[Illustration: 9089]
EAVING Carson Dwight, Wade Tingle, and Bob Smith chatting about the ball
in the den the next morning, Garner went to the office, bit off a chew
of tobacco, and plunged into work with a vigor which indicated that
he was almost ashamed of his departure from his beaten track into the
unusual fields of social gayety. He still wore the upright collar and
white necktie of the night before, but the hitherto carefully guarded
expanse of shirt-front was already in imminent danger of losing all that
had once recommended it as a presentable garment.
With his small hand well spread over the page of the book he was
consulting, he had become oblivious to his surroundings when suddenly a
man stood in the doorway. He was tall and gaunt and wore a broad-brimmed
hat, a cotton checked shirt, jean trousers supported by a raw-hide belt,
and a pair of tall boots which, as he stood fiercely eying Garner, he
angrily lashed with his riding-whip. It was Dan Willis. His face was
slightly flushed from drink, and his eyes had the glare even his best
friends had learned to tear and tried to avoid.
“Whar's that that dude pardner o' yourn?” he asked.
“Oh, you mean Dwight!” Garner had had too much experience in the
handling of men to change countenance over any sudden turn of affairs,
either for or against his interests, and he had, also, acquired
admirable skill in most effective temporizing. “Why, let me see, Dan,”
he went on, after he had paused for fully a moment, carefully inspected
the lines he was reading, frowned as if not quite satisfied therewith,
and then slowly turned down a leaf. “Let me think. Oh, you want to see
Carson! Sit down; take a chair.”
“I don't want to set down!” Willis thundered. “I want to see that damned
dude, and I want to see him right off.”
“Oh, that's it!” said Garner. “You are in a _hurry!_” And then, from the
rigid setting of his jaw, it was plain that the lawyer had decided on
the best mode of handling the specimen glowering down upon him. “Oh yes,
I remember now, Willis, that you were loaded up a few nights ago looking
for that chap. Now, advice is cheap--that is, the sort I'm going to give
you. Under ordinary circumstances I'd charge a fee for it. My advice to
you is to straddle that horse of yours and get out of this town. You are
looking for trouble--great, big, far-reaching trouble.”
“You hit the nail that pop, Bill Garner,” the mountaineer snorted. “I'm
expectin' to git trouble, or _give_ trouble, an' I hain't goin' to lose
time nuther. This settlement was due several days ago, but got put off.”
“Look here, Willis”--Garner stood up facing him--“you may not be a fool,
but you are acting powerfully like one. You are letting that measly
little candidate for the legislature make a cat's-paw of you. That's
what you're doing. He knows, if he can get up a shooting-scrap between
you and my pardner over that negro-whipping business, it will turn a few
mountain votes his way. If you get shot, Wiggin will have more charges
to make; and if Carson was to get the worst of it, the boy would be
clean out of the skunk's way. You and Wiggin are both in bad business.”
“Well, that's _my_ lookout!” the mountaineer growled, beside himself in
rage. “Carson Dwight said I was with Johnson the night the gang came in
and whipped them coons, and--”
“Well, you _were_,” said Garner, as suddenly as if he were browbeating a
witness. “What's the use to lie about it?”
“Lie--you say I--?”
“I said I didn't _want_ you to lie about it,” said Garner, calmly. “I
know half the mob, and respect most of them. I have an idea that some of
my own kinsfolk was along that night. They thought they were doing right
and acting in the best interests of the community. That's neither here
nor there. The men that were licked were negroes, and most of them bad
ones at that, but when a big, strapping man of your stamp comes with
blood in his eye and a hunk of metal on his hip, looking for the son
of an old Confederate soldier, who is a Democratic candidate for the
legislature, and a good all-round white citizen, why, I say that is the
time to call a halt, and to call it out loud! I happen to know a few of
the grand jury, and if there is trouble of a serious nature in this town
to-day, I can personally testify to enough deliberation in your voice
and eye this morning to jerk your neck out of joint.”
“What the hell do I care for you or your law?” Dan Willis snorted. “It's
what that damned dude said about _me_ that he's got to swallow, and if
he's in this town I'll find him. A fellow told me if he wasn't here he'd
be in Keith Gordon's room. I don't know whar that is, but I kin find
out.” Turning abruptly, Willis strode out into the street again.
“The devil certainly is to pay now,” Garner said, with his deepest frown
as he closed the law-book, thrust it back into its dusty niche in his
bookcase, and put on his hat. “Carson is still up there with those boys,
and that fellow may find him any minute. Carson won't take back a thing.
He's as mad about the business as Willis is. I wonder if I can possibly
manage to keep them apart.”
On his way to the den he met Pole Baker standing on the corner of the
street by a load of wood, which Pole had brought in to sell. Hurriedly,
Garner explained the situation, ending by asking the farmer if he could
see any way of getting Willis out of town.
“I couldn't work him myself,” Baker said, “fer the dern skunk hain't any
more use fer me than I have fer him, but I reckon I kin put some of his
pals onto the job.”
“Well, go ahead, Pole,” Garner urged. “I'll run up to the room and try
to detain Carson. For all you do, don't let Willis come up there.”
Garner found the young men still in the den chatting about the ball and
Carson's campaign.
Wade Tingle sat at the table with several sheets of paper before him,
upon which, in a big, reporter's hand, he had been writing a glowing
account of “the greatest social event” in the history of the town.
