THE SOUL OF BLACK FOLKS
The negro to the white man, as the moon to the earth, shows one side
only; the other is dark and unknown. It is an instinct with him to
conceal the truth--any truth--from white men; who knows to what use
they will put it and him? So deeply have ages of slavery and
oppression ingrained this upon black men's subconsciousness, that
only one white man in a thousand ever knows or suspects what his
dark brethren think, or know, or feel. Peter Champneys happened to
be the thousandth.
There wasn't a cabin in all that countrywide in which this
barefooted last scion of a long line of slave-holding gentry wasn't
known and welcome. There wasn't a negro in the county he didn't know
by name: even "mean niggers" grinned amiably at Peter Champneys.
They remembered what he had once said to a district judge whom he
heard bitterly inveighing against their ingratitude, immorality,
shiftlessness, and general worthlessness. Peter had lifted his quiet
eyes.
"I've often thought, Judge, what a particularly mean nigger I'd have
been, myself," he said, and studied the judge with disconcerting
directness. "If you'd been born a colored man, and some folks talked
and behaved to you like some folks talk and behave to colored men,
don't you reckon you'd be in jail right this minute, Judge?"
The white men who heard Peter's remark smiled, and one of them said,
spitting out a mouthful of tobacco juice, that it was just another
piece of that boy's damfoolishness. But the negroes, who knew that
judge as only negroes can know white men, chuckled grimly. They have
an immense respect for intelligence, and they made no mistake where
Peter's was concerned.
They knew him, too, a mild-eyed, brown-faced child reading out of a
Book by the light of a kerosene lamp to groups of gray-headed,
reverent listeners in lonely cabins. And Peter was always making
pictures of them--Mindel at the wash-tub, Emma Campbell picking a
chicken, old Maum' Chloe churning, Liza playing with her fat black
baby, Joe Tuttle plowing, old Daddy Neptune Fennick leaning on his
ax. Sometimes these sketches caught some fleeting moment of fun, and
were so true and so amusing that they were received with shouts of
delighted laughter, passed from hand to hand, and cherished by
fortunate recipients.
Now, no simple and natural heart can even for a little while beat in
unison with other hearts, encased in whatsoever colored skin may
please God, without a quickening of that wisdom which is one of the
keys of the Kingdom to come. To be able really to know, truly to
understand and come human-close to the lowly, to men and women under
the bondage of age-old prejudice, or outcast by the color of their
skin, is a terrible and perilous gift. This is the much knowledge in
which there is much grief.
Peter Champneys saw both sides. He saw and heard and knew things
that would have made his mother turn in her grave had she known. He
knew what depths of savagery and superstition, of brute sloth and
ignorance, lay here to drive back many a would-be white helper in
despair, and to render the labor of many a splendid negro reformer
all but futile. But he knew, too, the terrible patience, the
incredible resignation, with which poverty and neglect and hunger
and oppression and injustice are borne, until at times, child as he
was, his soul sickened with shame and rage. He relished the sweet
earthy humor that brightens humble lives, the gaiety and charity
under conditions which, when white men have to bear them, go to the
making of red terrorists. Some of the things he saw and heard
remained like scars upon Peter's memory. He will remember until he
dies the June night he spent with Daddy Neptune Fennick in his cabin
on the edge of the River Swamp.
That early June day had been cloudy from dawn; Peter was glad of
that, for he meant to pick black-berries, and a sunless day for
berry-picking is an unmixed blessing. The little negroes are such
nimblefingered pickers, such locust-like strippers of all near-by
patches, that Peter had bad luck at first, and was driven farther
afield than he usually went; his search led him even to the edge of
the River Swamp, a dismal place of evil repute, wherein cane as tall
as a man grew thickly, and sluggish streamlets meandered in and out
of gnarled cypress roots, and big water-snakes stretched themselves
on branches overhanging the water. On the edges of the swamp the
unmolested vines were thick with fruit. In the late afternoon Peter
had filled his buckets to overflowing with extra-fine berries.
It had been a sultry day for all its sunlessness, and Peter was
tired, so tired that his head and back ached. He looked at the heavy
buckets doubtfully; it would be a man-size job to trudge the long
sandy road home, so laden. While he sat there, hating to move, Daddy
Neptune Fennick came in sight, hoe and rake and ax on his sturdy
shoulder. The old man cast a shrewd, weather-wise eye at the
darkening sky.
