Books: The Law of the Land

E >> Emerson Hough >> The Law of the Land

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Eddring had made it his especial care, from the beginning of this
work, to undertake that less esteemed branch of the law which has to
do with the collection of claims, and, naturally or by choice, he
found himself concerned more commonly with the claims of the weak
against the strong. Collection law is little esteemed as against the
better paid and vaster practice of the corporation law; yet Eddring
had succeeded. To his own surprise, and that of others, he began to
find his humble way of life pleasant and desirable. His business had
widened rapidly, and, to his own wonder, now began to offer him a
view into wide avenues of employment. Occupied not only with many
minor matters, but with more considerable prosecutions, John Eddring,
agent of claims, was possessor of a business yielding him four-fold
the yearly value of his former salary on the Y.V. road.

As to the latter, it had promptly withdrawn charges which presently
it found impossible to prove. The head men of the railway were keen
enough, after all. They studied the growing list of judgments
collected against the road throughout the Delta country, but they
could find no trace of John Eddring behind these claims. No system of
detectives, no hired espionage could belie the truth. Finally
convinced, they did the unusual and somewhat handsome thing of
writing their former claim agent a full letter of apology and of
asking his return to his late employment, at a salary precisely
double that which he had resigned. Eddring had replied to this that,
though agent of claims, he could not find it in his heart to serve as
a corporation claim agent. So, he had labored on, prosperous to a
just extent, and happy as only that man can be who finds work which
gives him delight in the doing, and which offers a future built upon
the honest accomplishment of the present.

On this morning Eddring, humming contentedly as he went about his
work at the humble desk before him, heard a knock and a shuffling
tread which by instinct he knew belonged to some member of the
colored race. "Come in," said he, without looking up.

"Good mawnin', Mas' Edd'ern," said the newcomer.

"Oh, it's you, is it, Jack?" said Eddring. "Well, come in."

Jack by profession was a local expressman, owner of a rickety wagon
and a tumble-down mule. He was coffee-colored in complexion. His feet
projected quaintly behind as well as in front. His lips projected
also, as did his eyes, wide-rimmed and bulging. His trousers were too
long for him, and his coat hung limp from his stooped shoulders. His
speech was low and soft. Not an heroic figure, you would have said,
yet, as it seemed, a person possessed of a certain history.

"Where did you come from, Jack?" said Eddring. "I thought you were in
jail up at Jackson."

"No, sah, Mas' Edd'ern," replied Jack. "Dem folks up thah never did
put me in jail at all. I got tired of it, an' at las' I jest walked
on home."

As to the case of Jack, there had recently been enacted, on the
public square of this southern city, a tawdry little tragedy in brown
and coffee color, having to do with the fascinations of a certain
damsel known in her own circles as the "gold-tooth girl." The latter
had, in her earlier days, drifted northward, where she had learned
many things, among these the fact that the white race is exceedingly
difficult to imitate, desirable though such imitation may seem. The
mistress of Sally chanced to be the possessor of a gold-crowned
tooth, and nothing would do Sally herself except the same ornament.
Having persuaded a dentist to sacrifice one of her splendid bits of
ivory, she became so enamored of her own dazzling smile that perforce
she must return again to the South, where such radiance would in all
likelihood meet with a better reception. To such charms it was small
wonder that Jack, a man of certain solidity and stability of business
among his kind, should have fallen victim. Jack and Sally had lived
together some six months before Jack had come into Mr. Eddring's
office and asked for the loan of a six-shooter. This latter he had
returned a couple of hours later, with the calm remark that he had
just shot a "yaller nigger" who had been "pesterin' 'round his wife."
Jack's arrest and trial followed quickly. Eddring, out of friendship,
took his case, and promptly lost it, it being the argument of the
prosecuting attorney that "we can't have shooting here on the streets
by niggers." Pending the argument for a new trial, Jack had been sent
to Jackson jail, where he met with the difficulty of one for whom
there seems to be no place in the social system.

"Dem white folks up thah never would let me in jail at all," said he,
complainingly. "When I got thah, de jailah man and his wife wuz right
sick, and dey warn't no one to take care o' things. I ain't bad at
nussin' folks, so I jest turned in an' nussed dat jailah man an' his
folks fer 'bout six weeks. I soht o' run dat jail, up dah, fer a
while, myself. De jailah was too po'ly to enjoy wu'kkin' vehy hahd,
so I tuk de keys, an' when dey didn't need me at nights, ovah at his
house, I allus locked myse'f in reg'lar every night, so's to feel I
wuz doin' right, you know. In de mawnin', right early, I made
breakfast foh dem, an' fix dem up like. Fin'lly, dey got well, an' I
giye de keys to de jailah er de she'iff, er whoever he wuz, and I sez
I reckon he bettah lock me up now, and he sez to me, 'Go long, you
damn nigger, I ain't a-goin' to lock you up at _all._ I _couldn't,'_
says he to me. It looks like dere ain't no place fer a nigger."

