"I'll be back in a minute, General."

"My boy, the grave's full of nice fellows going to be back in a minute.

Son John, there's only one thing I'm thoroughly ashamed of you for----"

"I can see you half a dozen better, General; let me go."

"You've no need to go; Proudfit's coming right back; he's only gone for his horse. There's plenty of time to hear the little I've got to say.

John March, I'm ashamed of this reputation you've got for being quick on the trigger. O, you're much admired for it--by both s.e.xes! Ye G.o.ds!

John, isn't it pitiful to see a fellow like you not able to keep a kindly contempt for the opinion of fools! My dear boy--my dear boy!

you'll never be worth powder enough to blow you to the devil till you've learned to let the sun go down on your wrath!"

John smiled and dropped his eyes, and the General, with an imperative gesture detaining some one at the young man's back, spoke on. "John, the old year's dying. For G.o.d's sake let it die in peace. Yes, and for your own sake, and for the sake of us old murderers of the years long dead, let as many old things as will die with it. I don't say bury anything alive--that's not my prescription; but ease their righteous death and give them a grave they'll stay in."

"General, all right! the Colonel may go for the present, but I'll tell you now, and I'll soon show him, that whatever the laws of my State give me leave to do I'll do if I choose, even if it's to help black men do what white men say shan't be done." John reached behind him for the latch.

His mentor smiled queerly. "Yes, even if it's to float a scheme drawing twice as much water as we've got on our political sandbar. Ah! John March, don't you know that the law's permission is never enough? Better get all the permissions you can, and turn your 'I' into the most mult.i.tudinous 'we' you can possibly make it. Seven legislatures can't dig you too much channel."

March's reply was cut short by a voice behind him, which said:

"You can have the _Courier's_ permission."

As John wheeled about, Jeff-Jack came a step forward and Barbara Garnet shrank against a window.

"Well, Miss Garnet," laughed March, as Ravenel conversed with Halliday, "I _was_ absorbed, wa'n't I? You and Miss Fannie going to watch the old year out and the new year in to-night?"

"No, sir, we're only going to the revival meeting," replied Barbara, with mellow gravity. "All bad people are cordially invited, you know. I reckon I've got to be there."

"Why, Miss Garnet, my name's Legion, too. I didn't know we were such close kin." He said good-day and departed, mildly wondering what the next incident would be. The retiring year seemed to be rushing him through a great deal of unfinished business.

XLI.

SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY

It was really a daring stroke, so to time the revival that the first culmination of interest should be looked for on New Year's eve. On that day business, the dry sorts, would be apt to decline faster than the sun, and the nearness of New Year would make men--country buyers and hors.e.m.e.n in particular--social, thirsty, and adventurous.

In fact, by the middle of the afternoon the streets around the court-house square were wholly given up to the white male s.e.x. One man had, by accident, shot his own horse. Another had smashed a window, also by accident, and clearly the fault of the bar-keeper, who shouldn't have dodged. Men, and youths of men's stature, were laying arms about each other's necks, advising one another, with profanely affectionate a.s.sumptions of superiority, to come along home, promising on triple oath to do so after one more drink, and breaking forth at unlooked-for moments in blood-curdling yells. Three or four would take a fifth or seventh stirrup cup, mount, start home, ride round the square and come tearing up to the spot they had started from, as if they knew and were showing how they brought the good news from Ghent to Aix, though beyond a prefatory catamount shriek, the only news any of them brought was that he could whip anything of his size, weight and age in the three counties. The Jews closed their stores.

Proudfit had gone home. Enos had met a brother and a cousin, and come back with them. John March, with his hat on, sat alone at his desk with Fair's and Leggett's letters pinned under one elbow, his map under the other, and the verbal counsels of Enos, General Halliday, and Proudfit droning in his ears. He sank back with a baffled laugh.

He couldn't change a whole people's habit of thought, he reflected. Even the _Courier_ followed the popular whim by miles and led it only by inches. So it seemed, at least. And yet if one should try to make his scheme a public one and leave the _Courier_ out--imagine it!

And must the _Courier_, then, be invited in? Must everybody and his n.i.g.g.e.r "pa.s.s their plates?" Ah! how had a few years--a few months--twisted and tangled the path to mastership! Through what thickets of contradiction, what mora.s.ses of bafflement, what unimperial acceptance of help and counsel did that path now lead! And this was no merely personal fate of his. It was all Dixie's. He would never change his politics; O no! But how if men's politics, asking no leave of their owners, change themselves, and he who does not change ceases to be steadfast?

Behold! All the way down the Swanee River, spite of what big levees of prevention and draining wheels of antiquated cure, how invincibly were the waters of a new order sweeping in upon the "old plantation."

