As I drove into the yard, a bare-headed old nigger with a game leg
throwed down an armful of wood he was gathering and went limping up
to the veranda as fast as he could. He opened the door and bawled out,
pointing to us, before he had it fairly open:
"O Marse WILLyum! O Miss LUCY! Dey've brung him home! DAR he!"
A little, bright, black-eyed old lady like a wren comes running out of
the house, and chirps:
"O Bud--O my honey boy! Is he dead?"
"I reckon not, Miss Lucy," says Bud raising himself up on the mattress
as she runs up to the wagon, and trying to act like everything was all
a joke. She was jest high enough to kiss him over the edge of the wagon
box. A worried-looking old gentleman come out the door, seen Bud and his
mother kissing each other, and then says to the old nigger man:
"George, yo' old fool, what do yo' mean by shouting out like that?"
"Marse Willyum--" begins George, explaining.
"Shut up," says the old gentleman, very quiet. "Take the bay mare and go
for Doctor Po'ter." Then he comes to the wagon and says:
"So they got yo', Bud? Yo' WOULD go nightriding like a rowdy and a thug!
Are yo' much hurt?"
He said it easy and gentle, more than mad. But Bud, he flushed up, pale
as he was, and didn't answer his dad direct. He turned to his mother and
said:
"Miss Lucy, dear, it would 'a' done yo' heart good to see the way them
trust warehouses blazed up!"
And the old lady, smiling and crying both to oncet, says, "God bless her
brave boy." But the old gentleman looked mighty serious, and his worry
settled into a frown between his eyes, and he turns to me and says:
"Yo' must pardon us, sir, fo' neglecting to thank yo' sooner." I told
him that would be all right, fur him not to worry none. And him and me
and Mandy, which was the nigger cook, got Bud into the house and into
his bed. And his mother gets that busy ordering Mandy and the old
gentleman around, to get things and fix things, and make Bud as easy
as she could, that you could see she was one of them kind of woman that
gets a lot of satisfaction out of having some one sick to fuss over. And
after quite a while George gets back with Doctor Porter.
He sets Bud's arm, and he locates the bullet in him, and he says he
guesses he'll do in a few weeks if nothing like blood poisoning nor
gangrene nor inflammation sets in.
Only the doctor says he "reckons" instead of he "guesses," which they
all do down there. And they all had them easy-going, wait-a-bit kind
of voices, and didn't see no pertic'ler importance in their "r's." It
wasn't that you could spell it no different when they talked, but it
sounded different.
I eat my breakfast with the old gentleman, and then I took a sleep until
time fur dinner. They wouldn't hear of me leaving that night. I fully
intended to go on the next day, but before I knowed it I been there a
couple of days, and have got very well acquainted with that fambly.
Well, that was a house divided agin itself. Miss Lucy, she is awful
favourable to all this nightrider business. She spunks up and her eyes
sparkles whenever she thinks about that there tobaccer trust.
She would of like to been a night-rider herself. But the old man, he
says law and order is the main pint. What the country needs, he says,
ain't burning down tobaccer warehouses, and shooting your neighbours,
and licking them with switches, fur no wrong done never righted another
wrong.
"But you were in the Ku Klux Klan yo'self," says Miss Lucy.
The old man says the Ku Kluxes was working fur a principle--the
principle of keeping the white supremacy on top of the nigger race. Fur
if you let 'em quit work and go around balloting and voting it won't
do. It makes 'em biggity. And a biggity nigger is laying up trouble fur
himself. Because sooner or later he will get to thinking he is as good
as one of these here Angle-Saxtons you are always hearing so much talk
about down South. And if the Angle-Saxtons was to stand fur that, purty
soon they would be sociable equality. And next the hull dern country
would be niggerized. Them there Angle-Saxtons, that come over from
Ireland and Scotland and France and the Great British Islands and
settled up the South jest simply couldn't afford to let that happen, he
says, and so they Ku Kluxed the niggers to make 'em quit voting. It was
THEIR job to MAKE law and order, he says, which they couldn't be with
niggers getting the idea they had a right to govern. So they Ku Kluxed
'em like gentlemen. But these here night-riders, he says, is AGIN law
and order--they can shoot up more law and order in one night than can be
manufactured agin in ten years. He was a very quiet, peaceable old man,
Mr. Davis was, and Bud says he was so dern foolish about law and order
he had to up and shoot a man, about fifteen years ago, who hearn him
talking that-a-way and said he reminded him of a Boston school teacher.