"Well, Jack," suggested Eddring, trying not to smile, "why don't you
walk across the bridge there, over into Arkansas, and get clear of
this whole thing for good?"

"Now, Mas' Edd'ern, whut makes you talk like dat? You know I wouldn'
do dat an' leave you heah, 'sponsible fer me."

"Well," said Eddring, "in some ways your case does seem a little
irregular, but perhaps the court would fix it up now and let you stay
right where you are. You go and get your mule and wagon, if you can
find them, and go to work again. I'll see Judge Baines this evening,
and tell him just what you have told me. Go on, now. I suppose you
are going to take that woman back to live with you?"

"Oh, yessah. I kain't help dat nohow. I done licked her dis mawnin',
fust thing I done. She's a heap more humble and con-_trite_ now."

At this Eddring grumbled and turned back to his work. Still Jack
hesitated. A certain gravity sat on his face.

"Mas' Edd'ern," said he, finally, "kin you tell me why de rivah is
out all ovah de lan' down below, and why dere's so many people
wu'kkin' tryin' to stop de breaks?"

"No," said Eddring. "I know there's a big overflow, and it's getting
worse."

"Mas' Edd'ern," said Jack, stepping close to him, "dar's been a heap
of devil-_ment_ to wu'k down dah."

"What do you know about it?"

"I knows a heap about it. De niggers all over in dah is gittin'
mighty bad. Now, my wife she done tol' me dat dis mawnin',--she's
a-feelin' mighty con-_trite."_

"What did she tell you about it?"

"Well, Mas' Edd'ern, you know, sah, dere's a heap o' things about
black folks dat white folks kain't understand an' nevah will. You
know fer ovah fifty yeahs black folks has been thinkin' sometime
dey'd run dis country. All de time dere's some 'ligious doctah, or
preacheh or other, tellin' dem dat. Now, dat sort o' thing been goin'
on down dah fer long while. Dere's a sort o' woman, conjuh woman,
'mongst dem. Dey call her de Queen now.

"Now, while I wuz up at Jackson, my wife she done had a heap o' truck
wid dem niggers f'om down in dah. My wife tol' me all about dis yer
Queen. She tol' me all about the devil-_ment_ dat's been goin' on and
is a-gwine to go on down in dat country. Hit's right in whah Cunnel
Blount lives. I've knowed for yeahs, o' co'se, how frien'ly you two is
to each otheh. Now, Mas' Edd'ern, you've been right good to me. I dess
thought--seein' dat I couldn't pay you nohow--I'd tell you dis heah,
and you could do whut you liked. De trufe is, niggers down heah been
gittin' mighty biggoty lately, dey get so much 'couragement f'om up
Norf. Massa Edd'ern, dey sho'ly do think dey gwine ter run dis country
atter while. O' co'se every nigger whut's got any sense knows
diff'rent f'om dat, but it seem like dey allus wuz a heap o' triflin'
niggers whut ain't willin' to wu'k, but _is_ willin' to make trouble.
I dess thought I'd tell you 'bout dis heah."

Eddring turned at his desk for a moment. "Take this over to the
telegraph office at once, Jack," said he. "It's a message to Colonel
Blount. I want to see him; and I want you to stay around, so I can
get you when he comes up."

CHAPTER II

THE OPINIONS OF CALVIN BLOUNT

It was nearly noon of the following day before Colonel Calvin
Blount, in response to the summons of Eddring, presented himself at
the office of the latter. He was Calvin Blount grown still more gaunt
and gray and grizzled, though his eye lacked nothing of its
accustomed fire. He seated himself, and cast one long leg across the
other, as he threw his hat into a chair, in response to Eddring's
invitation.

"First," said Eddring, "tell me about yourself. It has been quite a
while since I've been down at your place, hasn't it?"

"Well, as to the place," replied Blount, "it's pretty much gone to
pieces. You know my idea is that the chief end of man is to go b'ah
hunting, and he oughtn't to be guilty of contributory negligence by
staying at home too much. There's been no one to run the place, and I
haven't cared. Least said about it, the best, I reckon."

