst the blacks—they say this in spite of the fact that it is always the uneducated niggers that commit the rascality. No, my friends, it ain't education that's the cause, it isthe lackof it. Education ain't just what is learnt in school-books. It is anything that makes folks higher an' better. Before the war niggers was better educated, for they had the education that come from bein' close to the white race an' profitin' by the'r example. After slavery was abolished the poor, simple numskulls, great, overgrown, fun-lovin' children, was turned loose without advice or guidin' hand, an' the worst part of 'em went downhill. Slavery was education, and I'll bet the Lord had a hand in it, for it has lifted a race from the jungles of Africa to a civilized land full of free schools. So I say, teach 'em the difference between right an' wrong, an' then let 'em work out their own salvation.
“Who in the name of common-sense is to do this if it ain't you of the superior race?But!wait a minute, think! How can you possibly teach 'em what law an' order is without knowin' a little about it yourselves? How can you learn a nigger what justice means when he sees his brother, son, or father, shot dead in his tracks or hung, like a scare-crow to the limb of a tree because some lower grade black man a hundred miles off has committed a dastardly deed? No sensible white man ever thought of puttin' the two races on equality. The duty of the white blood is always to keep ahead of the black, and it will. This candidate openly declares that the time is coming when the negroes will overpower the whites. A man that has as poor an opinion of his own race as that ought to be kicked out of it. Now I can't vote, but I want every woman in this crowd that believes I know what I'm talkin' about to see that her brother, father, or husband votes for a member of the legislature that knows what law an' order means, an' not for a red-handed anarchist who would lay this country in ruins to gain his own puny aims. That's all I've got to say.”
When she had finished there was still no applause. They had learned that it was unseemly to make a demonstration at church, when deeply moved by a sermon, and they had heard something to-day that had lifted them as high under her sway as they had sunken low under Wiggin's. The formal part of the exercises was over, and they proceeded to spread out the contents of their baskets. Wiggin, after his successful ascent, had fallen with something like a thud. He saw Mrs. Parsons helped from the platform by her proudly flushing husband and instantly surrounded by people anxious to offer congratulations. Wiggin shuddered for he stood quite alone. Those who were in sympathy with him seemed afraid to openly signify it. Even Dan Willis lurked back under the trees, his face flushed with liquor and inward rage.
Pole Baker, however, was more thoughtful of the candidate's comfort. With a queer twinkle of amusement in his eyes, and polishing, with the dexterity of a carver of cherry-stones, his little stick, he approached the candidate.
“Say, Wiggin,” he drawled out, “I want to ax you a question.”
“All right, Baker, what is it?” the candidate asked, absent-mindedly.
“Don't you remember tellin' me,” Pole began, “that you never had in all yore life met a man that made better an' truer predictions about things to come than I did?”
“Yes, I think so, Baker—yes, I remember now,” answered Wiggin. “You do seem to have a head that way. Some men have more than others, a sort of foresight or intuition.”
Pole chuckled. “You remember I said Teddy Rusefelt would whip the socks off of Parker. I'm a Democrat an' always will be, but I kin see things that are goin' to be agin me as plain as them I'm prayin' for. Well, you remember I was called a traitor jest beca'se I told what was comin', but I hit the nail on the head, didn't I?”
“Yes, you did,” admitted the downcast candidate.
“An' I was right about the majority Towns would git for the State senate, Mayhew for solicitor, an' Tim Bloodgood for the last legislature.”
“Yes, you were, I remember that,” said Wiggin.
“I hit it on the Governor's race to a gnat's heel, too, didn't I?” Pole pursued, his keen eyes fixed on those of the man before him.
“Yes, you did,” admitted Wiggin; “you really seem to have remarkable foresight.”
“Well, then,” said Baker, “I've got a prediction to make about your race agin Carson Dwight.”
“Oh, you have!” exclaimed Wiggin, now all attention.
“Yes, and this time I'd bet my two arms and the first joint of my right leg agin a pinch o' snuff that Carson'll beat you worse than a man was ever whipped in his life.”
“You think so, Baker?” Wiggin was trying to sneer.
“I don't think anything about it; Iknowit,” said Pole.
Wiggin stared at the ground a moment aimlessly, then he said, doggedly, and yet with an evident desire for information at any sort of fountain-head: “What makes you think I'm beat, Baker?”
“Because you've showed you hain't no politician, an' you've got a born one to beat. For one thing, you've stirred up a hornet's nest. Women, when they set the'r heads agin a'body, are devils in petticoats, an' the one that presided this mornin' has got more influence than forty men. Before you are a day older every man who has a wife, mother, or sweetheart will be afraid to speak to you in broad daylight. Then ag'in, no candidate ever won a race on a platform of pure hate an' revenge. You made that crowd as mad as hell just now, while you was belchin' out that stuff, but as soon as Sister Parsons showed 'em what a friend of the'rs Dwight was they melted to him like thin snow after a rain.”