[Illustration: 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? _I_ know who did it. _You_ know
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 a _gal_ baby at that.”
With a laugh, Pole went back to his seat on the grass for Wiggin was
thundering again.
“What happened _next!_” 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'll_ vote 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.