CHAPTER XIX.

_The Fugitives Flee Again._

When Bud Harper and Foresta, on the night following their elopement, returned to Almaville, Bud took Foresta by her home to break the news to her mother, leaving her at the gate, while he went to his home to tell his mother. Finding a corpse in his house and noting the terror that his appearance seemed to inspire, Bud left and ran back to Foresta's home.

In the meantime Mrs. Crump had explained the situation to Foresta, who now told Bud. With bowed heads and troubled hearts the three sat in deep study as to what to do.

The white people were under the impression that Bud had committed the murder. They had killed another man thinking that it was he. In case they now apprehended him, would the popular feeling be that there was a mistake in the lynching or a mistake as to Bud's having committed the murder?

Bud felt fully able to demonstrate his innocence, but the ruthless mob would hardly give him time to collect his evidence, he feared. Thus, though innocent, he decided that it was best for him to leave Almaville and remain in hiding for a time at least. Foresta a.s.serted her determination to go with him it mattered not where he went.

Bud gave to Foresta the privilege of choosing their exile. For a number of years the condition of the Negroes in the cotton states farther South had been weighing heavily on her mind. She had read how that under the credit system, the country merchant, charging exorbitant prices for merchandise for which the crops stood as security, was causing the Negro farmer to work from year to year only to sink deeper and deeper into debt. She had read of the contract system under which ignorant Negroes, not knowing the contents of the papers signed, practically sold themselves into slavery, agreeing to work for a number of years for a mere pittance and further agreeing to be locked up in a stockade at night and to pay for the expense of a recapture in case they attempted to escape. She had heard much of the practice of peonage, how that planters and contractors would enter into collusion with magistrates and convict innocent Negroes of crimes in order that they might get Negro laborers by the paying of fines a.s.sessed on these trumped up charges.

She had read accounts of investigations of the prison system of the South, showing that the various states made the earning of money by the prisoners a prime consideration, and detailing how brutal overseers were wont to maltreat convicts leased to them by the state. These things coupled with the absence of reformatories for youths were destined, Foresta felt a.s.sured, to produce a harvest of criminals. What to her mind added to the hopelessness of the plight of the Negroes was the fact that an emigration agent was required to pay such a heavy tax and stood in such a danger of bodily harm from the planters that nothing was being done toward pointing the inhabitants of the blighted regions to better lands.

Foresta concluded to choose Mississippi, a state in which conditions were in some respects so thoroughly forbidding, as their future home.

Two things influenced her in making a choice, a desire to use her education for the amelioration of the ills of which she had heard so much and the thought that a land reputed to be so dest.i.tute of hope for the Negro would be searched last of all for Negro refugees. So the two had gone forth in the darkness and journeyed southward.

With money that Bud had saved they bought a small farm near Maulville, Mississippi. It was not long before Foresta's quiet influence was felt throughout that region. The whites who had been preying upon the more ignorant of the Negroes were not long in tracing this new influence to its source. It was agreed among them that the Fultons (for such was the name a.s.sumed by Bud and Foresta) were rather undesirable neighbors and a decision was reached to put them out of the way. The thousands of individual murders, and lynching by mobs, had so blunted the sensibility of these whites that they reached this decision without any qualms of conscience. Sidney Fletcher was agreed upon as the man to rid the settlement of Bud and Foresta.

On this particular afternoon, Foresta's hair was hanging down her back in girlish fashion. A small cap sat upon the top of her head, while a blue gingham ap.r.o.n protected her dress. She had finished the milking and was walking toward the house when Sidney Fletcher, the owner of a neighboring farm, approached her.

"Where has Tobe Stewart gone?" asked Fletcher, in a very gruff manner, inquiring about a Negro lad who had run away from him.

Foresta looked at him steadily without replying.

"You ---- wench, you, you can't speak can you? You and that dad blasted man of yours have got the big head, anyway," said Fletcher, drawing his pistol and starting toward Foresta.

Foresta dropped her milk pail and ran into the house.

Fletcher took a seat on a bench in the yard and awaited the coming of Bud Harper, Foresta's husband, who was out hunting and was not due for some time yet.

Foresta stole out of the door on the other side of the house and reached a patch of woods without being observed by Sidney Fletcher. By a circuitous route she was able to place herself in Bud's pathway so as to intercept him before he reached home.

