Mountain Part 26

The track was cleared now. Even the first negro's body was laid hurriedly on the south-bound rail. But the wild bombardment of the train had had its effect. The bewildered engineer started backing into the gap, in whose deeper shadows the reinforced strikers had further advantage.

One boulder, two-thirds the height of a man, was sent lumbering down, gathering momentum. It leapt against the side of a car; for a moment the car tottered. The head gunman, seeing his men deserted by the train, stumbled down the cross-ties toward it.

"Hey, stop! d.a.m.n you, stop, I say!"

His voice cracked; he began again.

It was a rout for the company forces, a clear victory for the strikers.

Then with a whirr like giant mechanical wings the belated guard automobiles, four of them, swung around the curving crest of the road fifty feet behind and above the cut. The trees and underbrush had been cleared for just this purpose. The huge searchlights, one to each car, wavered, then poured their blinding flood on the dark gap summits.

"Oh, G.o.d! The deppities----"

The light itself seemed to stagger those who had been triumphant in the dark. They diverged sharply from the point of advantage. Those on the far side cleared back toward the east. Those on the near side halted uncertainly for a fatal second, before they ran toward the two ends of the cut.

"Let 'em have it!"

An intermittent sheet of flame broke from the guard automobiles. The defenseless workers stopped and tumbled grotesquely. To Dawson's horrified imagination it seemed that more than a dozen lay flat and twitching in the h.e.l.lish flare of the searchlights.

"Come on!"

"Got 'im, Jim!"

"Take that, you d.a.m.ned----"

With savage yells the new attackers, firing whenever they saw a moving target, covered the slope, and halted above the train.

"Hey, there," bellowed the man in the lead, addressing the train crew below. "Whatcher stop for?"

"We're going on."

"Why 'n' cher go on, then?" he parroted in irritation.

The whistle wailed, the engine and cars shuddered forward toward Hewintown. The first attack was over.

"Well," Dawson led the way back to the low gray car hidden in the shadows. "h.e.l.l's loose this time!"

III

THE COLES

XV

The youth who lay dead on the track was Babe Cole, the youngest of Tom Cole's four sons.

Three years before Paul Judson left Jackson, in answer to that wordless message of the mountain that he interpreted as promising all success to him, Tom Cole had received a call to s.h.i.+loh African Baptist Church, the tall white church at the corner of Pine and Gammon streets, at one end of Atlanta's sprawling negro section. He had not succeeded in making farming in Fulton County pay.

"Nigguh caint make money grow nohow," he would complain to neighbors who had come to the crossroads church to hear his sermon, and stayed for the inevitable discussion of crops and stock and any other topic wandering minds might bring up. "Ah kin make cawn grow, an' peas grow, an'

string-beans grow, wid de good Lawd's blessin'; Ah kin make pigs grow, an' chickens grow----"

"You eats 'em anyhow, Brudder Cole; ain't sayin' whar you gits 'em,"

chuckled Peter Bibb, the oldest elder.

The pastor joined in the laugh against himself. "Sounds lak you'se tryin' to establish an allerbi, Uncle Peter. Mebbe you ain't never heard dat our hens, de Plymouth Rocks Aunt Stella tends herse'f, is de fattes'

in fo'teen miles." He grinned easily, bringing out the mesh of bronzed wrinkles beneath the knotty kinks of wire-black hair, powdered with uneven gray around the edges. "But Ah gotter go, breddren. Caint make no money here nohow; Ah's done preached de gospel six years now in dis chu'ch, an Ah reckons Ah done 'zausted mah message."

The urban congregation was proud of "Brudder Tom" from the start. "Ah wuz bawn in slavery," was his favorite beginning, "in bodily slavery; de good Lawd done riz me to freedom. Ah wuz bawn in slavery, in spir'chual slavery; de good Lawd done riz me to freedom. De Lawd sont me to bring grace erboundin' an' everlastin' to you sinnuhs; come unto de fol', oh brudders, let de Lawd's baptizin' wash you free f'um sin an' de ol'

Debble's tracks on yo' soul----" They rose to his eloquent appeal; his open air "baptizin's" up Peachtree Creek were scenes of pervasive religious ecstasy.

Preaching was pleasant, but not profitable. Tom gradually secured a number of customers who called him in for day work, keeping lawns in order, hedge-clipping, and some regular gardening. The house he got at two dollars a week, from a white land-owner interested in the church; and there was a succession of invitations to dinner from the members of his congregation, whether well-to-do or not; "feeding the minister" was an acknowledged duty of all good African Baptists. But there were Stella Cole and the five hungry little Coles to be considered; these were not included in the invitation.

Stella finally, through the aid of her sister Caroline, maid to a family on Was.h.i.+ngton Street, got work as cook in one of the big houses on Pryor Avenue. It was much the most "hifalutin'" section of the city, she a.s.sured Tom, and Judge Land certainly looked the most important jurist in all Atlanta, when he walked stiffly down the front steps, beneath the lofty ante-bellum pillars, and let "Miss' Kate" deftly badge him with a lilac spray, before opening the low-swung gate and pa.s.sing into the changing world without.

Stella figured that the two dollars a week, added to the panful of cornpone and sc.r.a.ps of left-over meat and dessert, which she was expected to take home every evening, raised the family to a position of positive prosperity.

One afternoon Tom Cole sat lounging upon a bed in his back room, talking over with a committee the "chitterling supper" to raise organ money--an entertainment in which the church members gave the food, then bought it back, the money going to the church. He was rounding up an easy third year at s.h.i.+loh Church, and looked forward to many more.

The front door snapped open with a peculiar sharpness. The committeemen sat up, surprised and puzzled. Stella's voice came to them, high-strung, weeping. "Tom! Lawd hab mercy! Tom----"

From behind her, through the closing door, they heard an unusual hubbub in the street.

"Stella--here Ah is----"

She stood before them, leaning against the door jamb, one hand behind her back. "Oh, Tom! They'se killed Cah'line--they'se killin' all the nigguhs----"

Tom drew nearer, his eyes open in alarmed fascination, his face washed with a dusky pallor. "Killed Cah'line----"

"Get mah babies, Tom. We gonter leave dis place, now."

"What's all dis, Miss' Cole?" one of the men hurled at her, jumping to his feet.

"Lawsy, you po' chile! What's de matter wid yu' han'?"

She brought it out from behind her, bleeding, crushed, pulpy. "Rock hit me," she said, straightly. "Git de babies, Tom. We gotter go."

"Whar we gwine?"

"Gawd knows. Dey's all over town by now. Hung two nigguhs on Capitol Avernoo; a man he hit Cah'line wid a rock, an' dey stomped all over her. Listen to 'em!" She shrieked this, half turning to the front.

"Whar's Ed 'n' Will? Whar's de baby?"

Tom s.n.a.t.c.hed at his hat; the committeemen reached for theirs. "Let's go out de back way. Diana's mindin' de babies, all de boys 'cep' Ed's dar; he's out in de alley. Can we go to de chu'ch?"