But Miss Lucy and Bud, they tells me what all them night-ridings is
fur. It seems this here tobaccer trust is jest as mean and low-down and
unprincipled as all the rest of them trusts. The farmers around there
raised considerable tobaccer--more'n they did of anything else. The
trust had shoved the price so low they couldn't hardly make a living.
So they organized and said they would all hold their tobaccer fur a fair
price. But some of the farmers wouldn't organize--said they had a right
to do what they pleased with their own tobaccer. So the night-riders was
formed to burn their barns and ruin their crops and whip 'em and shoot
'em and make 'em jine. And also to burn a few trust warehouses now and
then, and show 'em this free American people, composed mainly out of the
Angle-Saxton races, wasn't going to take no sass from anybody.
An old feller by the name of Rufe Daniels who wouldn't jine the
night-riders had been shot to death on his own door step, jest about a
mile away, only a week or so before. The night-riders mostly used these
here automatic shot-guns, but they didn't bother with birdshot. They
mostly loaded their shells with buckshot. A few bicycle ball bearings
dropped out of old Rufe when they gathered him up and got him into shape
to plant. They is always some low-down cuss in every crowd that carries
things to the point where they get brutal, Bud says; and he feels like
them bicycle bearings was going a little too fur, though he wouldn't let
on to his dad that he felt that-a-way.
So fur as I could see they hadn't hurt the trust none to speak of, them
night-riders. But they had done considerable damage to their own county,
fur folks was moving away, and the price of land had fell. Still, I
guess they must of got considerable satisfaction out of raising the
deuce nights that-away; and sometimes that is worth a hull lot to a
feller. As fur as I could make out both the trust and the night-riders
was in the wrong. But, you take 'em one at a time, personal-like, and
not into a gang, and most of them night-riders is good-dispositioned
folks. I never knowed any trusts personal, but mebby if you could ketch
'em the same way they would be similar.
I asts George one day what he thought about it. George, he got mighty
serious right off, like he felt his answer was going to be used to
decide the hull thing by. He was carrying a lot of scraps on a plate to
a hound dog that had a kennel out near George's cabin, and he walled his
eyes right thoughtful, and scratched his head with the fork he had been
scraping the plate with, but fur a while nothing come of it. Finally
George says:
"I'se 'spec' mah jedgment des about de same as Marse WILLyum's an' Miss
LUCY's. I'se notice hit mos' ingin'lly am de same."
"That can't be, George," says I, "fur they think different ways."
"Den if DAT am de case," says George, "dey ain't NO ONE kin settle hit
twell hit settles hitse'f.
"I'se mos' ingin'lly notice a thing DO settle hitse'f arter a while.
Yass, SAH, I'se notice dat! Long time ago dey was consid'ble gwines-on
in dis hyah county, Marse Daniel. I dunno ef yo' evah heah 'bout dat o'
not, Marse Daniel, but dey was a wah fit right hyah in dis hyah county.
Such gwines-on as nevah was--dem dar Yankees a-ridin' aroun' an' eatin'
up de face o' de yearth, like de plagues o' Pha'aoah, Marse Daniel, and
rippin' and rarin' an' racin' an' stealin' evehything dey could lay
dey han's on, Marse Daniel. An' ouah folks a-ridin' and a racin' and
projickin' aroun' in de same onsettled way.
"Marse Willyum, he 'low HE gwine settle dat dar wah he-se'f--yass, SAH!
An' he got on he hoss, and he ride away an' jine Marse Jeb Stuart. But
dey don' settle hit. Marse Ab'ham Linkum, he 'low HE gwine settle hit,
an' sen' millyums an' millyums mo' o' dem Yankees down hyah, Marse
Daniel. But dey des ONsettle hit wuss'n evah! But arter a while it des
settle HITse'f.
"An' den freedom broke out among de niggers,
and dey was mo' gwines-ON, an' talkin', an' some on 'em 'lowed dey was
gwine ter be no mo' wohk, Marse Daniel. But arter a while dat settle
HITse'f, and dey all went back to wohk agin. Den some on de niggers
gits de notion, Marse Daniel, dey gwine foh to VOTE. An' dey was mo'
gwines-on, an' de Ku Kluxes come a projickin' aroun' nights, like de
grave-yahds done been resu'rected, Marse Daniel, an' den arter a while
dat trouble settle HITse'f.