"Who is your housekeeper now?" asked Eddring.

"No one, unless you call it that girl Delphine that used to work for
Mrs. Ellison. She came back there a while ago, and said she hadn't
any place to live, and wanted to go to work, so I told her to take
hold. I don't care. I've been livin' out in the woods most of the
time. There's more b'ahs now than you ever did see. You ought to come
down and have a hunt. The high water has driven 'em all up to the
ridges, and we can just get all of 'em we want."

"Well, I like to hunt once in a while," said Eddring, placing the
tips of his fingers together judicially, "but, you see, I'm a poor
man, and I have to do a little work once in a while, Now, you've got
that big plantation of yours--"

"Plantation!" snorted Blount; "yes, about half my fields are grown up
in sassafras brush. I rented out a thousand acres to the best niggers
I had, and I give 'em mules and machinery and a stake at the store,
and I told 'em to go ahead, and we'd split even at the end of the
year. It's no use. I've got to begin all over again, the same as I
did when I first started in there. It don't take long for that
country to slide back into brush, if you don't keep after it. It
would be cane and sassafras and cat briers all over to-day, so far as
the niggers are concerned. Why, man, if you opened the gates of
Heaven and showed them to Mr. Nigger, yon couldn't get him in, unless
you kicked him in."

"You don't seem exactly in accord with the modern idea of uplifting
the colored race, this morning, do you, Colonel?"

"No, I don't. Now, I wish our friends from the North would do one of
two things, either leave Mr. Nigger alone, or else take him up North,
and live with him themselves. You know what happened down at my place
last month?"

"No, anything new?"

"No, nothing _new,_ only another one of them investigatin' parties
from up North. They had a good fat new educator, half-nigger,
half-white, this time--educated a heap more'n I am. He was the king
bee in that lot of evangelizers and elevators. Well, I took them out
over my farms and showed them the sassafras shoots coming up where
the cotton ought to be. 'Gentlemen,' said I, 'here's an instance of
what an intelligent and industrious race can do. Here's the best
plantation in the Delta turned over to these people to make or break.
This is the richest soil in the world. They had half of all they
could raise, and they had their living guaranteed them. Nobody
guarantees _me_ a living, not even God A'mighty. They didn't put
up a dollar, nor an ounce of brains, nor a bit of worry. Now, did
they work, or did they sit in the shade and loaf? You look around and
tell me.'

"The big half-white man began to preach to me, and I says to him,
'Before you go on, I just want to ask you two questions. First, how
much of you is nigger, and how much is white? Second, do you want to
quit running a college up North, and come down here and take hold of
this plantation, and so help out three hundred fellow-citizens of
yours who are a heap more interested in the nigger question than you
are yourself?' I asked that fellow that. That's when he shrunk some."

Eddring smiled, but it was a serious smile, for the South has small
inclination to jest over questions such as these.

"Well, about all the fellow could do was to fall back on his old song
about education uplifting the race. 'That's all right,' I said to
him. 'I'll pay my share of that. But we've got to wait until your
millennium comes. It's no use saying it has come, when it hasn't.
It's going to take a long time before you get the real useful
educating done.'

"I got riled, talking to him, and at last I called up one of my field
hands--he had ruined twenty acres of the best cotton land I had--and
I took him by the ear and pulled out a bunch of his hair. Said I to
him, 'Sam, is your hair like mine! Would it ever get like mine?'
'No, boss,' said he, 'not in a hundred yeahs.' He laughed at me.

"Then I said to that white fellow from the North, 'How hard do you
work? I want to know that.' He began to swell up a little at that.
Well, I put it to him this way. Says I, 'There was a man came down
through here a few years ago, and he got plumb rich. He told all
these poor black people all around that for fifty cents he'd sell
them a bottle of stuff that would make their hair straight like a
white man's, in less'n a month. He always put it about a month ahead,
so that he'd have time to get away. Now, that hair tonic man was what
I call a professional benefactor of the nigger race,' said I. 'He got
paid for it, just the same as you do. And,' says I, 'he'll straighten
out their hair with his hair tonic just about as soon as you'll
straighten out their problem with your particular kind of ointment--
for which you are getting better paid than he did.'

