LEECH LOOKS HIGHER AND GETS A FALL

Major Leech was now one of the leading men in the State. No one had been so successful in his measures. He boasted openly that he owned his own county. Carried it in his breeches pocket, he said.

Hiram Still had become the largest property-holder in the county. “I don’t know so much about these here paper stocks,” he said to his son. “But I know good land, and when you’ve got land you’ve got it, and everybody knows you’ve got it.”

It was understood now that Leech was courting Still’s daughter, and it began to be rumored that reinforced by this alliance, after the next election he would probably be the leader in the State. He was spoken of as a possible candidate for the Governorship, the election for which was to come off the following year.

The people were now as flat on their backs as even Leech could wish.

Fortunately there is a law by which conditions through their very excess are sometimes rectified. Absolute success often bears in it the seeds of its own destruction. With the power to make such laws as they wanted, and to gild all their acts with the tinsel of apparent authority, Leech and his associates had been so successful that they had lost all reckoning of opposition, and in their security had begun to quarrel among themselves.

The present Governor, Krafton, was a candidate for re-election, and his city organ declared that Leech was pledged to him. He had “made Leech,” it said. “Leech was bound to him by every tie of gratitude and honor.” Leech in private sneered at the idea. “Does he think I’m bound to him for life? Ain’t he rich enough? Does he want to keep all the pie for himself? Why don’t he pay that rent to the State for the railroad him and his crowd leased? He talk about beatin’ me! I’ll show him. You wait until after next session and all h—l can’t beat me,” he said to Hiram Still. He did not say this to the Governor. But perhaps even counting this Leech did not count all the forces against him. Emboldened by the quietude which had existed so long, Leech moved more openly. He believed he was strong enough now for anything. Success was at length turning even Still’s head.

“You got to keep yourself before the people, and do it all the time. If you don’t they’ll forgit you, and somebody else will reap your harvest,” Still explained to his ally.

“Anybody as reaps for me is welcome to all he gets,” said Leech.

The campaign opened, and soon Leech was as prominent as he could have wished. However prostrate the people were, they were not ready to have Leech for the Governor of the State, and they so declared. At a public meeting that was held, Steve Allen in a speech declared that “Krafton is a robber; but Leech is a thief.”

Both Leech and Still were sensible of the stir; but they did not heed it. Leech was daily strengthening himself.

When the rumor started that the whites were rousing up and were beginning to think of organizing in opposition, Leech only laughed.

“Kick, will they?” said he. “I want ’em to kick. I’m fixed for ’em now. I’ve got the power I want behind me now, and the more they kick the more they’ll git the rowels. I guess you’re beginning to find out I’m pretty well seated?” he added triumphantly to Still. Still could not but admit that it was so.

“Fact is, things’re goin’ almost too smooth,” he said.

“You’re hard to please,” growled Leech.

“No; but you know, sometimes I’m most afeered I’ll wake up and find it a dream. Here I am settin’ up, a gentleman here in this big house that I used to stand over yonder on the hill in the blazin’ sun and just look at, and wonder if I ever would have one even as good as the one I was then in as my own; and yonder are you, one of the big men in the State, and maybe will be Governor some day, who knows?” Leech accepted the compliment with becoming condescension.

“That was a great stroke of yours to git the State to endorse the bonds and then git your man Bolter down here to put up that money. If this thing keeps up we soon won’t have to ask nobody any odds,” pursued Still.

“I don’t ask any of ’em any odds now. When I get my militia fully organized, I’m going to make a move that will make things crack. And old Krafton will come down too. He thinks he’s driving, and he’s just holding the end of the reins.”

“I don’t count so much on your militia as I do on your friends. I know these people, and I tell you, you can’t keep ’em down with niggers. If you try that you’ll have a bust up ’t will blow you—somewhere you won’t want to be,” cautioned Still. “I never was so much in favor of that militia business as you was. Comes to a fight, the whites will beat every time—and it costs too much. My taxes this year’ll be——”

Leech frowned.

