THE NEW TROOP MEETS THE ENEMY

The difference between the old company and the new one which came in its place, was marked in many ways besides color, and the latter had not been in the county an hour before the people knew that the struggle was on, and set themselves to prepare for it.

The evening of the arrival of the new company, Jerry entered Captain Allen’s office somewhat hastily, and busied himself with suspicious industry. Presently Steve looked at him amusedly.

“Well, what do you want now?—grandmother dead again? If you get drunk I’ll thrash you within an inch of your life.”

Jerry giggled.

“Done sent a company o’ niggers heah,” he announced, with something very like a grin as he cut his eyes at his master.

“Negroes—hey?” Steve’s expression did not change a particle, and Jerry looked disappointed. If anything, there was a little more light in Steve’s eyes, but they were gazing out of the window, and Jerry could not see them.

“Leech back?” asked Mr. Allen, indifferently.

“Don’ know, suh—I’ll fine out.” The look on Jerry’s face once more became pleasant.

Just then the sound of a distant bugle came in at the window, and Steve rose and walked to the door of his office. The doors of several other offices were filled about the same moment. Steve walked down to the fence in front of the court green, and stood leaning against it listlessly, watching as the company came up the road, with bugle blowing, dust rising, and a crowd of young negroes running beside them.

“Halt!” The Captain, a stout, red-faced man, turned his horse, and waved his sword to the negroes in the road. “Pull that fence down.” He indicated the panel where Steve stood, adding a string of oaths to stir the negroes from their dulness. A dozen men jumped toward the fence. Steve never budged an inch. With his arms resting on the rail, he looked the Captain in the eye calmly, then looked at the negroes before him, and kept his place. Except for a slight dilatation of the nostrils he might not have known that there was a soldier within a hundred miles. The men hesitated a second, then, just as the Captain began to swear again, ran to the next panel and tore it down even with the ground, dragging the posts out of their holes, and making a wide breach through which the company passed into the court-yard to the old camp which Middleton’s company had occupied.

As Steve turned away he said to a man near him:

“Seventy-nine negroes, and three white men. We can manage them. Jerry, saddle my horse, and find out when Leech is coming back—and where Captain McRaffle is.”

“Yes, suh,” and Jerry, with a shrewd look, disappeared.

When Jerry returned, his master was writing, and as he did not look up, Jerry went into the inner room, and shortly brought out a pair of saddle-bags, and a pair of pistols.

Steve had just finished his letters, and was sealing them. Jerry gave his report.

“Nor, suh, he ain’ come yet; but dee’s ’spectin’ of him, de Cap’n says. Cap’n McRaffle, he’s away, too.”

“I thought as much. Take this letter over to the General. These two are for Mr. Hurley and Mr. Garden. If I’m not here, come up to Dr. Cary’s to-morrow morning.”

“Yes, suh—yo’ horse is in de stable. I’ll take de saddle bags over dyah.”

Steve buckled one pistol on under his coat, put the other in his saddle-bags, and went out. He sauntered across to where the company was pitching camp. The throng of negroes was already increasing. A tall, black sergeant, with great pompousness, was superintending the placing of the lines, cursing and damning his men, with much importance, for the benefit of the crowd around. Sweeping the crowd aside, Steve walked right up to him.

“Boy, where’s your Captain?” The Sergeant turned and faced him. Perhaps, had Steve been ten feet off the soldier might have been insolent; but Captain Allen was close up to him, and there was that about him, and the tone of command in which he spoke, which demanded obedience. The Sergeant instinctively pointed to the other side of the camp.

“Go and tell him that Captain Allen wishes to speak to him. Go on.” Impelled by the tone of authority, the imperative gesture, and the evident impression made on the crowd, the Sergeant moved off, with Steve at his heels.

“Dat’s one o’ my young marsters—he wuz a gret soldier,” said one of the old negroes just outside the camp to a squad near him.

Steve and the Sergeant found the Captain sitting against a tree smoking. He was a heavy-looking man, with a red face. Steve took in the familiarity with which the Sergeant addressed him, and governed himself accordingly.

“Here, boy—” Steve gave the negro a five-dollar note, not the less coolly because it was his last; thanked him as he would have done any other servant, only, perhaps, with a little more condescension, and addressed himself to the officer.

“Captain, I am Captain Allen, and I have come to have an understanding with you at the outset.”

Perhaps, his very assurance stood him in stead. Had he been a victor dictating terms he could not have done it more coolly.