"Gwine to hab one spell o' wedder," he called. "Best come on home
wid me, Peter, en wait w'ile."
Even as he spoke a blaze of lightning split the sky and lighted up
the swamp. A loud clap of thunder followed on the heels of it. Daddy
Neptune seized one bucket, Peter the other, and both ran for the
shelter of the cabin, some eighth of a mile farther on. They reached
it just as the rain came down in swirling, blinding sheets.
The old man built a fire in his mud fireplace, and prepared the
evening meal of broiled bacon, johnny-cake, and coffee. He and his
welcome guest ate from tin plates on their knees, drinking their
coffee from tin cups. Between mouthfuls each gave the other what
county news he possessed. Peter particularly liked that orderly
one-roomed cabin, and the fine old man who was his host.
He was an old-timer, was Daddy Neptune, more than six feet tall, and
massively proportioned. His bald head was fringed with a ring of
curling gray wool, and a white beard covered the lower portion of an
unusually handsome countenance. He had a shrewd and homely wit, an
unbuyable honesty, and such a simple and unaffected dignity of
manner and bearing as had won the respect of the county.
The old man lived by himself in the cabin by the River Swamp. His
wife and son had long been dead, and though he had sheltered, fed,
clothed, and taught to work several negro lads, these had gone their
way. Peter was particularly attached to him, and the old man
returned his affection with interest.
The dark fell rapidly. You could hear the trees in the River Swamp
crying out as the wind tormented them. On a night like this, with
lightning snaking through it and wild wind trying to tear the heart
out of its thin cypresses, and the cane-brake rustling ominously in
its unchancy black stretches, one might believe that the place was
haunted, as the negroes said it was. Daddy Neptune was moved to tell
Peter some of his own experiences with the River Swamp. He spoke,
between puffs of his corn-cob pipe, of the night Something had come
out of it--_pitterpat! pitterpat!_--right at his heels. It had
followed him to the very edge of his home clearing. Daddy Neptune
wasn't exactly _afraid_, but he knew that Something hadn't any
business to be pitterpattering at his heels, so he had turned around
and said:
"Ef you-all come out o' hebben, you 's wastin' good time 'yuh. Ef
Dey-all lef' you come out o' hell, you bes' git right back whah you
b'longs. One ways, _I_ ain't got nothin' I kin tell you; t'other
ways, _you_ ain't got nothin' I 's gwine to let you tell me. I 's
axin' you to _git_. En," finished Neptune, "dat t'ing done went
right _out_--whish!--same lak I 's tellin' you! Yessuh! hit went
spang _out_!" He threw another chunk of fatwood on the fire, and
watched the smoky flame go dancing up the chimney. In the red glow
he had the aspect of a kindly Titan.
"It never bothered you again, Daddy Nep?" Peter was always curious
about these experiences. He had a glimmer that negroes are nearer to
certain Powers than other folks are, and although he wasn't
superstitious, he wasn't skeptical, either.
"Never bothered me a-tall, less'n dat 's whut 's been meddlin' wid
my fowls, whichin ef I catches it, I aims to blow its head plum off,
ghostes or no ghostes," said the old man, stoutly.
"Ghosts don't steal chickens. I reckon it's a wild-cat gets yours. I
heard one scream in the swamp not so long since."
"Well, I aims to git Mistuh Wildcat, den. I done got me a couple o'
guinea-fowls for watch, en dey sho does set up a mighty potrackin'
w'en anything strange comes a-snoopin' roun' de yahd."
After a while Daddy Neptune put away his pipe and took down from a
shelf his big battered Bible, and Peter read the Twenty-first and
Twenty-second chapters of Revelation, to which the old man listened
with clasped hands and an uplifted face, his lips moving soundlessly
as he repeated to himself certain of the words:
And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there
shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither
shall there be any more pain; for the former things are passed
away.... He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will
be his God and he shall be my son ...
"I was born in slaveryment," said the old man, audibly.
