_The Fugitives Flee Again._
When Bud Harper and Foresta, on the night following their elopement,
returned to Almaville, Bud took Foresta by her home to break the news to
her mother, leaving her at the gate, while he went to his home to tell
his mother. Finding a corpse in his house and noting the terror that his
appearance seemed to inspire, Bud left and ran back to Foresta's home.
In the meantime Mrs. Crump had explained the situation to Foresta, who
now told Bud. With bowed heads and troubled hearts the three sat in deep
study as to what to do.
The white people were under the impression that Bud had committed the
murder. They had killed another man thinking that it was he. In case
they now apprehended him, would the popular feeling be that there was a
mistake in the lynching or a mistake as to Bud's having committed the
murder?
Bud felt fully able to demonstrate his innocence, but the ruthless mob
would hardly give him time to collect his evidence, he feared. Thus,
though innocent, he decided that it was best for him to leave Almaville
and remain in hiding for a time at least. Foresta asserted her
determination to go with him it mattered not where he went.
Bud gave to Foresta the privilege of choosing their exile. For a number
of years the condition of the Negroes in the cotton states farther South
had been weighing heavily on her mind. She had read how that under the
credit system, the country merchant, charging exorbitant prices for
merchandise for which the crops stood as security, was causing the Negro
farmer to work from year to year only to sink deeper and deeper into
debt. She had read of the contract system under which ignorant Negroes,
not knowing the contents of the papers signed, practically sold
themselves into slavery, agreeing to work for a number of years for a
mere pittance and further agreeing to be locked up in a stockade at
night and to pay for the expense of a recapture in case they attempted
to escape. She had heard much of the practice of peonage, how that
planters and contractors would enter into collusion with magistrates and
convict innocent Negroes of crimes in order that they might get Negro
laborers by the paying of fines assessed on these trumped up charges.
She had read accounts of investigations of the prison system of the
South, showing that the various states made the earning of money by the
prisoners a prime consideration, and detailing how brutal overseers were
wont to maltreat convicts leased to them by the state. These things
coupled with the absence of reformatories for youths were destined,
Foresta felt assured, to produce a harvest of criminals. What to her
mind added to the hopelessness of the plight of the Negroes was the fact
that an emigration agent was required to pay such a heavy tax and stood
in such a danger of bodily harm from the planters that nothing was being
done toward pointing the inhabitants of the blighted regions to better
lands.
Foresta concluded to choose Mississippi, a state in which conditions
were in some respects so thoroughly forbidding, as their future home.
Two things influenced her in making a choice, a desire to use her
education for the amelioration of the ills of which she had heard so
much and the thought that a land reputed to be so destitute of hope for
the Negro would be searched last of all for Negro refugees. So the two
had gone forth in the darkness and journeyed southward.
With money that Bud had saved they bought a small farm near Maulville,
Mississippi. It was not long before Foresta's quiet influence was felt
throughout that region. The whites who had been preying upon the more
ignorant of the Negroes were not long in tracing this new influence to
its source. It was agreed among them that the Fultons (for such was the
name assumed by Bud and Foresta) were rather undesirable neighbors and a
decision was reached to put them out of the way. The thousands of
individual murders, and lynching by mobs, had so blunted the sensibility
of these whites that they reached this decision without any qualms of
conscience. Sidney Fletcher was agreed upon as the man to rid the
settlement of Bud and Foresta.
On this particular afternoon, Foresta's hair was hanging down her back
in girlish fashion. A small cap sat upon the top of her head, while a
blue gingham apron protected her dress. She had finished the milking and
was walking toward the house when Sidney Fletcher, the owner of a
neighboring farm, approached her.
"Where has Tobe Stewart gone?" asked Fletcher, in a very gruff manner,
inquiring about a Negro lad who had run away from him.
Foresta looked at him steadily without replying.
"You ---- wench, you, you can't speak can you? You and that dad blasted
man of yours have got the big head, anyway," said Fletcher, drawing his
pistol and starting toward Foresta.
Foresta dropped her milk pail and ran into the house.
Fletcher took a seat on a bench in the yard and awaited the coming of
Bud Harper, Foresta's husband, who was out hunting and was not due for
some time yet.
Foresta stole out of the door on the other side of the house and reached
a patch of woods without being observed by Sidney Fletcher. By a
circuitous route she was able to place herself in Bud's pathway so as
to intercept him before he reached home.
"Oh, Bud," said Foresta, greeting her husband, "Old Sid Fletcher is at
our house waiting for you with a drawn revolver."
A frown came over Bud's face. "The jealous knave," said he. "Ever since
we bought this farm he has had a dislike for me and I have been
expecting trouble from him."
"Yes, Bud; but we must stay out of trouble. A colored man hasn't a dog's
show in this part of the world."
Bud sat down on a stump and Foresta dropped at his feet.
"Let's stay away from home to-night. We have had trouble enough, Bud,"
said Foresta pleadingly.
Bud looked down on her tenderly, and said, "It is a shame for a
peaceful, industrious man to have a home and not be able to go to it."
Just then Sidney Fletcher was seen coming in their direction.
"Get behind a tree; nobody knows what will take place," said Bud to
Foresta. She obeyed and Bud now calmly awaited the approach of Sidney
Fletcher.
When Fletcher got in shooting distance he deliberately opened fire on
Bud. After the third shot Bud raised his gun to his shoulder and fired
and Fletcher fell backward a corpse. Bud and Foresta now looked at each
other aghast. They knew the penalty attached to the raising of a black
hand against a white man, even when that man unjustly sought the life of
the black.
Rushing to their humble little home, Bud and Foresta hastily gathered a
few things into a bundle, seized whatever food there was in the house,
armed themselves and went forth as fugitives, Foresta attiring herself
in man's clothing. By day and by night, through fields and forest, swamp
and morass, avoiding the sight of man the unhappy couple fled.
The news of the killing of Fletcher was not long in getting abroad and a
mob of several hundred whites was soon organized to give chase. The news
agencies acquainted the whole nation with the situation and day by day
the millions of America scanned with eagerness and with sad forebodings
the progress of the chase. Several Negroes who happened to be found in
the pathway of the mob that was sweeping the country were shot down or
hung according to the whim of the pursuers.
The two in turn relieved each other at watching, whenever the exhausted
condition of one or the other imperatively demanded sleep. It became
Foresta's time to sleep and the two took a position behind a huge fallen
tree, Foresta reclining her head upon Bud's lap. Soon she was asleep,
with Bud looking down in tenderness on her pretty face, now showing
signs of the terrible strain that they were undergoing. Bud thought of
his position as her protector and gnashed his teeth in the bitterness of
his soul as he contemplated his utter helplessness. Hot tears coursed
down his cheeks and, dropping on Foresta's face, awakened her.
Foresta, who had been having troubled dreams, quickly lifted her head
from Bud's lap and looked about in terror. Turning toward him she saw
his eyes reddened from weeping. She threw herself on his shoulder and
the two now gave way to their feelings for the first time.
"We have one consolation, Bud. They can't destroy our love for one
another, can they?" said Foresta.
Bud was too full of sorrow at the plight of the wife of his bosom to
reply. A deep groan of anguish escaped his lips. He leaned back against
the log, Foresta still clinging to his neck. After a while both of them
from sheer exhaustion fell asleep.