“You have seventy-nine men and three officers—I have ten times as many.”

“Major Leech—told me—” began the Captain.

“Your Major Leech is a liar, and a coward, and you will find it so. We propose to obey the laws, but we do not mean to be governed by negroes, and if you attempt it you will commit a great mistake.” He walked back through the camp inspecting the horses, leaving the other to wonder who and what he could be.

Ten minutes later the officer had called a guard, but Steve was already riding out the back lane toward the upper part of the county.

Leech arrived on the next train after that which brought the new troops. He opened a law office in a part of the building occupied by his commissary, and announced himself as a practitioner of the law, as well as the Provost of the county.

He had evidently strengthened his hands during his absence. Krafton, who appeared now to be the chief authority in the State, was in constant communication with him.

Leech boasted openly that he had had Middleton’s company removed, and he began to exercise new functions. The new company seemed to be under his authority.

Within a few weeks Dr. Cary and the other civil officers in the county received notices from Leech vacating their commissions on the ground, among others, that they had exceeded their powers. Still was appointed Justice of the Peace in place of Dr. Cary, and Nicholas Ash was made Constable. Their services were not in immediate requisition, however, as, for the time being, Leech appeared to prefer to exercise his military, rather than his civil, powers. He began, forthwith, to send out the soldiers in squads on tours throughout the county, partly to distribute rations, and partly to patrol the country.

They had not been at this business long when they began bullying and tyrannizing over the people and terrorizing them as far as possible. At first, they devoted their energies principally to the whites, and the negroes were both impressed and affected by their power and insolence But after more than one of the marauders were shot, they began to go in large parties, and soon turned their energies against the negroes as well as against the former masters, and were quickly almost as obnoxious to the blacks as to the whites. Their action caused intense excitement in the county.

Steve Allen had almost abandoned his law practice, or at least his office, and spent his time visiting about in the adjoining counties. Leech took it as a sign of timidity and breathed the freer that the insolent young lawyer was away.

“I mean to drive him and that Jacquelin Gray out of the county,” he boasted to Still. “I’ll make it too hot for him.”

“Wish you could,” answered Still, devoutly. “But don’t you go too fast. They ain’t the sort to drive easy. They was taken up late. And if you push ’em too hard there’ll be trouble.”

Leech sneered. He wished Allen would do something so he might get his hand on him.

“You don’t mean nothin’ to you? ’Cause if he got his hand on you first——”

“No—I ain’t afraid of him. He ain’t such a fool as to do anything to me. I am the Government of the United States!” The Provost puffed out his bosom, and with a look of satisfaction glanced at himself in a mirror.

“He ain’t afeared of the Gov’ment or nothin’ else. I wish he was,” declared Still, sincerely.

“Well, he’d better be,” asserted Leech. “As soon as I get things straight, I mean to make him give an account of himself.”

Someone soon gave an account of himself. A considerable party of the men of the negro troop, under command of a sergeant, was “raiding,” one afternoon, in the upper end of the county, when an incident occurred which had a signal effect on both the company and the county. They had already “raided” several places on their tour and were on their way home, their saddle-bows ornamented with the trophies of their rapacity: from sheep to ladies’ bonnets, when toward sunset they stopped near the edge of the Red Rock plantation, at a roadside store, of which Mr. Andy Stamper had recently become the owner. Mr. Stamper was absent, and the store was in charge of his agent, an old soldier named Michael.

The men demanded liquor. They took all they wanted, and called in a number of negroes and made them drunk also. Old Waverley, who had come to the store to make some little purchases, was sitting on a block, smoking. Him they tried to induce to drink too, and when he declined, they hustled him a good deal and finally kicked him out into the road. He was a “worthless old fool who didn’t deserve to be free,” they said. Then in their drunken folly they began to talk of going to Red Rock and ordering supper before returning to camp. It would be a fine thing to take possession of that big house and have supper, and they would raid Stamper’s also on the way. They knew all about both places, and declared that they ought both to be burnt down. Meantime, they demanded more liquor, which the store-keeper seemed suddenly ready to furnish. He made a sign to old Waverley, and the latter slipped off and took a path through the woods. The nearest place was a little homestead on the roadside, belonging to a man named Deals; but there was no one there but a woman; her husband had gone up to Mr. Stamper’s, she told Waverley. So warning her as to the squad of negroes, the old man set out as hard as he could for home. Before he was through the woods, however, he met Rupert, riding down to the store on his colt, a handsome gray, and to him he gave notice, telling him that the store-keeper was doing what he could to hold the men there. Rupert wheeled his horse, and was off like a shot, and when Waverley emerged from the woods, he saw the boy a half mile away, dashing up—not to Red Rock; but to the Stamper place, which stood out, off to one side, clear on its little hill, a straight column of smoke going up in the still evening air. It seemed to the old man that there were a number of horses standing about in the yard, and it occurred to him to wonder if the soldiers could possibly have gotten there already. If so, his young master would be in danger of being hurt. But if the horsemen were soldiers they did not remain long; for in a few minutes Waverley saw a number of men mount and the whole party ride rapidly away down the hill, with Rupert on his gray colt among them. Waverley caught one more glimpse of the riders as they disappeared at a gallop in the wood, going in the direction of the store, and then he hurried on to Red Rock, where he found everything quiet.