Peter lay on his straw bed before the fire, sleepily watching
Neptune finish his prayers. He still had a child's faith, but he was
beginning to wonder how a laboring negro could retain it. One thing
he was sure of; if there was such a thing as a Christian man,
endowed with ideal Christian virtues, that old man kneeling in his
cabin, pouring out his heart to his Maker, was a Christian. And
remembering comfortable, complacent white Christians--well fed, well
housed, well clothed; with education and all that it implies as
their heritage; with all the high things of the world open to them
by reason of their white skin; praying decorously every Sunday to a
white man's God--Peter felt confused. How should the white man and
the white man's God answer and account to the Daddy Neptunes, who
had been "born in slaveryment," had lived and would die in
slaveryment to poverty and prejudice? Where do they come in, these
dispossessed dark sons of the Father? Surely, the Father has a very
great deal to make up to them!--Then the firelighted cabin walls,
the wavering figure of the kneeling old man, the soft sound of light
rain on the roof, faded and went out. Peter fell asleep.
He slept a tired boy's dreamless slumber. The night deepened. The
rain ceased, and a wan and sad moon climbed the sky, wearily, like a
tired old woman. In the River Swamp frogs croaked, a whippoorwill at
intervals gave its lonesome and lovely call, the shivering-owl's cry
making it lovelier by comparison. The cypresses shook blackly in the
blacker swamp water which licked their roots. From the drenched
vegetation arose a fresh and penetrating odor, the smell of the
clean June night. And presently, he didn't know why, Peter awoke
with every sense instantly alert. It was as if his soul had sensed a
sound, knew it for what it was, and was on guard.
A few red embers glowed in the big mud chimney. Save for these, the
one-room cabin was in darkness. Somebody was moving about. Peter
made out the figure of big Neptune standing with his head bent in a
listening attitude at one of the shuttered windows. A bit of fatwood
in the fireplace burst for a moment into an expiring flame, which
flickered dully on the barrel of the gun in the negro's hands. Peter
scrambled up, and stole noiselessly across the floor.
"Dem guineas potracked en waked me up, Son," whispered Neptune. "Now
I aims to git whut 's been sneakin' off wid my fowls."
At that moment a low knock sounded on the door. At such an hour,
and in that lonely place, it gave the old man and the boy a distinct
sensation of fear: who should come knocking so stealthily at the
door of the cabin by the River Swamp at that eerie hour? Neptune,
his gun gripped in his hands, twisted his head sidewise, listening.
The knock came again, this time more insistent. Then a thick voice
spoke, muffled by the intervening door:
"Daddy Nepshun, is you awake? For Gawd A'mighty's sake, Daddy
Nepshun, lemme in!"
The old man stepped to the door and flung it wide. The figure that
had been crouching against it tumbled in and lay panting on the
floor.
"Light me dat lamp, please, Peter," said Neptune, peering down at
his visitor.
Peter, who had recovered from his momentary fear, lighted the
kerosene lamp. By its light they perceived a stained, muddy,
disheveled wretch, in the last state of terror and exhaustion. Two
wild eyes glared at them out of a gray, grimed face.
"Why, Jake! Lawd 'a' mussy, hit 's Jake!" burst from Daddy Neptune.
Peter recognized in the intruder a negro to whom the old man had
been, as was his wont, fatherly kind. On a time he and his wife had
sheltered and fed Jake.
Peter didn't know why, but something in the man's aspect, in his
rolling eyes, his lips drawn back from his teeth, his torn clothes,
his desperate look of a hunted beast, made him recoil. He had never
before seen any one with just that look of brute cunning and
terror. Daddy Neptune's steady eyes took in every detail. He
stiffened in his tracks.
"Whut you been doin'?" he demanded. Jake turned his head from side
to side; he refused to meet the direct old eyes. He mumbled:
"Is you got any w'isky, Da' Nepshun? For Gawd's sake, Da' Nepshun,
gimme a drink en don't ast me no questions twell I 's able to
answer." His voice was hoarse and shaking; his whole body shook.
"I ain't got no w'isky, but I got coffee en bittles. Whichin you is
welcome to," said Neptune. "You ain't say yit whut you been doin'.
Whut you been up to, Jake?"
Jake writhed off the floor. Again Peter recoiled instinctively. As
the negro got upon his feet his coat fell open, and the torn sleeve
and cuff of a gingham shirt showed. On it was a dark stain which was
not swamp water or mud. Peter's eyes fastened upon that dark red
smear.
