The Sins of the Father Part 17

On the day of this fated election the little Scalawag Governor sat in the Capitol, the picture of nervous despair. Since sunrise his office had been flooded with messages from every quarter of the state begging too late for troops. Everywhere his henchmen were in a panic. From every quarter the stories were the same.

Hundreds of determined, silent white men had crowded the polls, taken their own time to vote and refused to give an inch of room to the long line of panic-stricken negroes who looked on helplessly. At five o'clock in the afternoon less than a hundred blacks had voted in the entire towns.h.i.+p in which the Capital was located.

Norton was a candidate for the Legislature on the white ticket, and the Governor had bent every effort to bring about his defeat. The candidate against him was a young negro who had been a slave of his father, and now called himself Andy Norton. Andy had been a house-servant, was exactly the major's age and they had been playmates before the war. He was endowed with a stentorian voice and a pa.s.sion for oratory. He had acquired a reputation for smartness, was good-natured, loud-mouthed, could tell a story, play the banjo and amuse a crowd. He had been Norton's body-servant the first year of the war.

The Governor relied on Andy to swing a resistless tide of negro votes for the ticket and sweep the county. Under ordinary conditions, he would have done it. But before the hurricane of fury that swept the white race on the day of the election, the voice of Andy was as one crying in the wilderness.

He had made three speeches to his crowd of helpless black voters who hadn't been able to vote. The Governor sent him an urgent message to ma.s.s his men and force their way to the ballot box.

The polling place was under a great oak that grew in the Square beside the Court House. A s.p.a.ce had been roped off to guard the approach to the boxes.

Since sunrise this s.p.a.ce had been packed solid with a living wall of white men. Occasionally a well-known old negro of good character was allowed to pa.s.s through and vote and then the lines closed up in solid ranks.

One by one a new white man was allowed to take his place in this wall and gradually he was moved up to the tables on which the boxes rested, voted, and slowly, like the movement of a glacier, the line crowded on in its endless circle.

The outer part of this wall of defense which the white race had erected around the polling place was held throughout the day by the same men--twenty or thirty big, stolid, dogged countrymen, who said nothing, but every now and then winked at each other.

When Andy received the Governor's message he decided to distinguish himself. It was late in the day, but not too late perhaps to win by a successful a.s.sault. He picked out twenty of his strongest buck negroes, moved them quietly to a good position near the polls, formed them into a flying wedge, and, leading the a.s.sault in person with a loud good-natured laugh, he hurled them against the outer line of whites.

To Andy's surprise the double line opened and yielded to his onset. He had forced a dozen negroes into the ranks when to his surprise the white walls suddenly closed on the blacks and held them as in a steel trap.

And then, quick as a flash, something happened. It was a month before the negroes found out exactly what it was. They didn't see it, they couldn't hear it, but they knew it happened. They _felt_ it.

And the silent swiftness with which it happened was appalling. Every negro who had penetrated the white wall suddenly leaped into the air with a yell of terror. The white line opened quickly and to a man the negro wedge broke and ran for life, each black hand clasped in agony on the same spot.

Andy's voice rang full and clear above his men's:

"G.o.ddermighty, what's dat!"

"Dey shot us, man!" screamed a negro.

The thing was simple, almost childlike in its silliness, but it was tremendously effective. The white guard in the outer line had each been armed with a little piece of s.h.i.+ning steel three inches long, fixed in a handle--a plain shoemaker's pegging awl. At a given signal they had wheeled and thrust these awls into the thick flesh of every negro's thigh.

The attack was so sudden, so unexpected, and the pain so sharp, so terrible, for the moment every negro's soul was possessed with a single idea, how to save his particular skin and do it quickest. All _esprit de corps_ was gone. It was each for himself and the devil take the hindmost!

Some of them never stopped running until they cleared Buffalo creek, three miles out of town.

Andy's ambitions were given a violent turn in a new direction. Before the polls closed at sundown he appeared at the office of the _Eagle and Phoenix_ with a broad grin on his face and asked to see the major.

He entered the editor's room bowing and sc.r.a.ping, his white teeth gleaming.

