CHAPTER X—THE MAN OR BRUTE IN EMBRYO

TWO months later General Worth, while busy rebuilding his mills at Independence, had served on him a summons to appear before the Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau at Hambright and answer the charge of using “abusive language” to a freedman.

The particular freedman who desired to have his feelings soothed by law was a lazy young negro about sixteen years old whom the General had ordered whipped and sent from the stables into the fields on one occasion during the war while on a visit to his farm. Evidently the boy had a long memory.

“Now don’t that beat the devil!” exclaimed the General.

“What is it?” asked his foreman.

“I’ve got to leave my work, ride on an old freight train thirty miles, pull through twenty more miles of red mud in a buggy to get to Hambright, and lose four days, to answer such a charge as that before some little wizeneyed skunk of a Bureau Agent. My God, it’s enough to make a union man remember Secession with regrets!”

“My stars, General, we can’t get along without you now when we are getting this machinery in place. Send a lawyer,” growled the foreman.

“Can’t do it, John—I’m charged with a crime.”

“Well, I’ll swear!”

“Do the best you can, I’ll be back in four days, if I don’t kill a nigger!” said the General with a smile. “I’ve got a settlement to make with the farm hands anyhow.”

There was no help for it. When the court convened, and the young negro saw the face of his old master red with wrath, his heart failed him. He fled the town and there was no accusing witness.

The General gazed at the Agent with cold contempt and never opened his mouth in answer to expressions of regret at the fiasco.

A few moments later he rode up to the gate of his farm house on the river hills about a mile out of town. A strapping young fellow of fifteen hastened to open the gate.

“Well, Allan, my boy, how are you?”

“First rate, General. We’re glad to see you! but we didn’t make a half crop, sir, the niggers were always in town loafing around that Freedman’s Bureau, holding meetings all night and going to sleep in the fields.”

“Well, show me the books,” said the General as they entered the house.

The General examined the accounts with care and then looked at young Allan McLeod for a moment as though he had made a discovery.

“Young man, you’ve done this work well.”

“I tried to, sir. If the niggers dispute anything, I fixed that by making the store-keepers charge each item in two books, one on your account, and one on an account kept separate for every nigger.”

“Good enough. They’ll get up early to get ahead of you.”

“I’m afraid they are going to make trouble at the Bureau, sir. That Agent’s been here holding union League meetings two or three nights every week, and he’s got every nigger under his thumb.”

“The dirty whelp!” growled the General.

“If you can see me out of the trouble, General, I’d like to jump on him and beat the life out of him next time he comes out here!”

The General frowned.

“Don’t you touch him,—any more than you would a pole cat. I’ve trouble enough just now.”

“I could knock the mud out of him in two minutes, if you say the word,” said Allan eagerly.

“Yes, I’ve no doubt of it.” The General looked at him thoughtfully.

He was a well knit powerful youth just turned his fifteenth birthday. He had red hair, a freckled face, and florid complexion. His features were regular and pleasing, and his stalwart muscular figure gave him a handsome look that impressed one with indomitable physical energy. His lips were full and sensuous, his eyebrows straight, and his high forehead spoke of brain power as well as horse power.

He had a habit of licking his lips and running his tongue around inside of his cheeks when he saw anything or heard anything that pleased him that was far from intellectual in its suggestiveness. When he did this one could not help feeling that he was looking at a young well fed tiger. There was no doubt about his being alive and that he enjoyed it. His boisterous voice and ready laughter emphasised this impression.

“Allan, my boy,” said the General when he had examined his accounts, “if you do everything in life as well as you did these books, you’ll make a success.”

“I’m going to do my best to succeed, General. I’ll not be a poor white man. I’ll promise you that.”

“Do you go to church anywhere?”

“No sir, Maw’s not a member of any church, and it’s so far to town I don’t go.”

“Well, you must go. You must go to the Sunday School too, and get acquainted with all the young folks. I’ll speak to Mrs. Durham and get her to look after you.”

“All right, sir, I’ll start next Sunday.” Allan was feeling just then in a good humour with himself and all the world. The compliment of his employer had so elated him, he felt fully prepared to enter the ministry if the General had only suggested it.

The following day was appointed for a settlement of the annual contract with the negroes. The Agent of the Freedman’s Bureau was the judge before whom the General, his overseer, and clerk of account, and all the negroes assembled.

If the devil himself had devised an instrument for creating race antagonism and strife he could not have improved on this Bureau in its actual workings. Had clean handed, competent agents been possible it might have accomplished good. These agents were as a rule the riff-raff and trash of the North. It was the supreme opportunity of army cooks, teamsters, fakirs, and broken down preachers who had turned insurance agents. They were lifted from penury to affluence and power. The possibility of corruption and downright theft were practically limitless.

The Agent at Hambright had been a preacher in Michigan who lost his church because of unsavory rumours about his character. He had eked out a living as a book agent, and then insurance agent. He was a man of some education and had a glib tongue which the negroes readily mistook for inspired eloquence. He assumed great dignity and an extraordinary judicial tone of voice when adjusting accounts.