“Your taxes! If it hadn’t been for high taxes I’d like to know where you’d been. You’re always talkin’ about knowin’ these people. You’re afraid of ’em. I’m not. I suppose it’s natural; we’ve whipped you.”

There was a sudden lower in Still’s eye at the sneer.

“You’re always talkin’ about havin’ whipped us. You ain’t whipped us so much,” he growled. “If you ain’t afraid of ’em, whyn’t you take up what Steve Allen said to you t’other day when he told you he’d be Governor before you was, and called you—ur worse than Krafton? He’s given you chances enough.”

“You wait, and you’ll see how I’ll take it up. I’ll take him up. I’ve got the government behind me, and when I’m Governor and get a judge such as I want, you’ll see things working even enough.”

“Well, ’twon’t do for us to quarrel, Major. We’re like two steers yoked together,” Still said, conciliatorily. “Only don’t go too fast at first—or you may break your team down before you git anywhere near where you want to go.” When Still was alone with his son after this interview he told him that Leech was in danger of ruining everything.

“He’s gittin’ sp’iled. We must keep the brakes on him or he’ll bust the wagon all to pieces. If he gits up too fast he won’t remember me and you,” observed Mr. Still. “Where would I be now if I hadn’t gone a little keerful?”

“Careful,” corrected his son, superciliously.

“Well, careful, then; I can’t keep up with your book learnin’. But I know a few things, and he’s about to make a fool of himself. He wants to break with old Krafton before it’s time, and I ain’t sure he’s strong enough yet to do it. We may have to call on Krafton yet, and ’twon’t do to let him go till we get Leech settled. He’s goin’ too fast with his niggers. We’ve got to keep the brakes on him.”

Leech soon perfected the organization of his negroes. The League furnished the nucleus. He had quite an army enrolled. At first they drilled without arms, or with only the old muskets which had come down from the war; but in a little time a consignment of new rifles came from somewhere, and at their next drill the bands appeared armed and equipped with new army muskets and ammunition. Nicholas Ash was captain of one company, and another was under command of Sherwood. Leech was Colonel and commanding officer in the county. Under the law, Krafton, as Governor, had the power to accept or refuse any company that organized and offered itself. The effect of the new organization on the negroes was immediately felt. They became insolent and swaggering. The fields were absolutely abandoned. Should they handle hoes when they could carry guns! Should they plough when they were the State guard!

When Leech’s new companies drilled, the roadsides were lined with their admirers. They filled the streets and took possession of the sidewalks, yelling, and hustling out of their way any who might be on them. Ladies walking on the street were met and shoved off into the mud. In a little while, whenever the militia were out, the whites disappeared almost wholly from the streets. But the men were to be found gathered together at some central place, quiet, and apparently without any object, but grim and earnest. Steve Allen was likely to be among them.

Steve organized a company and offered its services to the Governor, asking to be commissioned and armed. Only negro companies were being commissioned. The Governor referred him to Leech, who was, he said, the Commandant in that section. The next time Steve met Leech he said:

“Major Leech, your man Krafton says if you’ll recommend it he’ll commission a company I have.” Leech hemmed and stammered a little.

“No need to be in a hurry about it, Major,” said Steve, enjoying his embarrassment. “When you want ’em let me know. I’ll have’em ready,” and he passed on with cheery insolence, leaving the carpet-bagger with an ugly look in his pale blue eyes.

Leech conferred with Still, who counselled that they should move with deliberation. Leech had grown impatient. He thought himself strong enough now to overawe the whites. Night meetings were being held everywhere, at which Leech addressed his followers. Their response was almost an outbreak.