Norton laughed and quietly said:

"Well, Andy?"

"Ya.s.sah, major, I des drap roun' ter kinder facilitate ye, sah, on de 'lection, sah."

"It does look like the tide is turning, Andy."

"Ya.s.sah, hit sho' is turnin', but hit's gotter be a purty quick tide dat kin turn afore I does, sah."

"Yes?"

"Ya.s.sah! And I drap in, major, ter 'splain ter you dat I'se gwine ter gently draw outen politics, ya.s.sah. I makes up my min' ter hitch up wid de white folks agin. Brought up by de Nortons, sah, I'se always bin a gemman, an' I can't afford to s.m.u.t my hands wid de crowd dat I been 'sociating wid.

I'se glad you winnin' dis 'lection, sah, an' I'se glad you gwine ter de Legislature--anyhow de office gwine ter stay in de Norton fambly--an' I'se satisfied, sah. I know you gwine ter treat us far an' squar----"

"If I'm elected I'll try to represent all the people, Andy," the major said gravely.

"If you'se 'lected?" Andy laughed. "Lawd, man, you'se dar right now! I kin des see you settin' in one dem big chairs! I knowed it quick as I feel dat thing pop fro my backbone des now! Ya.s.sah, I done resigned, an' I thought, major, maybe you get a job 'bout de office or 'bout de house fer er young likely n.i.g.g.e.r 'bout my size?"

The editor smiled:

"Nothing just now, Andy, but possibly I can find a place for you in a few days."

"Thankee, sah. I'll hold off den till you wants me. I'll des pick up er few odd jobs till you say de word--you won't fergit me?"

"No. I'll remember."

"An', major, ef you kin des advance me 'bout er dollar on my wages now, I kin cheer myself up ter-night wid er good dinner. Dese here loafers done bust me. I hain't got er nickel lef!"

The major laughed heartily and "advanced" his rival for Legislative honors a dollar.

Andy bowed to the floor:

"Any time you'se ready, major, des lemme know, sah. You'll fin' me a handy man 'bout de house, sah."

"All right, Andy, I may need you soon."

"Ya.s.sah, de sooner de better, sah," he paused in the door. "Dey gotter get up soon in de mornin', sah, ter get erhead er us Nortons--ya.s.sah, dat dey is----"

A message, the first news of the election, cut Andy's gabble short. It spelled Victory! One after another they came from every direction--north, south, east and west--each bringing the same magic word--victory! victory!

A state redeemed from negroid corruption! A great state once more in the hands of the children of the men who created it!

It had only been necessary to use force to hold the polls from hordes of ignorant negroes in the densest of the black counties. The white majorities would be unprecedented. The enthusiasm had reached the pitch of mania in these counties. They would all break records.

A few daring men in the black centres of population, where negro rule was at its worst, had guarded the polls under his direction armed with the simple device of a shoemaker's awl, and in every case where it had been used the resulting terror had cleared the place of every negro. In not a single case where this novel weapon had been suddenly and mysteriously thrust into a black skin was there an attempt to return to the polls. A long-suffering people, driven at last to desperation, had met force with force and wrested a commonwealth from the clutches of the vandals who were looting and disgracing it.

Now he would call the little Scalawag to the bar of justice.

CHAPTER IX

THE WORDS THAT COST

It was after midnight when Norton closed his desk and left for home.

Bonfires were burning in the squares, bands were playing and hundreds of sober, gray-haired men were marching through the streets, hand in hand with shouting boys, cheering, cheering, forever cheering! He had made three speeches from the steps of the _Eagle and Phoenix_ building and the crowds still stood there yelling his name and cheering. Broad-shouldered, bronzed men had rushed into his office one by one that night, hugged him and wrung his hands until they ached. He must have rest. The strain had been terrific and in the reaction he was pitifully tired.

The lights were still burning in his wife's room. She was waiting with Cleo for his return. He had sent her the bulletins as they had come and she knew the result of the election almost as soon as he. It was something very unusual that she should remain up so late. The doctor had positively forbidden it since her last attack.