Read Ebook: Mam' Linda by Harben Will N Will Nathaniel Masters F B Frank B Illustrator

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Ebook has 1624 lines and 104553 words, and 33 pages

Illustrator: F. B. Masters

MAM' LINDA

Illustrated by F. B. Masters

N the rear of the long store, at a round table under a hanging-lamp with a tin shade, four young men sat playing poker. The floor of that portion of the room was raised several feet higher than that of the front, and between the two short flights of steps was the inclining door leading to the cellar, which was damp and dark and used only for the storage of salt, syrup, sugar, hardware, and general rubbish.

Near the front door the store-keeper, James Blackburn, a portly, bearded man of forty-five, sat chatting with Carson Dwight, a young lawyer of the town.

"Oh, I know we hang around here too much," Carson Dwight replied; "and you ought to kick us out, the last one of us."

"Oh, it isn't so bad at night like this, when trade's over, but it is sort o' embarrassing during the day. Why, what do you think? A Bradstreet commercial reporter was in the other day to get a statement of my standing, and while he was here Keith Gordon--look at him now, the scamp! holding his cards over his head; that's a bluff. I'll bet he hasn't got a ten-spot. While that agent was here Keith and a lot more of your gang were back there on the platform dancing a hoe-down. The dust was so thick you couldn't see the windows. The reporter looked surprised, but he didn't say anything. I told him I thought I'd be able to pay for all I bought in market, and that I had no idea how much I was worth. I haven't invoiced my stock in ten years. When I run low I manage to replenish somehow, and so it goes on from year to year."

"Well, I am going to talk to the boys," Dwight said. "They are taking advantage of your goodnature. The whole truth is they consider you one of them, Jim. Marrying didn't change you. You are as full of devilment as any of the rest, and they know it, and love to hang around you."

"Well, I reckon that's a fact," Blackburn answered, "and I believe I'd rather you wouldn't mention it. I think a sight of the gang, and I wouldn't hurt their feelings for the world. After all, what does it matter? Life is short, and if Trundle & Hodgson are getting more mountain custom than I am, I'll bet I get the biggest slice of life. They'll die rich, but, like as not, friendless. By-the-way, I see your partner coming across the street. I forgot to tell you; he was looking for you a few minutes ago. You had a streak of luck when you joined issues with him; Bill Gamer's a rough sort o' chap, but he is by all odds the brainiest lawyer in Georgia to-day."

At this juncture a man of medium stature, with a massive head crowned by a shock of reddish hair, a smooth-shaven, freckled face, and small feet and hands stood in the doorway. He wore a long black broadcloth coat, a waistcoat of the same material, and baggy gray trousers. The exposed portion of his shirt-front and the lapels of his coat were stained by tobacco juice.

"I've been up to the den, over to the Club, and the Lord only knows where else looking for you," he said to his partner, as he advanced, leaned against a showcase on the counter, and stretched out his arms behind him.

"Work for us, eh?" Carson smiled.

"No; since when have you ever done a lick after dark?" was the dry reply. "I've come to give you a piece of advice, and I'm glad Blackburn is here to join me. The truth is, Dan Willis is in town. He is full and loaded for bear. He's down at the wagon-yard with a gang of his mountain pals. Some meddling person--no doubt your beautiful political opponent Wiggin--has told him what you said about the part he took in the mob that raided! negro town."

"Well, he doesn't deny it, does he?" Dwight asked, his eyes flashing.

"I don't know whether he does or not," said Gamer. "But I know he's the most reckless and dangerous man in the county, and when he is drunk he will halt at nothing. I thought I'd advise you to avoid him."

"Avoid him? You mean to say"--Dwight stood up in his anger--"that I, a free-born American citizen, must sneak around in my own home to avoid a man that puts on a white mask and sheet and with fifty others like himself steals into town and nearly thrashes the life out of a lot of banjo-picking negroes? Most of them were good-for-nothing, lazy scamps, but they were born that way, and there was one in the bunch that I know was harmless. Oh yes, I got mad about it, and I talked plainly, I know, but I couldn't help it."

"I can't help it," Dwight repeated, more calmly, though his voice shook with suppressed feeling as he went on. "If I lose all I hope for politically--and this seems like the best chance I'll ever have to get to the legislature--I'll stand by my convictions. We must have law and order among ourselves if we expect to teach such things to poor, half-witted black people. I was mad that night. You know that I love the South. Its blood is my blood. Three of my mother's brothers and two of my father's died fighting for the 'Lost Cause,' and my father was under fire from the beginning of the war to the end. In fact, it is my love for the South, and all that is good and pure and noble in it, that made my blood boil that night. I saw a part of it you didn't see."