"Gimme a bite o' bittles so 's I kin git on," implored Jake.
"I axes you once mo', Jake: whut you been doin'?" demanded Neptune.
His voice was stern, and his face began to set.
"En I axes you to lemme git dem bittles fust, en I'll tell you, soon
's I gits back mah wind," returned Jake, sullenly.
Still retaining his gun, Neptune went to the corner cupboard, from
which he took a loaf of bread. Without cutting it he handed it to
Jake, who began to tear it with his teeth. All the while he ate, he
kept turning his head, listening, listening.
"Cain't wait for no coffee. Gimme drink o' water, please, suh." In
silence Neptune handed him a gourd of water. When Jake had gulped
this down, Neptune asked again, inexorably:
"Whut you been doin', Jake?"
Jake shifted from one foot to the other. He thrust his bullet head
forward. His hands, hanging at his sides, opened and closed, the
fingers twitching.
"Dem w'ite mens is atter--somebuddy--en dey say hit 's me," he
muttered hoarsely. His eyes rolled toward the door, which, not
having been barred after his entrance, swung slightly ajar.
"Whut dey atter somebuddy _for_?" Neptune demanded. Outside, in the
wet night, the screech-owl cried. The sweet wind danced on airy feet
in and out of the cypresses and the gums, kissed them, stole their
breath, and tossed it abroad odorously. Stars had come out to keep
the pale moon company, and a faint light glinted on wet grass and
bushes. Crickets and katydids and little green tree-frogs kept up a
harsh concert. And then, above all the minor, murmuring noises of
the night arose another sound, very faint and far off, but
unmistakable and unforgetable--the deep, long, bell note of a hound
upon the trail.
The three in the cabin stood like figures turned to stone in the
attitude of listening. Jake's teeth chattered audibly. He edged
toward the open door, but Neptune stepped in front of him, and
flung up an arresting hand.
"_Whut for_?" His voice was like a whip-lash.
"Somebuddy--done meddled wid a w'ite gal--een de cawn-field. En dey
'low--hit wuz me."
A gasp, as if his heart had been squeezed, came from Neptune. Of a
sudden he seemed to grow in height, to tower unhumanly tall above
the cringing wretch he confronted. His eyes narrowed into red points
that bored into the other's eyes, and plunged like daggers into his
heart and mind. Before that glance, like a vivisectionist's knife,
Jake wilted; he seemed to shrink, dwindle, collapse. And with a
growing, cold, awful horror, a suspicion so hideous that his mind
revolted from it, Peter Champneys stood staring from one black face
to the other.
"You--you--" Neptune gulped, strangling. A long, slow shudder, as of
one confronting unheard-of torture, went over his big frame. The
fringe of hair on his bald head rose, his beard bristled. Sparks
seemed to shoot from his eyes, burning with a terrible flame.
"Da' Nepshun--" Jake put out clawing, twitching hands. "Dey 's--dey
's--gwine to git me." His voice broke into a half-scream.
"Whut you do hit for?" This from Neptune, in a heart-shaken,
anguished, rattling whisper. He asked no further questions. He had
no doubt. Jake's rolling eyes had told him the unspeakable truth.
"I 'clah to Gawd, Da' Nepshun, I wuz n't meanin' no hahm--I never
had no idea--She came down de cawn-field paff--wid de cow followin'
'er--en--en--I don't know _whut_ mek me meddle wid dat gal. Seems
lak hit wuz de debbil, 'stead o' me."
"Is de gal done daid?"
"Yas, suh, she done daid." Jake rocked himself to and fro, muttering
her name.
Peter Champneys looked at the torn shirt-sleeve with the red stain
upon it. The room shook and wavered, wind was in his ears. And the
red of that girl's blood got into his eyes, and he saw things
through a scarlet mist. The most horrible rage he had ever
experienced shook him like a mortal sickness. Oh, God! oh, God! oh,
God! That girl!
In the momentary silence that fell upon that tragic room, a sound
shivered. Long, slow, bell-like. Nearer. It galvanized Jake into
terror-stricken action. He started for the door.