"Den arter de Ku Kluxes dey was de time Miss Lucy Buckner gwine ter mahy
Marse Prent McMakin. An' she don' want to ma'hy him, if dey give her her
druthers about hit. But Ol' Marse Kunnel Hampton, her gram-pa, and her
aunt, MY Miss Lucy hyah, dey ain't gwine give her no druthers. And dey
was mo' gwines-ON. But dat settle HITse'f, too."
George, he begins to chuckle, and I ast him how.
"Yass, SAH, dat settle HITse'f. But I 'spec' Miss Lucy Buckner done he'p
some in de settleMENT. Foh de day befoh de weddin' was gwine ter be,
she ups an' she runs off wid a Yankee frien' of her brother, Kunnel Tom
Buckner. An' I'se 'spec' Kunnel Tom an' Marse Prent McMakin would o'
settle' HIM ef dey evah had o' cotched him--dat dar David Ahmstrong!"
"Who?" says I.
"David Ahmstrong was his entitlement," says George, "an' he been gwine
to de same college as Marse Tom Buckner, up no'th somewhah. Dat's
how-come he been visitin' Marse Tom des befoh de weddin' trouble done
settle HIT se'f dat-away."
Well, it give me quite a turn to run onto the mention of that there
David Armstrong agin in this part of the country. Here he had been
jilting Miss Hampton way up in Indiany, and running away with another
girl down here in Tennessee. Then it struck me mebby it is jest
different parts of the same story I been hearing of, and Martha had got
her part a little wrong.
"George," I says, "what did you say Miss Lucy Buckner's gran-dad's name
was?"
"Kunnel Hampton--des de same as MY Miss Lucy befo' SHE done ma'hied
Marse Willyum."
That made me sure of it. It was the same woman. She had run away with
David Armstrong from this here same neighbourhood. Then after he got
her up North he had left her--or her left him. And then she wasn't
Miss Buckner no longer. And she was mad and wouldn't call herself Mrs.
Armstrong. So she moved away from where any one was lible to trace her
to, and took her mother's maiden name, which was Hampton.
"Well," I says, "what ever become of 'em after they run off, George?"
But George has told about all he knows. They went North, according to
what everybody thinks, he says. Prent McMakin, he follered and hunted.
And Col. Tom Buckner, he done the same. Fur about a year Colonel Tom,
he was always making trips away from there to the North. But whether he
ever got any track of his sister and that David Armstrong nobody knowed.
Nobody never asked him. Old Colonel Hampton, he grieved and he grieved,
and not long after the runaway he up and died. And Tom Buckner, he
finally sold all he owned in that part of the country and moved further
south. George said he didn't rightly know whether it was Alabama or
Florida. Or it might of been Georgia.
I thinks to myself that mebby Mrs. Davis would like to know where her
niece is, and that I better tell her about Miss Hampton being in that
there little Indiany town, and where it is. And then I thinks to myself
I better not butt in. Fur Miss Hampton has likely got her own reasons
fur keeping away from her folks, or else she wouldn't do it. Anyhow,
it's none of MY affair to bring the subject up to 'em. It looks to
me like one of them things George has been gassing about--one of them
things that has settled itself, and it ain't fur me to meddle and
unsettle it.
It set me to thinking about Martha, too. Not that I hadn't thought of
her lots of times. I had often thought I would write her. But I kept
putting it off, and purty soon I kind of forgot Martha. I had seen a lot
of different girls of all kinds since I had seen Martha. Yet, whenever
I happened to think of Martha, I had always liked her best. Only moving
around the country so much makes it kind of hard to keep thinking steady
of the same girl. Besides, I had lost that there half of a ring, too.
But knowing what I did now about Miss Hampton being Miss Buckner--or
Mrs. Armstrong--and related to these Davises made me want to get away
from there. Fur that secret made me feel kind of sneaking, like I wasn't
being frank and open with them. Yet if I had of told 'em I would of felt
sneakinger yet fur giving Miss Hampton away. I never got into a mix up
that-a-way betwixt my conscience and my duty but what it made me feel
awful uncomfortable. So I guessed I would light out from there. They
wasn't never no kinder, better people than them Davises, either. They
was so pleased with my bringing Bud home the night he was shot they
would of jest natcherally give me half their farm if I had of ast them
fur it. They wanted me to stay there--they didn't say fur how long, and
I guess they didn't give a dern. But I was in a sweat to ketch up with
Doctor Kirby agin.