"What was that?" Garner asked.

"It was a clear moonlight night," Dwight went on. "I was sitting at the window of my room at home, looking out over Major Warren's yard, when the first screams and shouts came from the negro quarter. I suspected what it was, for I'd heard of the threats the mountaineers had made against that part of town, but I wasn't prepared for what I actually saw. The cottage of old Uncle Lewis and Mammy Linda is just behind the Major's house, you know, and in plain view of my window. I saw the old pair come to the door and run out into the yard, and then I heard Linda's voice. 'It's my child!' she screamed. 'They are killing him!' Uncle Lewis tried to quiet her, but she stood there wringing her hands and sobbing and praying. The Major raised the window of his room and looked out, and I heard him ask what was wrong. Uncle Lewis tried to explain, but his voice could not be heard above his wife's cries. A few minutes later Pete came running down the street. They had let him go. His clothes were torn to strips and his back was livid with great whelks. He had no sooner reached the old folks than he keeled over in a faint. The Major came down, and he and I bent over the boy and finally restored him to consciousness. Major Warren was the maddest man I ever saw, and a mob a hundred strong couldn't have touched the negro and left him alive."

"I know, that was all bad enough," Garner admitted, "but antagonizing those men now won't better the matter and may do you more political damage than you'll get over in a lifetime. You can't be a politician and a preacher both; they don't go together. You can't dispute that the negro quarter of this town was a disgrace to a civilized community before the White Caps raided it. Look at it now. There never was such a change. It is as quiet as a Philadelphia graveyard."

"I understand Pete would have got off much easier if he hadn't fought them like a tiger," said Blackburn. "They say--"

"I wasn't raising a row," the young candidate said. "But Garner came to me just now, actually advising me to avoid that dirty scoundrel. I won't dodge any blustering bully who is going about threatening what he will do to me when he meets me face to face. I want your support, but I can't buy it that way."

"Well," Garner said, grimly, more to the others than to his partner, "there will be a row right here inside of ten minutes. I see that now. Willis has heard certain things Carson has said about the part he took in that raid, and he is looking for trouble. Carson isn't in the mood to take back anything, and a fool can see how it will end."

EITH GORDON and Tingle motioned to Garner, and the three stepped out on the sidewalk leaving Blackburn and the candidate together. The street was quite deserted. Only a few of the ramshackle street lights were burning, though the night was cloudy, the location of the stores, barbershop, hotel, and post-office being indicated by the oblong patches of light on the ground in front of them.

"You'll never be able to move him," Keith Gordon said, stroking his blond mustache nervously. "The truth is, he's terribly worked up over it. Between us three, boys, Carson never loved but one woman in his life, and she's Helen Warren. Mam' Linda is her old nurse, and Carson knows when she comes home and hears of Pete's trouble it is going to hurt her awfully. Helen has a good, kind heart, and she loves Linda as if they were the same flesh and blood. If Carson meets Willis to-night he'll kill him or get killed. Say, boys, he's too fine a fellow for that sort of thing right on the eve of his election. What the devil can we do?"

"Oh, I see; there's a woman at the bottom of it," Garner said, cynically. "I'm not surprised at the way he's acting now, but I thought that case was over with. Why, I heard she was engaged to a man down where she's visiting."

"She really may be," Gordon admitted, "but Carson is ready to fight her battles, anyway. I honestly think she turned him down when he was rolling so high with her brother, just before his death a year ago, but that didn't alter his feelings towards her."

Garner grunted as he thrust his hand deep into his breast-pocket for his plug of tobacco and began to twist off a corner of it. "The most maddening thing on earth," he said, "is to have a close friend who is a darned fool. I'm tired of the whole business. Old Dwight is out of all patience with Carson for the reckless way he has been living, but the old man is really carried away with pride over the boy's political chances. He had that sort of ambition himself in his early life, and he likes to see his son go in for it. He was powerfully tickled the other day when I told him Carson was going in on the biggest wave of popularity that ever bore a human chip, but he will cuss a blue streak when the returns come in, for I tell you, boys, if Carson has a row with Dan Willis to-night over this negro business, it will knock him higher than a kite."

"Do you know whether Carson has anything to shoot with?" Tingle asked, thoughtfully.

"Oh yes, I saw the bulge of it under his coat just now," Garner answered, still angrily, "and if the two come together it will be raining lead for a while in the old town."