"That riled the fellow plenty, but I went on talking to him. 'The
only difference between you and him,' says I to him, 'is that he was
whole white and was running a straight bluff, and you are part white,
and are running a half-way sort of bluff. You pray to God A'mighty so
much about this that you have just about got yourself half-persuaded
that you're honest. Do you reckon that you have got God A'mighty
persuaded that way, too?' said I to him. That made an awful
disturbance in the evangelizing and elevating outfit, and finally I
got out of patience. Says I to them, 'I don't want to forget that you
are visitors at my place. You white folks can come to my table, if
you want to, or you can eat with the oppressed and downtrodden out in
my kitchen, if you like that better. Your fellow-citizen, with the
specialty of elevating the downtrodden, can't eat at my table. After
you get it fixed up the way that suits you best, and have had your
dinner, I want you-all to go out and take one more look at the
sassafras that's growing on as fine a cotton land as ever lay out of
doors. If you can elevate my niggers so that they'll work, why go
ahead and do it. God knows they need it. Learn 'em geometry, learn
'em to write poetry, send 'em to Europe to learn painting, but please
put somewhere in your college a department showing how to dig up
stumps and chop sassafras roots. 'You'll pardon _me_,' says I, 'for
I'm a plain man; but I just want to say that that's the kind of
elevating that the black race in America needs most. But whatever you
do, don't be foolish. Don't say to me that that's done which you and
I both know _ain't_ done.'"

Both Eddring and Blount were silent for a time. "Those folks stayed
in around our country for quite a while," resumed Blount, "and they
succeeded in stirring up the niggers to thinking that they were not
getting a square deal, but ought to break into politics once more.
A few of us planters got together, and _we_ were so stirred up about
it that we thought we would do something right funny. Our county
election was coming on, and you know we have got about ten black
voters to one white down there. Under the Constitution we couldn't
elect a white man down there in a hundred years--not if we followed
the Constitution. This time, just for a joke--but listen--do you know
what we did?"

"Well, it's pretty hard to tell just what Cal Blount would do,
sometimes," said Eddring, "but I don't doubt you did something
foolish."

"No, we didn't. We just had a joke. We let them elect a nigger
sheriff for Tullahoma County! We just 'lowed we'd give 'em a touch of
law as a sort of object lesson to the Northern elevators. Thought
we'd take a shot at the educating business ourselves. The fellow's
name is Mose Taylor, and say! he's the tickledest nigger you ever did
see! He's about half-white, too, and he always did want to break into
politics one way or another. Now, he's done broke in. We let him,
just for a joke. Of course, when there's any need for a _real_
sheriff, we white people allow that we'll have to use the old one--
Jim Peters."

"Well, these things aren't always just exactly the best kind of
jokes," said Eddring. "You have been having nothing but trouble down
there for a long time."

"Trouble!" said Blount, "I should say we have. We've tried to keep it
a white man's country, but it's been a fight every day of the year.
Niggers stole and killed all the cattle of my neighbors down in
there, and we hung two or three niggers last month for stealing cows.
We put a sign on them, 'You stole a cow, cow killed you.' You've got
to make things sort of plain, you know, to these people, so's they
can understand 'em. Now, you know the trouble we had down there about
that train wreck. It's morally sure the niggers were at the bottom of
that, one way or another. That ain't all. I told you we were having a
big overflow now. Well, the fact is, we found out a day or so ago
that this overflow is mostly hand-made. They've been cutting the
levees--"

"Blount," said Eddring, quietly, "that's just why I telegraphed you
to come up here. I've got a boy here who knows about the whole
proposition. They're organizing, as sure as you're born, and they've
got a leader. They've got a Queen, they say."

"A Queen!" snorted Blount, jumping to his feet. "Queen, eh? Well,
now! you look here, if we ever do get hold of that Queen, I want to
tell you, she'll have the uneasiest head that ever did wear any kind
of crown. _Queen,_ eh!"

"And you've got a nigger sheriff now! Fine machinery for the law to
have in that part of the Delta just at this time, isn't it?"

"Sheriff! What do we need of a _sheriff,_ if we get down to the
bottom of this devilment? We have got to put it _down_, and
that's all there is to it, as you know very well. There's no two ways
about it. These disturbances, most of them due to politics, have
upset our whole country. Now, it is for us to set it right again.
We've got to cut politics out, and get down to common sense, down to
business. The South can't wait for ever on politics, Northern or
Southern. This country's _bigger_ than politics, and bigger than
politicians. You know we can count on every white man in my part of
the Delta. Can we count on you?"

Eddring hesitated, but finally looked his friend in the face. "I'm a
white man," said he. Blount went on.