"Dey 'll git me, dey 'll git me!" he croaked.
Peter would have flung himself upon the wretch, to reach for his
throat with bare hands; but something in Neptune's face stopped him.
Neptune's bigness seemed to fill the whole room. He drew a deep
breath, and with one movement jerked the door wide.
"Run down de paff by de fowl-house," he said sharply. "Den--hit 's
de swamp for you."
Peter turned sick. Was Neptune like all other--niggers? Hadn't he
the--proper sense of what this devil had done?
Jake leaped for the door, cleared the steps at a bound, and was
flying down the path. Neptune took one forward step, filling the
doorway. He lifted the shot-gun to his shoulder. Just as the
fugitive neared the fowl-house, the gun spoke. The flying figure
leaped high in the air, and then sprawled out and was suddenly still
and inert. The guinea-hens set up a deafening potracking, and the
cooped fowls squawked and flapped. Above all the noise they made
rose the bloodhound's note.
It was done so quickly, it was so inevitable, that Peter could only
stand and blink. He thought, sickly, that the very earth should
shudder away from the soiling touch of that appalling carrion. But
the earth was the one thing that would receive Jake unprotestingly.
He lay on his face, his arms outflung, and from the gaping hole
between his shoulders a dark stream welled. The indifferent earth,
the uncaring grass, received it. The wind came out of the swamp
on mincing feet and danced over him, and fluttered his torn
shirt-sleeve.
Stonily, voicelessly, Neptune stood in the cabin door, staring at
that which lay in the pathway. Then he lowered the smoking gun, and
leaned on it. His bald head drooped until his gray beard swept his
breast, and his throat rattled like a dying man's. Shudders went
over him. And stonily young Peter Champneys stood beside him, his
boyish eyes hard in a dead-white face, his boyish mouth a grim, pale
line.
"Peter," said the old man presently, in a thin whisper, "I helped
raise dat boy. Wuz n't sich a bad boy, neither. Used to sing en
wissle roun' de house, en fetch water en fiah-wood. Chloe, she loved
'im. Used to say Ouah Fathuh right in dis same room 'fo' he went to
sleep. Ef I 'd 'a' knowed--
"En dat po' lil w'ite chile's daddy en mammy, _dey_ done raise
'er--used to say 'er prayers--en laff en sing--en trus' de Almighty
Gawd--"
He raised his sinewy arms and shook the gun aloft.
"Ah, Gawd Almighty! Gawd Almighty! Whah is You dis night? Whah is
You?" cried the old man. And of a sudden he began to weep
dreadfully; heart-broken cries of pain and of protest, the tortured
cries of one suffering inhumanly.
"And all this while God said not a word."
Shaken to the soul, full of sick horror, and loathing, and rage,
Peter Champneys yet had a swift, intuitive understanding of old
Neptune; and as if through him he had caught a glimpse of the naked
and suffering soul of the black people, the boy began to weep with
him. With understanding merging into pity he crept nearer and put
his slender, boyish arm around the big, shaking, agonized figure,
and the old man turned his head and looked long and sorrowfully into
the white child's face. He put out the big, seamed, work-hardened
hand that had labored since it could hold an implement to labor
with, and laid it on the child's shoulder.
Then, bareheaded and empty-handed, Neptune sat down on his cabin
steps to wait for what should happen, and Peter Champneys sat beside
him, the gun between his knees. Over there by the fowl-house lay
Jake, a horrid blotch in the moonlight.
Presently, echoing through the River Swamp, the hunting hounds set
up their thrilling, deep-mouthed belling. They were closing in on
their quarry and the nearness of it excited them. A few minutes
later, and here they were, a posse of some thirty or forty mounted
men struggling pell-mell after them. One great hound leaped forward,
stood rigid by that which lay in a heap in the cabin clearing,
pointed his nose, and gave tongue. Other dogs bunched around him,
sniffed, and joined in.
The mounted men came to an abrupt standstill, the horses, like the
dogs, bunching together. Neptune had risen and Peter Champneys stood
on the top step, his head about level with the old man's shoulder.
He looked in vain for the sheriff; evidently, this was an
independent posse. One of the men rode up to the door, shouting to
make himself heard above the din of the dogs, and Peter recognized
him, with a sinking of the heart--a tenant farmer named Mosely, of a
violent and quarrelsome disposition.