Jacquelin was ill in bed that day, and Steve Allen had left the house about noon. Rupert had gone to the store for the mail. Waverley did not tell anything about having seen Rupert go off with the men from Stamper’s; but he turned and hurried back to the store, thinking now only of Rupert. He had not gone far when he heard a shot or two fired, and then on a sudden a dozen or more. The old fellow broke into a run. When he reached the edge of the woods from which he could see the Deals’s homestead he stopped appalled.

A half dozen negroes lay on the ground dead or dying, and a half dozen young white men, among them Captain McRaffle, were engaged either reloading their pistols or talking. Rupert was sitting on his horse at a little distance.

The little company of men Waverley had seen were a few who had gathered together on hearing of the raid that was taking place in the neighborhood that day. They too had heard of the contemplated visit to Red Rock and the Stamper place; for Jerry had got from someone that morning a hint that a descent was to be made on these places.

Shortly after Waverley had left the store the squad of soldiers had started for Red Rock; but, thinking to make a clean sweep as they went, they had stopped at the little house on the way, where Waverley had warned the woman and where there was a well, to take another drink. They were engaged in the pleasant amusement of looting this place, shooting chickens, etc., when the company that Waverley had seen ride off from Stamper’s came upon them. It was well for Mrs. Deals that the young men arrived when they did, for the troopers were tired of merely destroying property, and just as the white men rode up they had seized her. Her scream hastened the rescuing party. No one knew for a long time who composed the party; for in five minutes every one of the raiders was stretched on the ground, and the two or three neighborhood-negroes who were with them were sworn to secrecy under threats which they feared too much to wish to break their oaths.

There was excitement enough in the county that night, and when the news reached the court-house, which, owing to the picketing of the roads, it did not do till next morning, the citizens were prepared for the consequences. The comrades of the dead men swore they would burn the village and carry fire and sword through the county; but it was too grave a matter to be carried through too heedlessly. The officers suddenly awoke to the gravity of the situation, which was well for them. They were, no doubt, aided in doing so by the appearance of two or three hundred grave-looking men who were riding into town by every road that led to it, silent and dusty and grim. They were of every age and condition, and they lacked just order enough not to appear marching troops; but showed enough to seem one body. They were all serious and silent, and with that something in their deliberate movements which, whether it be mere resolution or desperation, impresses all who behold it. The negroes about the village who had been in a flurry of excitement since the news came and had been crowding about the camp shouting and yelling, suddenly settled down and melted out of sight, and even the soldiers quieted at the appearance of that steadily increasing force of resolute and orderly men gathered along the fences, facing the camp. General Legaie and Dr. Cary were their spokesmen, and they held an interview with the Captain, in which they gave him to understand certain things: They would obey his orders, they said, if he sent them by a single messenger; but if armed bodies of negroes continued to ravage the country they would not be responsible for the consequences.

Leech was not to be found that afternoon. He had “gone to the city.” Jerry learned afterward and told Captain Allen that he did not go until that night, and that when the crowd was there he was hidden at Hiram Still’s.

An investigation of the outbreak was held, and as a consequence Captain McRaffle and several young men left the county, among them Rupert Gray, who was sent off to school to an academy which was not known to the neighbors generally. Another result was that the old county got a bad name with those who were controlling the destiny of the State, which clung to it for many years. Andy Stamper was arrested for the affair, and was taken, handcuffed, by Leech and thrown in jail. Fortunately for him, however, it was shown that he was absent from the county that day, and he was discharged. All of these things, however, at the time were little cared for by the residents there, for the negro troop was removed and two white companies were sent in its place. The disorder breaking out wherever negro troops were stationed had attracted attention and caused the substitution of white soldiers.