A number of acts were committed that incensed the people greatly. Andy Stamper, with his wagon full of chickens and eggs, was coming along the road when he met one of the companies, followed by the crowd of negroes that usually attended the drills. In a few minutes the wagon was thrown down a bank and upset, the eggs were all smashed, and little Andy, fighting desperately with his whip, was knocked senseless and left on the roadside, unconscious. He said afterward it served him right for being such a fool as to go without his pistol, and that if he had had it he would have whipped the whole company. Mrs. Cary and Blair and Miss Thomasia came near having a similar experience. They were stopped on the road in their old carriage, and nothing but Mrs. Cary’s spirit and old Gideon’s presence of mind saved them perhaps from worse usage. Mrs. Cary, however, stepped out and stood beside her horses commanding that they should not be touched, while the old driver, standing up in the boot of the carriage, talked so defiantly and looked so belligerent that he preserved his mistresses from anything worse than being turned out rudely into the woods and very much frightened.

These things caused much excitement.

The first movement in the campaign was a great meeting that was held at the county seat. The negroes were summoned from several counties round, and there was to be a great muster of Leech’s “new militia.” It was a grave time in the county. All such assemblages were serious now, more for what might happen than for anything that had ever happened yet. But this one was especially serious. It was rumored that Leech would launch himself as a candidate for Governor, and would outline his policy. The presence of his militia was held to be a part of his plan to overawe any opposition that might arise. So strong was the tension that many of the women and children were sent out of the village, and those that remained kept their houses.

When the day for the meeting at the county seat came, nearly the entire male population of the county, white and colored, were present, and the negro companies were out in force, marching and parading up and down in the same field in which the white troops had paraded just before going off to the war. Many remarked on it that day. It served to emphasize the change that a few years had brought. When the parade was over, the companies took possession of the court green, and were allowed to break ranks preparatory to being called under arms again, when they were to be addressed on the issues of the campaign. The negroes, with a few white men among them—so few as not to make the slightest impression in the great dusky throng—were assembled on the court green. The whites were outside.

There was gravity, but good-humor.

Steve Allen, particularly, appeared to be in high spirits. To see the way the crowd was divided it might have looked as if they were hostile troops. Only, the whites apparently had no arms. But they had almost the formation of soldiery waiting at rest. Steve sauntered up into the crowd of negroes and made his way to where Leech stood well surrounded, talking to some of the leaders.

“Well, Colonel, how goes it? You seem to have a good many troops to-day. We heard you were going to have a muster, and we came down to see the drill.”

The speech was received good-temperedly by the negroes, many of whom Steve spoke to by name good-humoredly.

Leech did not appreciate the jest, and moved off with a scowl. The young man, however, was not to be shaken off so. He followed the other to the edge of the crowd, and there his manner changed.

“Mr. Leech,” he said, slowly, with sudden seriousness and with that deep intonation which always called up to Leech that night in the woods when he had been waylaid and kidnapped. “Mr. Leech, you are on trial to-day. Don’t make a false step. You are the controlling spirit of these negroes. They await but your word. So do we. If a hand is lifted you will never be Governor. We have stood all we propose to stand. You are standing on a powder magazine. I give you warning.”

He turned off and walked back to his own crowd.

It was the boldest speech that had been made to Leech in a long time. His whole battalion of guards were on the grounds, and a sign from him would have lodged Steve in the jail, which frowned behind the old brick clerk’s office. He had a mind to order his arrest; but as he glanced at him there was a gleam in Steve’s gray eyes which restrained him. They were fixed on him steadily, and the men behind him suddenly seemed to have taken on something like order. Until that moment Leech had no idea what a force it was. There were men of all classes in the ranks. He seemed suddenly the focus of all eyes. They were fastened on him with a cold hostility that made him shiver. He had a sudden catching at the heart. He sent for Still and had a conference with him. Still advised a pacific course. “Too many of ’em,” he said. “And they are ready for you.”

Leech adopted Still’s advice. In the face of Steve’s menace and that crowd of grim-looking men he quailed. His name was put forward, and many promises were made for him, revolutionary enough, but it was not by himself. Nicholas Ash, after a long conference with Leech and Still, was the chief speaker of the occasion, and Leech kept himself in the background all day.