"Shet up them damn dogs!" he yelled. And to Neptune, savagely: "Now
then, nigger, talk! What's been doin' here?"
It was Peter Champneys who answered.
"Daddy Neptune's been worried by something or somebody stealing his
fowls. He's been on the watch. So when he saw that--that nigger over
there running by the chicken-house, he just blazed away. Got him
between the shoulder-blades."
A yell so ferocious that Peter's marrow froze, burst from the posse,
which had dismounted.
"It's him!" howled a farm-hand, and kicked the corpse in the face.
"What in hell did that big nigger shoot him for, anyhow?" he roared.
"He'd ought to be strung up himself, the old black--" And he cursed
Neptune vilely. He felt swindled. There would be no burning, with
interludes of unspeakable things. Nothing but senseless carrion to
wreak vengeance upon. And all through a damned old meddling nigger's
fault! A nigger taking the law into his own hands!
Somebody, discovering Daddy Neptune's woodpile, had kindled a
fatwood torch. Others followed his example, and the red, smoky light
flared over enraged faces and glaring eyes of maddened men; over the
sweating horses, the baying dogs, and the black corpse with its
bruised face. The guinea-hens, after their insane fashion, kept up a
deafening potracking, flapping from limb to limb of the tree in
which they roosted. The indifferent swamp chorus joined in, katydids
and crickets shrilling all the while. And over it all the moon went
about its business; the awful depths of the sky were silent. The
wind from the swamp, the night, the earth, didn't care.
Somebody whipped out a knife and bent over Jake's body. A yell
greeted this. Dogs and men moved confusedly around the thing on the
ground, in a sort of demoniac circle upon which the hissing, flaring
pitch-pine torches danced with infernal effect. Peter Champneys
watched it, his soul revolting. He had no sympathy for Jake; he felt
for him nothing but hatred. He couldn't think of that gay and
innocent girl coming down the corn-field path, unafraid--to meet
what she had met--without a suffocating sense of rage. She had been,
Peter remembered, a very pretty girl, a girl who, as Neptune had
said, used to sing, and laugh, and say her prayers, and trust
Almighty God.
But Peter was seeing now the other side of that awful cloud which
darkens the horizon of the South--the brute beast mob-vengeance that
follows swiftly upon the heels of the unpardonable sin. There must
be justice. But what was happening now wasn't justice. It was stark
barbarism let loose.
Neptune, who had "helped raise" Jake, had meted out to him justice
full and sure. He had avenged both the wronged white and the wronged
black people. Peter looked at the men in the cabin clearing, and saw
the thing nakedly, and from both angles. For instance, consider
Mosely, who had done things--with a clasp-knife. And that other man,
the farm-hand, shifty-eyed and mean, always half drunk, a bad
citizen: _they_ would be sure to be foremost in affairs like this.
They had precious little respect for the law as law. And here they
were, making the holy night indecent with bestial behavior. Again a
sick qualm shook Peter: Mosely was calmly putting four severed black
fingers into his coat pocket. Oh, where was the sheriff? Why didn't
the sheriff come?
Peter caught a glimpse of a shapeless, battered, gory mass under
trampling feet. Maddened by the little they were able to accomplish,
and with the torture-lust that is as old as humanity itself roused
to fury by frustration, the posse turned from that which had been
Jake, to old Neptune, standing motionless by his doorway. Neptune
had not moved or spoken since Peter had answered the posse's
questions. He had not even appeared to hear the vile abuse heaped
upon him. He was not in the least afraid for his life: He was beyond
that. That which had happened, which was happening, had dealt the
stern, simple-hearted old man so mighty a blow that his faculties
were stunned. He couldn't think. He could only suffer a bewildered,
baffled torment. He stood there, dumb as a sheep before the
slaughterers, and the sight of his black face maddened the men who
were out to avenge a black man's monstrous crime.
"Hang the damn nigger!" screamed Mosely, and the crowd surged
forward ominously. You could see, by the shaking torch-light, faces
in which the eyes glared wolf-like, brandished fists, glints of
guns. Neptune, without a flicker of fear, regarded them with his
sorrowful gaze. But Peter Champneys stepped in front of him, and
thrust the cold muzzle of the shot-gun against Mosely's face. The
man, a coward at heart, leaped back, trampling upon the toes of
those behind him, who cursed him shrilly and vindictively.
