"It was nobody else," said Blount. "You talk about human tigers, and fiends, and all that kind of thing; that woman beat anything I ever did see or hear of. She was brave as a lion. Peters and Bowles and I closed in on her, wanting to take her, but she fought like a man, and a brave one. She had two six-shooters, and she dropped us, all three of us; and then before the others could close in on her, she turned loose on herself, and killed herself dead as hell. She didn't see the finish of the others."
Eddring buried his face in his hands and inwardly thanked Providence that he himself had not been present at such a scene.
Blount resumed presently. "Peters didn't die right away," said he. "He lay there with his head propped on a coat rolled up for a piller, and he talked to us all like we was at home in the parlor. 'Keep on with it, boys,' said he. 'Do this thorough. Make this a white man's country; or if you kain't, don't leave no white men alive in it.' Then after a while he turns to me and says he, 'Colonel, you know I'm not a rich man. Now I've got a couple of mighty fine b'ah-dogs, and I want to give 'em to you; but if you don't mind, I'd like mighty well if you'd send my wife over a good cow. She's going to be left in pretty poor shape, I'm afraid, for you know how things have been going on the plantations,' I told him I would. We was both laying on the ground together. I told him I would take care of his folks, for he was a friend of mine, and the right kind of man. He talked on a while like that, and finally he says, 'Well, boys, I'm not going to live, and you've got a heap to do right now, and I mustn't keep you from it. Jake,' says he, 'you Jake, come here.'—Jake was his nigger boy that he always kept around with him. We had three or four good darkies with us. My boy Bill, out there, was along, and this Jake and some others. 'Jake,' says Jim Peters to this boy, 'come around here an' take this piller out from under my head. Lay me down, and lemme die!' Jake he didn't want to, but Jim says to him again, 'Jake, damn you,' says he,'do like I tell you'; so then Jake he took the piller out, and Jim he just lay back and gasped once, 'Oh!' like that, and he was gone. I call that dying like a gentleman," said Blount.
"The poor fools," presently went on the firm voice of the man who was recounting these commonplaces of the recent savage scenes, "they think, and they told us, some of them, that they've got the North behind them. They think the time is going to come when they won't have to work any more. They want to make all this Delta black, and not white. If we could give it to them and fence them in we would be well rid of the whole proposition, North and South alike. These poor fools say that the North will make another war and set them free again! There'll never be another war between the South and the North. Next time it will be North and South together, against the slaves, white and black. But as to the Delta going black, while we men in here are left alive—well, I want to say we'll never live to see it. If the people up North could only know the trouble they make—could only know that that trouble lands hardest on the niggers, I think maybe they'd change a few of their theories. They don't understand. They think that maybe after a while they can make us people think that black is white, and white is black. Carry that out, and it means extermination, on the one side or the other.
"Law?" he went on bitterly; "I wish you'd tell me what is the law. Good God, we white men in this country are anxious enough in our hearts to settle all these things. We want to be law-abiding, but how can we, unless we begin everything all over again? Law? You tell me, what is the law!"
CHAPTER XV
CERTAIN MOTIVES
Miss Lady and her stout-hearted friend, Clarisse Delchasse, found abundance at hand to engage their activities. Miss Lady ran from one part to another of the great house which once she had known so familiarly. Everywhere was an unlovely disorder and confusion, which spoke of shiftlessness and lack of care. The touch of woman's hand had long been wanting. Colonel Blount, in the hands of his indifferent servants, had indeed seen all things go to ruin about him. To Miss Lady, concerned with the swift changes in her own life, wondering what the future might presently have in store for her, all this seemed a sorry home-coming. She leaned her head against the door and wept in a sudden sense of loneliness; yet presently she lost in part this feeling in a greater access of pity which she felt for the helpless master of the Big House, who had been living thus abandoned and alone. With this there came the woman-like wish to restore the place to some semblance of a home. Even as she dried her eyes, to her entered presently madame, with her sleeves rolled to the elbow and her face aglow in the noble ardor of housekeeping.
"Voila!" she cried. "I have foun' it! I have dig it h'out. Here is the soss-pan of copper. It was throw' away. It was disspise'. Mais oui, but now I shall cook! This house it is ruin'. Such a place I never have seen since I begin. You and I, Mademoiselle, it is for us to make this a place fit for the to-live—but you, what is it? Ah, Mademoiselle, why you weep? Come, Come to me!" And Miss Lady was indeed fain to lay her head upon the broad shoulders, to feel the comforting embrace of madame's fat arms.
"H'idgit!" cried madame, suddenly, starting back.