General Worth submitted his accounts and they showed that all but six of the fifty negroes employed had a little overdrawn their wages in provisions and clothing.

“I think there is a mistake, General, in these accounts,” said the Rev. Ezra Perkins the Agent.

“What?” thundered the General.

“A mistake in your view of the contracts,” answered Ezra in his oiliest tone.

The negroes began to grin and nudge one another, amid exclamations of “Dar now!”

“Hear dat!”

“What do you mean? The contracts are plain. There can be but one interpretation. I agreed to furnish the men their supplies in advance and wait until the end of the year for adjustment after the crops were gathered. As it is, I will lose over five hundred dollars on the farm.” The General paused and looked at the Agent with rising wrath.

“It’s useless to talk. I decide that under this contract you are to furnish supplies yourself and pay your people their monthly wages besides. I have figured it out that you owe them a little over fifteen hundred dollars.”

“Fifteen hundred dollars! You thief!”——

“Softly, softly!—I’ll commit you for contempt of court!”

The General turned on his heel without a word, sprang on his horse, and in a few minutes alighted at the hotel. He encountered the assistant agent of the Bureau on the steps.



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“Did you wish to see me, General?” he asked.

“No! I’m looking for a man—a union soldier not a turkey buzzard!” He dashed up to the clerk’s desk.

“Is Major Grant in his room?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell him I want to see him.”

“What can I do for you, General Worth?” asked the Major as he hastened to meet him.

“Major Grant, I understand you are a lawyer. You are a man of principle, or you wouldn’t have fought. When I meet a man that fought us I know I am talking to a man, not a skunk. This greasy sanctified Bureau Agent, has decided that I owe my hands fifteen hundred dollars. He knows it’s a lie. But his power is absolute. I have no appeal to a court. He has all the negroes under his thumb and he is simply arranging to steal this money. I want to pay you a hundred dollars as a retainer and have you settle with the Lord’s anointed, the Rev. Ezra Perkins for me.”

“With pleasure, General. And it shall not cost you a cent.”

“I’ll be glad to pay you, Major. Such a decision enforced against me now would mean absolute ruin. I can’t borrow another cent.”

“Leave Ezra with me.”

“Why couldn’t they put soldiers into this Bureau if they had to have it, instead of these skunks and wolves?” snorted the General.

“Well, some of them are a little off in the odour of their records at home, I’ll admit,” said the Major with a dry smile. “But this is the day of the carrion crow, General. You know they always follow the armies. They attack the wounded as well as the dead. You have my heartfelt sympathy. You have dark days ahead! The death of Mr. Lincoln was the most awful calamity that could possibly have befallen the South. I’m sorry. I’ve learned to like you Southerners, and to love these beautiful skies, and fields of eternal green. It’s my country and yours. I fought you to keep it as the heritage of my children.”

The General’s eyes filled with tears and the two men silently clasped each other’s hands.

“Send in your accounts by your clerk. I’ll look them over to-night and I’ve no doubt the Honourable Reverend Ezra Perkins will see a new light with the rising of tomorrow’s sun.”

And Ezra did see a new light. As the Major cursed him in all the moods and tenses he knew, Ezra thought he smelled brimstone in that light.

“I assure you, Major, I’m sorry the thing happened. My assistant did all the work on these papers. I hadn’t time to give them personal attention,” the Agent apologised in his humblest voice.

“You’re a liar. Don’t waste your breath.”

Ezra bit his lips and pulled his Mormon whiskers.

“Write out your decision now—this minute—confirming these accounts in double quick order, unless you are looking for trouble.”

And Ezra hastened to do as he was bidden.

The next day while the General was seated on the porch of the little hotel discussing his campaigns with Major Grant, Tom Camp sent for him.

Tom took the General round behind his house, with grave ceremony.

“What are you up to, Tom?”

“Show you in a minute! I wish I could make you a handsomer present, General, to show you how much I think of you. But I know yer weakness anyhow. There’s the finest lot er lightwood you ever seed.”

Tom turned back some old bagging and revealed a pile of fat pine chips covered with rosin, evidently chipped carefully out of the boxed place of live pine trees.

The General had two crochets, lightwood and waterpower. When he got hold of a fine lot of lightwood suitable for kindling fires, he would fill his closet with it, conceal it under his bed, and sometimes under his mattress. He would even hide it in his bureau drawers and wardrobe and take it out in little bits like a miser.

“Lord Tom, that beats the world!”

“Ain’t it fine? Just smell?”

“Rosin on every piece! Tom, you cut every tree on your place and every tree in two miles clean to get that. You couldn’t have made me a gift I would appreciate more. Old boy, if there’s ever a time in your life that you need a friend, you know where to find me.”

“I knowed ye’d like it!” said Tom with a smile.