Then spoke up small Peter Champneys, standing barefooted and
bareheaded, clothed in a coarse blue blouse and a pair of patched
and faded denim trousers, but for all that heir to a long line of
dead-and-gone Champneyses who had been, whatever their faults,
fearless and gallant gentlemen.
"Get back there, you, Mosely!" Peter Champneys spoke in the voice
his grandfather had on a time used to a recalcitrant field-hand.
"Chuck that little nigger-lover in the swamp!"
"Knock him down an' git the nigger, Mosely!"
"Burn down the house!"
But the shot-gun in that steady young hand held them in check for a
breathing-space. They knew Peter Champneys.
"Mosely!" snapped Peter. "You, too, Nicolson! Stand back, you
white-livered hounds! First one of you lays a hand on me or Daddy
Nep gets his head blown off! Damn you, Mosely! don't make me tell
you again to get back!"
And Mosely saw that in the boy's eyes that drove him back, swearing.
The huge farm-hand, who had shifted and squirmed his way to the back
of the crowd, now lifted his arm. A rope with a noose at the end
snaked over the tossing heads, and all but settled over black
Neptune's. It slipped, writhing from the old man's shoulder and down
his shirt. The mob set up a disappointed and yet hopeful howl.
"Try it again! Try it again!" they shrieked. Then a sort of waiting
hush fell upon them. The farm-hand, to whom the rope had been
tossed, was again making ready for a throw, measuring the distance
with his eyes. Peter, his lips tightening, waited too. The farm-hand
was a tall man, and the posse had shifted to allow him space. His
arm shot up, the noosed rope whizzed forward. But even as it did so
Peter Champneys's trigger-finger moved. The report sounded like a
clap of thunder, and was followed by a roar of rage and pain. The
rope-thrower, with the rope tripping his feet and impeding his
movements, danced about wildly, shaking the hand from which three
fingers had been cleanly clipped. At that instant another posse rode
up, with a baying of hounds to herald it. One saw the sheriff on a
large bay horse, a Winchester in the crook of his arm. With a merest
glance at what had been Jake, he pushed his way through the throng,
and was confronted by Peter Champneys standing in front of old
Neptune Fennick, with a smoking shot-gun in his hands.
"You better do something, quick! If you let anything happen to Daddy
Nep, you've got to kill me first," panted Peter.
"He'd ought to be shot for a nigger-lover, Sheriff!" shouted the
farm-hand.
"All right. Do it. But you'll get your neck stretched for it! My
name's _Champneys_," shouted Peter.
The sheriff moved restlessly on his bay. A Champneys had fed his
parents. Chadwick Champneys had given him his first pair of shoes.
The sheriff was stirred to the depths by the crime that had been
committed, and he had no love for a nigger, but--
He turned to the menacing crowd. "Here, boys, enough o' this! The
right nigger's dead, and that's all there is to it. No, you don't do
no hangin'! I'm sheriff o' this county, an' I aim to keep the law.
Let that old nigger alone, Mosely! If that young hell-cat puts a
bullet in your chitlin's, it'll be your own funeral."
He straightened in the saddle, touched the rein, and in a second the
big bay had been swung around to stand between Neptune and the white
men. The muzzle of Peter's gun touched the sheriff's leg.
"Put that pop-gun up, Son," said he, turning his head to look down
into the boy's face. Their eyes met, in a long look.
"I knew that girl since she was bawn," he said, and his hard face
quivered. "Hell!" swore the sheriff, and the hand on his bridle
shook. He knew old Neptune, too, and in his way liked him. But it
was hard for the sheriff, who had seen the dead little girl, to look
into any black face that night and retain any feeling of humanity.
"Yes, sir. I knew her, too," said Peter Champneys, gulping. "But--I
know Neptune, too. And--what happened--wasn't his fault. It's got
nothing to do with Neptune--and--and things that Mosely--" His voice
broke.