"What you tell me is not altogether news. We're going after these
people, and we're going to put an end to this thing once for all.
We're going to have a _country._ Now, we want as large a number
of white gentlemen as possible. We will want you.

"Now, no matter what you are doing, or where you are, will you come
when I send for you!"

Eddring repeated simply, "I am a white man, too."

"It's for the law, Eddring--for the country."

"Yes. I think it's for the law."

CHAPTER III

REGARDING LOUISE LOISSON

"Come out and eat with me, Cal," said Eddring. "I've some other
matters to put before you. A great many things have been so confused
in my mind that I have hardly known where to begin to straighten them
out."

"I reckon you've got some new lawsuit or other on your hands," said
Blount.

"You're right. At least it may be a lawsuit, and it certainly bids
fair to be a puzzling study, lawsuit or not."

After they were seated at table in an adjoining cafe, Eddring tossed
over to his friend a late copy of a New Orleans newspaper. "You see
that headline?" said he. "It's all about a dancer, Miss Louise
Loisson. You ever hear that name before?"

"Why, no, I don't seem to remember it, if I ever did."

"Well, that name is bothering me mightily just now. You know
something of the history of those old Y. V. damage judgments, after I
left the road?"

"Yes, I reckon I heard something about it. Some one seems to have got
hold of the list of claims, and pushed them for all they were worth.
Of course, I know you hadn't anything to do with that."

"It was an odd sort of thing," said Eddring, "and it has led up to a
number of other things still more strange. Now, no one knows how that
information regarding the claims got out. I told you that I found
that complete list of the claims in the valise of the mysterious man,
Mr. Thompson, who was killed in the train wreck at your place. Of
course I turned over all this material to the company at once. But
there must have been a duplicate list out somewhere. I had my own
suspicions. I knew, or thought I knew, why the dogs ran that trail
right up to your house. Here's one reason I had for that." He threw
on the table before Blount a soiled and wrinkled bit of linen, the
same mysterious handkerchief which he had put in his pocket at the
train wreck long ago.

"Did you ever see that before?" asked he. Blount sat up straighter
and looked closely at the object, but shook his head.

"It might be Delphine's," said Eddring. At this the other man shut
his mouth hard and his face grew suddenly serious.

"Now, I say I had suspicions," resumed Eddring. "That list of claims
was never written out by that traveling man, Thompson. It might have
been done by Henry Decherd, might it not?"

"What makes you think so?"

"Nothing, except that I believe those papers were in Henry Decherd's
valise. In fact, I know it. He did not want to claim the valise when
he saw that I had it. This letter might very possibly have been
written by Delphine to Decherd. See here." He placed before Blount
the unsigned letter which he had preserved ever since the time of its
discovery. Blount read it through in silence, flushing a bit to see
his own name mentioned by a servant in such connection; but without
comment he looked quietly at Eddring, now eager in the instinct of
the chase.

"I'll tell you frankly, Cal," said the latter, "I guessed all along
that these two were concerned in all this business, but I couldn't
speak. I didn't dare tell my suspicions when I had no better proof
than was possible to get at that time. I didn't want to tell the
sheriff. I didn't dare tell even you what I thought. Now there was
something else in that valise which I did not turn over to the
company, because I did not think it was their property."

He took from his pocket the mysterious little volume, the same which
had so strangely appeared at different times and in the hands of
different parties, not all of whom were at that time known to
himself. Blount turned it over curiously in his hand.

"Funny sort of book for a traveling man to have in his valise," said
he. "You reckon he was some sort of book collector?"

"Well, I don't reckon that Thompson was. Upon the other hand, Henry
Decherd might have been, for certain reasons. Let's see.

"Now, here is this little French book. It tells about a certain
journey made from America to France in the year 1825 by several
Indian chieftains. They went with one Paul Loise, interpreter. With
them was a young girl, Louise Loisson--don't you see the name?--and
she is carefully described as a descendant, not of Paul Loise, but of
the Comte de Loisson, a nobleman who came to St. Louis shortly before
1825."

Blount sat up still straighter in his chair. "This here is mighty
strange," said he. "Names sound right near alike."

"Yes," said Eddring. "But that Louise Loisson must have been dead,
buried and forgotten half a hundred years ago. If so, what is she
doing dancing down at New Orleans to-day? As soon as I saw that name
in the newspaper, I looked it up again in my little book. Then I put
together my suspicions about the letter, and the list, and the
valise. If I hadn't seen the name in the newspaper, I might never
have been so much interested in it; and certainly I should never have
put the matter before you."

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