“Tom, you’re a man after my own heart. You’re feeling rich enough to make your General a present when we are all about to starve. You’re a man of faith. So am I. I say keep a stiff upper lip and peg away. The sun still shines, the rains refresh, and water runs down hill yet. That’s one thing Uncle Billy Sherman’s army couldn’t do much with when they put us to the test of fire. He couldn’t burn up our water power. Tom, you may not know it, but I do—we’ve got water power enough to turn every wheel in the world. Wait till we get our harness on it and make it spin and weave our cotton,—we’ll feed and clothe the human race. Faith’s my motto. I can hardly get enough to eat now, but better times are coming. A man’s just as big as his faith. I’ve got faith in the South. I’ve got faith in the good will of the people of the North. Slavery is dead. They can’t feel anything but kindly toward an enemy that fought as bravely and lost all. We’ve got one country now and it’s going to be a great one.”

“You’re right, General, faith’s the word.”

“Tom, you don’t know how this gift from you touches me.”

The General pressed the old soldier’s hand with feeling. He changed his orders from a buggy to a two-horse team that could carry all his precious lightwood.

He filled the vehicle, and what was left he packed carefully in his valise.

He stopped his team in front of the Baptist parsonage to see Mrs. Durham about Allan McLeod.

“Delighted to see you, General Worth. It’s refreshing to look into the faces of our great leaders, if they are still outlawed as rebels by the Washington government.”

“Ah, Madam, I need not say it is refreshing to see you, the rarest and most beautiful flower of the old South in the days of her wealth and pride! And always the same!” The General bowed over her hand.

“Yes, I haven’t surrendered yet.”

“And you never will,” he laughed.

“Why should I? They’ve done their worst. They have robbed me of all. I’ve only rags and ashes left.”

“Things might still be worse, Madam.”

“I can’t see it. There is nothing but suffering and ruin before us. These ignorant negroes are now being taught by people who hate or misunderstand us. They can only be a scourge to society. I am heart-sick when I try to think of the future!”

There was a mist about her eyes that betrayed the deep emotion with which she uttered the last sentence.

She was a queenly woman of the brunette type with full face of striking beauty surmounted by a mass of rich chestnut hair. The loss of her slaves and estate in the war had burned its message of bitterness into her soul. She had the ways of that imperious aristocracy of the South that only slavery could nourish. She was still uncompromising upon every issue that touched the life of the past.

She believed in slavery as the only possible career for a negro in America. The war had left her cynical on the future of the new “Mulatto” nation as she called it, born in its agony. Her only child had died during the war, and this great sorrow had not softened but rather hardened her nature.

Her husband’s career as a preacher was now a double cross to her because it meant the doom of eternal poverty. In spite of her love for her husband and her determination with all her opposite tastes to do her duty as his wife, she could not get used to poverty. She hated it in her soul with quiet intensity.

The General was thinking of all this as he tried to frame a cheerful answer. Somehow he could not think of anything worth while to say to her. So he changed the subject.

“Mrs. Durham, I’ve called to ask your interest in your Sunday School in a boy who is a sort of ward of mine, young Allan McLeod.”

“That handsome red-headed fellow that looks like a tiger, I’ve seen playing in the streets?”

“Yes, I want you to tame him.”

“Well, I will try for your sake, though he’s a little older than any boy in my class. He must be over fifteen.”

“Just fifteen. I’m deeply interested in him. I am going to give him a good education. His father was a drunken Scotchman in my brigade, whose loyalty to me as his chief was so genuine and touching I couldn’t help loving him. He was a man of fine intellect and some culture. His trouble was drink. He never could get up in life on that account. I have an idea that he married his wife while on one of his drunks. She is from down in Robeson county, and he told me she was related to the outlaws who have infested that section for years. This boy looks like his mother, though he gets that red hair and those laughing eyes from his father. I want you to take hold of him and civilise him for me.”

“I’ll try, General. You know, I love boys.”

“You will find him rude and boisterous at first, but I think he’s got something in him.”

“I’ll send for him to come to see me Saturday.”

“Thank you, Madam. I must go. My love to Dr. Durham.”

The next Saturday when Mrs. Durham walked into her little parlour to see Allan, the boy was scared nearly out of his wits. He sprang to his feet, stammered and blushed, and looked as though he were going to jump out of the window.

Mrs. Durham looked at him with a smile that quite disarmed his fears, took his outstretched hand, and held it trembling in hers.

“I know we will be good friends, won’t we?”

“Yessum,” he stammered.

“And you won’t tie any more tin cans to dogs like you did to Charlie Gaston’s little terrier, will you? I like boys full of life and spirit, just so they don’t do mean and cruel things.”

The boy was ready to promise her anything. He was charmed with her beauty and gentle ways. He thought her the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in the world.

As they started toward the door, she gently slipped one arm around him, put her hand under his chin and kissed him.

Then he was ready to die for her. It was the first kiss he had ever received from a woman’s lips. His mother was not a demonstrative woman. He never recalled a kiss she had given him. His blood tingled with the delicious sense of this one’s sweetness. All the afternoon he sat out under a tree and dreamed and watched the house where this wonderful thing had happened to him.