"Hell!" swore the sheriff again. And he whispered, more gently, "All
right, Peter. An' I reckon you better stay by the old nigger for a
day or two until this thing dies down." After all, the sheriff
thought relievedly, Neptune's swift action, actuated by whatsoever
motive, had saved the county and himself from a rather frightful
episode. Turning to the crowd, he yelled:
"Get them dogs started for home! They're goin' plum crazy! Get on
your hawse, Mosely! You, over there, with your fist shot up, ride
next to me. Mount, all o' you! Mount, I say! No, I'll come last.
"What's that you're sayin', Briggs? No, suh, not by a damn-sight you
won't! Not while I'm sheriff o' this county an' upholdin' law an'
order in it, you won't drag no dead nigger behind _my_ hawse--nor
yet in front of him, neither! Let the nigger lay where he is and
rot--what's left of him."
"Do you want us to bury--it?" quavered Peter.
"Bury it or burn it. What the hell do I care what you do with it?"
growled the sheriff. "He's dead, that's all I got to think about."
He ran his shrewd eyes over the posse, saw that not one straggler
remained to do further mischief, and drove them before him,
willy-nilly. In five minutes the trampled yard was clear, and the
sound of the horses' hoofs was already dying in the distance. In the
sky all other stars had paled to make room for the morning star.
Peter and Neptune, left alone, looked at each other dumbly. A thing
remained to be done. The sun mustn't rise upon the horror that lay
in the cabin yard. Neptune went to his small barn and trundled out a
wheelbarrow, in which were several gunny-sacks, a piece of rope, and
a spade.
Peter turned his head away while the old man covered the thing on
the ground with sacking, rolled it over, floppily, and tied it as
best he could. The sweat came out on them both as they saw the
stains that spread on the clean sacking. Neptune heaped the bundle
into his wheelbarrow. At a word from him Peter went into the house
and returned with a lighted lantern, for the River Swamp was still
very dark. The sun wouldn't be up for an hour or two yet. Peter held
the lantern in one hand, and carried spade and shot-gun over the
other shoulder. In the ghostly light they entered the swamp, every
turn and twist of whose wide, watery acreage was known to Neptune,
and was fairly familiar to Peter. They had to proceed warily, for
the ground was treacherous, and at any moment a jutting tree-root
might upset the clumsy barrow. Despite Neptune's utmost care it
bumped and swayed, and the shapeless bundle in it shook hideously,
as if it were trying to escape. And the stains on the coarse shroud
grew, and spread.
In a small and fairly dry space among particularly large cypresses,
Neptune stopped. At one side was a deep pool in whose depths the
lantern was reflected. About it ferns, some of a great height, grew
thickly. Neptune began to dig in the black earth. Sometimes he
struck a cypress root, against which the spade rang with a hollow
sound. It was slow enough work, but the hole in the swamp earth grew
with every spade-thrust, like a blind mouth opening wider and wider.
Peter held the lantern. The trees stood there like witnesses.
Presently Neptune straightened his shoulders, moved back to the
barrow, and edged it to the hole. Swiftly and deftly he tipped it,
and the shapeless bundle slid into the open mouth awaiting it. It
was curiously still just then in the River Swamp.
When they emerged into the open, the sun was rising over a clean,
fresh world. The dark tops of the trees were gilded by the first
rays. Every bush was hung with diamonds, the young grass rippled
like a child's hair, and birds were everywhere, voicing the glory of
the morning.
The old negro dropped his wheelbarrow, and lifted a supplicating
face and a pair of gnarled hands to the morning sky. His lips moved.
One saw that he prayed, trustingly, with a childlike simplicity.
Peter Champneys watched him speculatively. He tried to reason the
thing out, and the heart in his boyish breast ached with a new pain.
Thoughts big, new, insistent, knocked at the door of his intellect
and refused to be denied admittance.
He thought it better to take the sheriff's advice and stay with
Neptune for a few days, but nobody troubled the good old man. The
verdict of the whole county was in his favor. He went his harmless,
fearless, laborious way unmolested. That autumn he died, and the
cabin by the River Swamp was taken over by nature, who gave it to
her winds and rains to play with. Her leaves drifted upon its floor,
her birds built under its shallow eaves.
Nobody would live there any more. The negroes said the place was
haunted: on wild nights one might hear there the sound of a shot,
the baying of a hound; and see Jake running for the swamp.