The Prodigal Judge Part 29

"So your sister doesn't like me?"

"No, she doesn't," said Ware, with simple candor.

"Told you to put a stop to my coming here?"

"Not here--to the house, yes. She doesn't give a d.a.m.n, so long as she doesn't have to see you."

Murrell, somber-faced and thoughtful, examined a crack in the flooring.

"I'd like to know what happened back yonder in North Carolina to make her so blazing mad?" continued Ware.

"Well, if you want to know, I told her I loved her."

"That's all right, that's the fool talk girls like to hear," said Ware.

He lighted a cigar with an air of wearied patience.

"Open the door, Tom," commanded Murrell.

"It is close in here," agreed the planter.

"It isn't that, but you smoke the meanest cigars I ever smelt, I always think your shoes are on fire. Tom, do you want to get rid of her? Did you mean that?"

"Oh, shut up," said Tom, dropping his voice to a surly whisper.

There was a brief silence, during which Murrell studied his friend's face. When he spoke, it was to give the conversation a new direction.

"Did she bring the boy here last night? I saw you drive off with him in the carriage."

"Yes, she makes a regular pet of the little ragam.u.f.fin--it's perfectly sickening!"

"Who were the two men with him?"

"One of 'em calls himself judge Price; the other kept out of the way, I didn't hear his name."

"Is the boy going to stay at Belle Plain?" inquired Murrell.

"That notion hasn't struck her yet, for I heard her say at breakfast that she'd take him to Raleigh this afternoon."

"That's the boy I traveled all the way to North Carolina to get for Fentress. I thought I had him once, but the little cuss gave me the slip."

"Eh--you don't say?" cried Ware.

"Tom, what do you know about the Quintard lands; what do you know about Quintard himself?" continued Murrell.

"He was a rich planter, lived in North Carolina. My father met him when he was in congress and got him to invest in land here. They had some colonization scheme on foot this was upward of twenty years ago--but nothing came of it. Quintard lost interest."

"And the land?"

"Oh, he held on to that."

"Is there much of it?"

"A hundred thousand acres," said Ware.

Murrell whistled softly under his breath.

"What's it worth?"

"A pot of money, two or three dollars an acre anyhow," answered Ware.

"Quintard has been dead two years, Tom, and back yonder in North Carolina they told me he left nothing but the home plantation. The boy lived there up to the time of Quintard's death, but what relation he was to the old man no one knew. What do you suppose Fentress wants with him?

He offered me five thousand dollars if I'd bring him West; and he still wants him, only he's lying low now to see what comes of the two old sots--he don't want to move in the dark. Offhand, Tom, I'd say that by getting hold of the boy Fentress expects to get hold of the Quintard land."

"That's likely," said Ware, then struck by a sudden idea, he added, "Are you going to take all the risks and let him pocket the cash? If it's the land he's after, the stake's big enough to divide."

"He can have the whole thing and welcome, I'm playing for a bigger stake." His friend stared at him in astonishment. "I tell you, Tom, I'm bent on getting even with the world! No silver spoon came in the way of my mouth when I was a youngster; my father was too honest--and I think the less of him for it!"

Mr. Ware seemed on the whole edified by the captain's unorthodox point of view.

"My mother was the true grit though; she came of mountain stock, and taught us children to steal by the time we could think! Whatever we stole, she hid, and dared my father to touch us. I remember the first thing of account was when I was ten years old. A Dutch peddler came to our cabin one winter night and begged us to take him in. Of course, he opened his pack before he left, and almost under his nose I got away with a bolt of linen. The old man and woman fought about it, but if the peddler discovered his loss he had the sense not to come back and tell of it! When I was seventeen I left home with three good horses I'd picked up; they brought me more money than I'd ever seen before and I got my first taste of life--that was in Nashville where I made some good friends with whose help I soon had as pretty a trade organized in horseflesh as any one could wish." A somber tone had crept into Murrell's voice, while his glance had become restless and uneasy. He went on: "I'm licking a speculation into shape that will cause me to be remembered while there's a white man alive in the Mississippi Valley!"

His wicked black eyes were blazing coals of fire in their deep sockets.

"Have you heard what the n.i.g.g.e.rs did at Hayti?"

"My G.o.d, John--no, I won't talk to you--and don't you think about it!

That's wrong--wrong as h.e.l.l itself!" cried Ware.

"There's no such thing as right and wrong for me. That'll do for those who have something to lose. I was born with empty hands and I am going to fill them where and how I can. I believe the time has come when the n.i.g.g.e.rs can be of use to me--look what Turner did back in Virginia three years ago! If he'd had any real purpose he could have laid the country waste, but he hadn't brains enough to engineer a general uprising."

Ware was probably as remote from any emotion that even vaguely approximated right feeling as any man could well be, but Murrell's words jarred his dull conscience, or his fear, into giving signs of life.

"Don't you talk of that business, we want nothing of that sort out here.

You let the n.i.g.g.e.rs alone!" he said, but he could scarcely bring himself to believe that Murrell had spoken in earnest. Yet even if he jested, this was a forbidden subject.

"White brains will have to think for them, if it's to be more than a flash in the pan," said Murrell unheeding him.

"You let the n.i.g.g.e.rs alone, don't you tamper with them," said Ware.

He possessed a profound belief in Murrell's capacity. He knew how the latter had shaped the uneasy population that foregathered on the edge of civilization to his own ends, and that what he had christened the Clan had become an elaborate organization, disciplined and flexible to his ruthless will.

"Look here, what do you think I have been working for--to steal a few n.i.g.g.e.rs?"

"A few--you've been sending 'em south by the boatload! You ought to be a rich man, Murrell. If you're not it's your own fault."

"That furnishes us with money, but you can push the trade too hard and too far, and we've about done that. The planters are uneasy in the sections we've worked over, there's talk of getting together to clean out everybody who can't give a good account of himself. The Clan's got to deal a counter blow or go out of business. It was so with the horse trade; in the end it became mighty unhandy to move the stock we'd collected. We've reached the same point now with the trade in n.i.g.g.e.rs.

Between here and the gulf--" he made a wide sweeping gesture with his arm. "I am spotting the country with my men; there are two thousand active workers on the rolls of the Clan, and as many more like you, Tom--and Fentress--on whose friends.h.i.+p I can rely." He leaned toward Ware. "You'd be slow to tell me I couldn't count on you, Tom, and you'd be slow to think I couldn't manage this thing when the time's ripe for it!"

But no trace of this all-sufficient sense of confidence, of which he seemed so certain, showed on Ware's hardened visage. He spat away the stump of his cigar.

"Sure as G.o.d, John Murrell, you are overreaching yourself! Your white men are all right, they've got to stick by you; if they don't they know it's only a question of time until they get a knife driven into their ribs--but n.i.g.g.e.rs--there isn't any real fight in a n.i.g.g.e.r, if there was they wouldn't be here."