“I've got a corking write-up, Bill,” he said, enthusiastically. “I've
just been reading it to the gang. It is immense. Miss Helen sent me a
full memorandum of what the girls wore, and, for a green hand, I think I
have dressed 'em up all right.”
“The only criticism I made on it, Garner,” spoke up Keith from his bed
in the corner, where he lay fully dressed, “is that Wade has ended all
of Helen's descriptions by adding, 'and diamonds.' I'll swear I'm
no critic of style in writing, but that eternal 'and diamonds, and
diamonds, and diamonds,' at the end of every paragraph, sounds so
monotonous that it gets funny. He even had Miss Sally Ware's plain black
outfit tipped off with 'and diamonds.'”
“Well, I look at it this way, Bill,” Wade said, earnestly, as Garner sat
down, “Of course, the girls who had them on would not like to see them
left out, for they are nice things to have, and, on the other hand,
those who were short in that direction would feel sorter out of it.”
“I think if he had just written 'jewels' once in awhile,” Keith said,
“it would sound all right, and leave something to the imagination.”
“That might help,” Garner said, his troubled glance on Carson's rather
grave face; “but see that you don't write it 'jewelry.'”
“Well, I'll accept the amendment,” Wade said, as he began to scratch
his manuscript and rewrite.
Carson Dwight stood up. “Did you leave the office open?” he asked
Garner. “I've got to shape up that Holcolm deed and consult the
records.”
“Let it go for a while. I want to look it over first,” Garner said,
rather suddenly. “Sit down. I want to talk to you about the--the race.
You've got a ticklish proposition before you, old boy, and I'd like to
see you put it through.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Keith, sitting up on the edge of his bed. “Balls and
what girls wear belong to the regular run of life, but when the chief
of the gang is about to be beaten by a scoundrel who will hesitate at
nothing, it's time to be wide awake.”
“That's it,” said Garner, his brow ruffled, his ear open to sounds
without, his uneasy eyes on the group around him. And for several
minutes he held them where they sat, listening to his wise and observant
views of the matter in hand. Suddenly, while he was in the midst of a
remark, a foot-fall sounded on the long passage without. It was heavy,
loud, and striding. Garner paused, rose, went to the bureau, and from
the top drawer took out a revolver he always kept either there or in his
desk at the office. There was a firm whiteness about his lips which was
new to his friends.
“Carson,” he said, “have you got your gun?” and he stood staring at the
doorway.
A shadow fell on the floor; a man entered. It was Pole Baker, and he
looked around him in surprise, his inquiring stare on Garner's unwonted
mien and revolver.
“Oh, it's you!” Garner exclaimed. “Ah, I thought--”
“Yes, I come to tell you that--” Baker hesitated, as if uncertain
whether he was betraying confidence, and then catching Garner's warning
glance, he said, non-committally: “Say, Bill, that feller you and me was
talkin' about has jest gone home. I reckon you won't get yore money out
of him to-day.”
“Oh, well, it was a small matter, anyway, Pole,” Garner said, in a tone
of appreciative relief, as he put the revolver back in the drawer and
closed it. “I'll mention it to him the next time he's in town.”
“Say, what was the matter with you just now, Garner?” Wade Tingle asked
over the top of his manuscript. “I thought you were going to ask Carson
to fight a duel.”
But with his hand on Dwight's arm Garner was moving to the door. “Come
on, lot's get to work,” he said, with a deep breath and a grateful side
glance at Baker.
In front of the office one of Carson's farm wagons drawn by a pair of
mules was standing. Tom Hill-yer, Carson's overseer and general manager,
sat on the seat, and behind him stood Pete Warren, ready for his stay in
the country.
“Miss Helen's made quick work of it, I see,” Carson remarked. “She's
determined to get that rascal out of temptation.”
“You ought to give him a sharp talking to,” said Garner. “He's got
entirely too much lip for his own good. Skelt told me this morning that
if Pete doesn't dry up some of that gang will hang him before he is a
month older. He doesn't know any better, and means nothing by it, but he
has already made open threats against Johnson and Willis. You understand
those men well enough to know that in such times as these a negro can't
do that with impunity.”
“I agree with you, and I'll stop and speak to him now.”
When Carson came in and sat down at his desk, a few moments later,
Garner looked across at him and smiled.
“You certainly let him off easy,” he said. “I could have thrown a
Christmas turkey down the scamp's throat through that grin of his. I saw
you run your hand in your pocket and knew he was bleeding you.”
“Oh, well, I reckon I'm a failure at that sort of thing,” Dwight
admitted, with a sheepish smile. “I started in by saying that he must
not be so foolhardy as to make open threats against any of those men,
and he said: 'Looky here, Marse Carson, dem white rapscallions cut
gashes in my body deep enough ter plant corn in, an' I ain't gwine ter
love 'em fer it. _You_ wouldn't, you know you wouldn't.'”
“And he had you there,” Garner said, grimly. “Well, they may say what
they please up North about our great problem, but nothing but time and
the good Lord can solve it. You and I can tell that negro to keep his
mouth shut from sunup till sun-down, but I happen to know that he had a
remote white ancestor that was the proudest, hardest fighter that ever
swung a sword. Some of the rampant agitators say that deportation is
the only solution. Huh! if you deported a lot of full-blood blacks along
with such chaps as this one, it would be only a short time before the
yellow ones would have the rest in bondage, and so history would be
going backward instead of forward. I guess it's going forward right now
if we only had the patience to see it that way.”