And still the old plantation slumbered on below the level of the world's great risen floods of emanc.i.p.ations and enfranchis.e.m.e.nts whereon party platforms, measures, triumphs, and defeats only floated and eddied, mere drift-logs of a current from which they might be cast up, but could not turn back.

He bent over the desk. "Jove!" was all he said; but it stood for the realization of the mighty difference between the map under his eyes and what he was under oath to himself to make it. What "lots" of men--not mountaineers only, but Blacklanders, too--had got to change their notions--notions stuck as fast in their belief as his mountains were stuck in the ground--before that map could suit him. To think harder, he covered his face with his hands. The gale rattled his window. He failed to hear Enos just outside his door, alone and very drunk, prying off the tin sign of John March, Gentleman. He did not hear even the soft click of the latch or the yet softer footsteps that brought the drunkard close before his desk; but at the first word he glanced up and found himself covered with a revolver.

"Set still," drawled Enos. In his left hand was the tin sign. "This yeh trick looked ti-ud a-tellin' lies, so I fotch it in."

Without change of color--for despair stood too close for fear to come between--John fixed his eyes upon the drunken man's and began to rise.

The weapon followed his face up.

"Enos, point that thing another way or I'll kill you." He took a slow step outward from the desk, the pistol following with a drunken waver more terrible than a steady aim. Enos spoke along its barrel, still holding up the sign.

"Is this little trick gwine to stay fetch in? Say 'ya.s.s, mawsteh,' aw I blow yo' head off."

But John still held the drunkard's eye. As he took up from his desk a large piece of ore, he said, "Enos, when a man like you leaves a gentleman's door open, the gentleman goes and shuts it himself."

"Ya.s.s, you bet! So do a n.i.g.g.ah. Sh.e.l.l I shoot, aw does you 'llow----"

"I'm going to shut the door, Enos. If you shoot me in the back I swear I'll kill you so quick you'll never know what hurt you." With the hand that held the stone, while word followed word, the speaker made a slow upward gesture. But at the last word the stone dropped, the pistol was in March's hand, it flashed up and then down, and the drunkard, blinded and sinking from a frightful blow of the weapon's b.u.t.t, was dragging his foe with him to the floor. Down they went, the pistol flying out of reach, March's knuckles at Enos's throat and a knee on his breast.

"'Nough," gasped the mountaineer, "'nough!"

"Not yet! I know you too well! Not till one of us is dead!" John pressed the throat tighter with one hand, plunged the other into his pocket, and drew and sprung his dirk. The choking man gurgled for mercy, but March pushed back his falling locks with his wrist and lifted the blade. There it hung while he cried,

"O if you'd only done this sober I'd end you! I wish to G.o.d you wa'n't drunk!"

"'Nough, Johnnie, 'nough! You air a gentleman, Johnnie, sir."

"Will you nail that sign up again?"

"Ya.s.s."

The knife was shut and put away, and when Enos gained his feet March had him covered with his magazine rifle. "Pick that pistol up wrong end first and hand it to me! Now my hat! 'Ever mind yours! Now that sign."

The corners of the tin still held two small nails.

"Now stand back again." March thrust a finger into his vest-pocket. "I had a thumb-tack." He found it. "Now, Enos, I'll tack this thing up myself. But you'll stand behind me, sir, so's if anyone shoots he'll hit you first, and if you try to get away or to uncover me in the least bit, or if anybody even c.o.c.ks a gun, you die right there, sir. Now go on!"

The sun was setting as they stepped out on the sidewalk. The mail hour had pa.s.sed. The square and the streets around it were lonely. The saloons themselves were half deserted. In one near the _Courier_ office there was some roystering, and before it three tipsy hors.e.m.e.n were just mounting and turning to leave town by the pike. They so nearly hid Major Garnet and Parson Tombs coming down the sidewalk on foot some distance beyond, that March did not recognize them. At Weed and Usher's Captain Champion joined the Major and the parson. But John's eye was on one lone man much nearer by, who came riding leisurely among the trees of the square, looking about as if in search of some one. He had a long, old-fashioned rifle.

"Wait, Enos, there's your brother. Stand still."

John levelled his rifle just in time. "Halt! Drop that gun! Drop it to the ground or I'll drop you!" The rifle fell to the earth. "Now get away! Move!" The horseman wheeled and hurried off under cover of the tree-trunks.

"Gentlemen!" cried Parson Tombs, "there'll be murder yonder!" He ran forward.

"Brother Tombs," cried Garnet, walking majestically after him, "for Heaven's sake, stop! you can't prevent anything that way." But the old man ran on.

Champion, with a curse at himself for having only a knife and a derringer, flew up a stair and into the _Courier_ office.

"Lend me something to shoot with, Jeff-Jack, the Yahoos are after John March."