"Oh, Bud," said Foresta, greeting her husband, "Old Sid Fletcher is at our house waiting for you with a drawn revolver."

A frown came over Bud's face. "The jealous knave," said he. "Ever since we bought this farm he has had a dislike for me and I have been expecting trouble from him."

"Yes, Bud; but we must stay out of trouble. A colored man hasn't a dog's show in this part of the world."

Bud sat down on a stump and Foresta dropped at his feet.

"Let's stay away from home to-night. We have had trouble enough, Bud,"

said Foresta pleadingly.

Bud looked down on her tenderly, and said, "It is a shame for a peaceful, industrious man to have a home and not be able to go to it."

Just then Sidney Fletcher was seen coming in their direction.

"Get behind a tree; n.o.body knows what will take place," said Bud to Foresta. She obeyed and Bud now calmly awaited the approach of Sidney Fletcher.

When Fletcher got in shooting distance he deliberately opened fire on Bud. After the third shot Bud raised his gun to his shoulder and fired and Fletcher fell backward a corpse. Bud and Foresta now looked at each other aghast. They knew the penalty attached to the raising of a black hand against a white man, even when that man unjustly sought the life of the black.

Rushing to their humble little home, Bud and Foresta hastily gathered a few things into a bundle, seized whatever food there was in the house, armed themselves and went forth as fugitives, Foresta attiring herself in man's clothing. By day and by night, through fields and forest, swamp and mora.s.s, avoiding the sight of man the unhappy couple fled.

The news of the killing of Fletcher was not long in getting abroad and a mob of several hundred whites was soon organized to give chase. The news agencies acquainted the whole nation with the situation and day by day the millions of America scanned with eagerness and with sad forebodings the progress of the chase. Several Negroes who happened to be found in the pathway of the mob that was sweeping the country were shot down or hung according to the whim of the pursuers.

The two in turn relieved each other at watching, whenever the exhausted condition of one or the other imperatively demanded sleep. It became Foresta's time to sleep and the two took a position behind a huge fallen tree, Foresta reclining her head upon Bud's lap. Soon she was asleep, with Bud looking down in tenderness on her pretty face, now showing signs of the terrible strain that they were undergoing. Bud thought of his position as her protector and gnashed his teeth in the bitterness of his soul as he contemplated his utter helplessness. Hot tears coursed down his cheeks and, dropping on Foresta's face, awakened her.

Foresta, who had been having troubled dreams, quickly lifted her head from Bud's lap and looked about in terror. Turning toward him she saw his eyes reddened from weeping. She threw herself on his shoulder and the two now gave way to their feelings for the first time.

"We have one consolation, Bud. They can't destroy our love for one another, can they?" said Foresta.

Bud was too full of sorrow at the plight of the wife of his bosom to reply. A deep groan of anguish escaped his lips. He leaned back against the log, Foresta still clinging to his neck. After a while both of them from sheer exhaustion fell asleep.

CHAPTER XX.

_The Blaze._

Little Melville Brant stamped his foot on the floor, looked defiantly at his mother, and said, in the whining tone of a nine-year old child,

"Mother, I want to go."

"Melville, I have told you this dozen times that you cannot go,"

responded the mother with a positiveness that caused the boy to feel that his chances were slim.

"You are always telling me to keep ahead of the other boys, and I can't even get up to some of them," whined Melville plaintively.

"What do you mean?" asked the mother.

"Ben Stringer is always a crowing over me. Every time I tell anything big he jumps in and tells what he's seen, and that knocks me out. He has seen a whole lots of lynchings. His papa takes him. I bet if my papa was living he would take me," said Melville.

"My boy, listen to your mother," said Mrs. Brant. "Nothing but bad people take part in or go to see those things. I want mother's boy to scorn such things, to be way above them."

"Well, I ain't. I want to see it. Ben Stringer ain't got no business being ahead of me," Melville said with vigor.

The shrieking of the train whistle caused the fever of interest to rise in the little boy.

"There's the train now, mother. Do let me go. I ain't never seen a darky burned."

"Burned!" exclaimed Mrs. Brant in horror.

Melville looked up at his mother as if pitying her ignorance.

"They are going to burn them. Sed Lonly heard his papa and Mr. Corkle talking about it, and it's all fixed up."