"I was just thinking about his sick mother," Keith Gordon remarked. "My sister told me the other day that Mrs. Dwight was in such a low condition that any sudden shock would be apt to kill her. A thing like this would upset her terribly--that is, if there is really any shooting. Don't you suppose if we were to remind Carson of her condition that he might agree to go home?"

"No, you don't know him as well as I do," Garner said, firmly. "It would only make him madder. The more reasons we give him for avoiding Willis the more stubborn he'll be. I guess we'll have to let him sit there and make a target of himself."

Just then a tall mountaineer, under a broad-brimmed soft hat, wearing a cotton checked shirt and jean trousers passed through the light of the entrance to the hotel near by and slouched through the intervening darkness towards them.

"It's Pole Baker," said Keith. "He's a rough-and-ready supporter of Carson's. Say, hold on, Pole!"

"Hold on yourself; what's up?" the mountaineer asked, with a laugh. "Plottin' agin the whites?"

"We want to ask you if you've seen Dan Willis to-night," Garner questioned.

"Have I?" Baker grunted. "That's exactly why I'm lookin' fer you town dudes instead o' goin' on out home where I belong. I'm as sober as an empty keg, but I git charged with bein' in the Darley calaboose every time I don't answer the old lady's roll-call at bed-time. You bet Willis is loaded fer bear, and he's got some bad men with him down at the wagon-yard. Wiggin has filled 'em up with a lot o' stuff about what Carson said concernin' the White Cap raid t'other night. I thought I'd sorter put you fellers on, so you could keep our man out o' the way till their liquor wears off. Besides, I'm here to tell you, Bill Garner, that's a nasty card Wiggin's set afloat in the mountains. He says a regular gang of blue-bloods has been organized here to take up fer town coons agin the pore whites in the country. We might crush such a report in time, you know, but we'll never kill it if thar's a fight over it to-night."

"That's the trouble," the others said, in a breath.

"Wait one minute--you stay right here," Baker said, and he went and stood in front of the store door and looked in for a moment; then he came back. "I thought maybe he'd let us all talk sense to 'im, but you can't put reason into a man like that any easier than you can dip up melted butter with a hot awl. I can't see any chance unless you fellers will leave it entirely to me."

"Leave it to you?" Garner exclaimed. "What could you do?"

"I don't know whether I could do a blessed thing or not, boys, but the dam thing is so desperate that I'm willin' to try. You see, I never talk my politics--if I do, I talk it on t'other side to see what I kin pick up to advantage. The truth is, I think them skunks consider me a Wiggin man, and I'd like to git a whack at 'em. Maybe I can git 'em to leave town. Abe Johnson is the leader of 'em, and he never gets too drunk to have some natural caution."

"Well, it certainly couldn't do any harm for you to try, Pole," said Tingle.

"Well, I'll go down to the wagon-yard and see if they are still hanging about."

As he approached the place in question, which was an open space about one hundred yards square surrounded by a high fence, at the lower end of the main street, Pole stood in the broad gateway and surveyed the numerous camp-fires which gleamed out from the darkness. He finally descried a group of men around a fire between two white-hooded wagons to the wheels of which were haltered several horses. As Pole advanced towards them, paying cheerful greetings to various men and women around the different fires he had to pass, he recognized Dan Willis, Abe Johnson, and several others.

A quart whiskey flask, nearly empty, stood on the ground in the light of the fire round which the men were seated. As he approached they all looked up and nodded and muttered careless greetings. It seemed to suggest a movement on the part of Dan Willis, a tall man of thirty-five or thirty-six years of age, who wore long, matted hair and had bushy eyebrows and a sweeping mustache, for, taking up the flask, he rose and dropped it into his coat-pocket and spoke to the two men who sat on either side of Abe Johnson.

"Come on," he growled, "I want to talk to you. I don't care whether you join us or not, Abe."

"Well, I'm out of it," replied Johnson. "I've talked to you fellows till I'm sick. You are too darned full to have any sense."

Willis and the two men walked off together and stood behind one of the wagons. Their voices, muffled by the effects of whiskey, came back to the ears of the remaining two.

"Goin' out home to-night, Abe?" Baker asked, carelessly.

"I want to, but I don't like to leave that damned fool here in the condition he's in. He'll either commit murder or git his blasted head shot off."

"Oh, I reckon that's all right," the other said, stroking his round, smooth-shaven face with a dogged sweep of his brawny hand. "That's all right, Pole."

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