The policy laid down by Nicholas Ash, even after his caution from Leech and Still, was bad enough. “They say the taxes are too high,” declared the negro statesman. “I tell you, and Colonel Leech tells you, they ain’t high enough, and when he’s Governor they’ll be higher yet. We are goin’ to raise ’em—yes, we are goin’ to raise ’em till we bankrupt ’em every one, and then the land will go to the ones as ought to have it, and if anybody interferes with you, you’ve got guns and you know how to use ’em.” Tumultuous applause greeted this exposition of Leech’s principles. Only the earnest counsel of Dr. Cary and some of the older and cooler heads kept the younger men quiet. But the day passed off quietly. The only exception was an altercation between Captain McRaffle and a negro. Leech’s name had been suggested for the Governorship, and had taken well. So he was satisfied. That night the negroes paraded in companies through the village, keeping step to a sort of chant about raising taxes and getting the lands and driving out the whites.

As Dr. Cary rode home that evening on his old horse, Still and Leech passed him in a new buggy drawn by a pair of fine horses which young Dr. Still had just got. Both men spoke to Dr. Cary, but the Doctor had turned his head away so as not to see them. It was the nearest his heart would let him come to cutting a man direct.

Next night after dark there was a meeting, at which were present nearly all the men whose names have appeared in this chronicle, except Dr. Cary and one or two of the older gentlemen, and a number more besides.

The place selected for the meeting was the old hospital, a rambling, stone house with wings, and extensive cellars under it. It was in a cleft between two hills, surrounded by a dense grove, which made it at all times somewhat gloomy. It had been used as a field-hospital in a battle fought near by, and on this account had always borne a bad name among the negroes, who told grewsome tales of the legs and arms hacked off there and flung out of the windows, and of the ghostly scenes enacted there now after nightfall, and gave it a wide berth.

After the war, a cyclone had blown down or twisted off many of the trees around the mansion, and had taken the roof off a part of the building and blown in one of the wings, killing several of the persons who then occupied it, which casualty the superstition of the negroes readily set down to avenging wrath. The rest of the house had stood the storm; but since that time the building had never been repaired and had sunk into a state of mournful dilapidation, and few negroes in the county could have been induced to go there even in daylight. The fields had sprung up in dense pines, and the roads leading out to the highways had grown up and were now hardly distinguishable. It had escaped even the rapacious clutch of Land Commissioner Still.

The night after the speaking at the court-house there was a meeting of ghostly riders at this old place, which had any of the negroes around seen, they would have had some grounds for thinking the tales told of the dead coming back from their graves true.

Pickets, with men and horses heavily shrouded, were posted at every outlet from the plantation, and the riders rode for some distance in the beds of streams, so that when the hoof-tracks reached certain points, they seemed suddenly to disappear from the earth.

Rumors had already come from other sections of a new force that had arisen, a force composed of ghostly night-riders. It was known as the “Invisible Empire,” and the negroes had already been in a tremor of subdued excitement; but up to this time this county had been so quiet, and Leech had been so supreme, that they had not taken in that the Ku Klux might reach there.

After the muster of Leech’s militia at the county seat the companies had been dismissed and the members had straggled to their homes, taking with them their arms and accoutrements, with all the pride and pomp of newly decorated children. But their triumph was short-lived.

In the dead of night, when the cabins and settlements were wrapped in slumber, came a visitation, passing through the county from settlement to settlement and from cabin to cabin, in silence, but with a thoroughness that showed the most perfect organization. When morning dawned every gun and every round of ammunition which had been issued throughout the county, except those at the county seat, and some few score that had been conveyed to other places than the homes of the men who had them, had been taken away.

In most cases the seizure was accomplished quietly, the surprise being so complete as to prevent wholly any resistance. All that the dejected warriors could tell next day was that there had been a noise outside, the door had been opened; the yard had been found full of awful forms wrapped like ghosts in winding-sheets, some of whom had entered the houses, picked up the guns and ammunition, and without a word walked out and disappeared.

In other instances, the seizure had not been so easily effected, and in some few places there had been force exerted and violence used. But in every case the guns had been taken either peaceably or by force, and the man who had resisted had only called down on his head severity. One man only had been seriously hurt. It was the man with whom McRaffle had had the difficulty.

The whites had not been wholly exempt.

Leech had spent the night at Hiram Still’s. They had talked over the events of the meeting and the whole situation. Ash’s speech proposing Leech for Governor had taken well with the negroes, and for the whites they did not care. The whites had evidently been overawed. This was Leech’s interpretation of their quietude. Leech was triumphant. It was the justification of his plan in arming his followers. He laid off his future plans when he should have fuller powers. His only regret was that he had not had Steve Allen arrested for threatening him. But that would come before long.

“D—n him! I wish he was dead,” he growled.

“Go slow, Colonel; if wishes could kill, he’d ’a’ been dead long ago—and maybe so would you,” laughed Still.

“What a——unpleasant laugh you have,” frowned Leech. He did not often allow himself the luxury of a frown; but he found it effective with Still.

Next morning Leech was aroused by his host calling to him hastily to get up. Still was as white as death.

“What is it?” demanded Leech.

“Get up and come out quick. Hell’s broke loose.”

When Leech came out, Still pointed him to a picture drawn with red chalk on the floor of the portico, a fairly good representation of the “Indian-killer.” There were also three crosses cut in the bark of one of the trees in front of the door.

“What does that mean?”

“Means some rascals are trying to scare you: we’ll scare them.”

But Still was not reassured. Anything relating to the “Indian-killer” always discomposed him. He had to take several drinks to bring back his courage—and when about breakfast-time the news began to come to them of the visitation that had been made through the county during the night, Leech, too, began to look pale.

By mid-day they knew the full extent and completeness of the stroke. A new and unknown force had suddenly arisen. The negroes were paralyzed with terror. Many of them believed that the riders were really supernatural, and they told, with ashy faces, of the marvellous things they had done. Some of them had said that they had just come from hell to warn them, and they had drunk bucketfuls of water, which the negroes could hear “sizzling” as it ran down their throats.

By dusk both Leech and Still had disappeared. They saw that the organization of the negroes was wholly destroyed, and unless something were done, and done immediately, they would be stampeded beyond hope. They hurried off to the city to lay their grievances before the Governor, and claim the aid of the full power of the Executive.

They found the Governor much exercised, indeed, about the attack on his militia; but to their consternation he was even more enraged against themselves by the announcement of Leech’s prospective candidacy in opposition to him. He declared that he had aided Leech in all his schemes, with the express understanding that the latter should give him his unqualified support for re-election, and he flatly charged him with treachery in announcing himself a candidate in opposition to him, and declined to interfere unless Leech at once retired.

In this dilemma Leech promptly denied that he had ever announced himself as a candidate.

Well, he allowed Nicholas Ash to do it, which amounted to the same thing, the Governor asserted.

Leech repudiated any responsibility for Ash’s action, and denied absolutely that he had any idea whatever of running against the Governor, for whom he asseverated the greatest friendship.

Thus the matter was ostensibly patched up, and Leech and Still received some assurance that action would be taken. When, however, they left the presence of the Governor, it was to take a room and hold a private conference at which it was decided that their only hope lay in securing immediately the backing of those powers on whose support the Governor himself relied to be sustained.

“I know him,” whispered Still. “You didn’t fool him. He ain’t never goin’ to help you. May look like he’s standin’ by you; but he ain’t. We’ve got to go up yonder. Bolter’s obliged to stand by us. He’s too deep in.” He chucked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction in which his noon-shadow was pointing. Leech agreed with him, and instead of returning home, the two paid a somewhat extended visit to the seat of government, where they posed as patriots and advocates of law and order, and were admitted to conferences with the most potent men in the councils of the nation, before whom they laid their case.