The Preacher drove slowly to his home, the mare pulling steadily on her lines. She walked proudly into her stable lot, her head high and fine eyes flashing, reeled and fell dead in the shafts! The Preacher couldn’t keep back the tears. He called Dick and left him and Charlie the sorrowful task of taking off her harness. He hurried into the house and shut himself up in his study.
That night when the crowd of young toughs assembled at their rendezvous it was barely ten o’clock.
Suddenly a pistol shot rang from behind the school-house, and before McLeod and Lis crowd knew what had happened fifty white horsemen wheeled into a circle about them. They were completely surprised and cowed. Major Dameron rode up to McLeod.
“Young man, you are the prisoner of the Chief of the Ku Klux Klan of Campbell county. Lift your hand now and I’ll hang you in five minutes. You have forfeited your life by disobedience to my orders. You go back to Hambright with me under guard. Whether I execute you depends on the outcome of the next two days’ conferences with the chiefs of the township lodges.”
The Major wheeled his horse and rode home. The next day he ordered every one of the eleven township chiefs to report in person to him, at different hours the same day. To each one his message was the same. He dissolved the order and issued a perpetual injunction against any division of the Klan ever going on another raid.
There were only a few who could see the wisdom of such hasty action. The success had been so marvellous, their power so absolute, it seemed a pity to throw it all away. Young Kline especially begged the Major to postpone his action.
“It’s impossible Kline. The Klan has done its work. The carpet-baggers have fled. The state is redeemed from the infamies of a negro government, and we have a clean economical administration, and we can keep it so as long as the white people are a unit without any secret societies.”
“But, Major, we may be needed again.”
“I can’t assume the responsibility any longer. The thing is getting beyond my control. The order is full of wild youngsters and revengeful men. They try to bring their grudges against neighbours into the order, and when I refuse to authorise a raid, they take their disguises and go without authority. An archangel couldn’t command such a force.”
Within two weeks from the dissolution of the Klan by its Chief, every lodge had been reorganised. Some of the older men had dropped out, but more young men were initiated to take their places. Allan McLeod led in this work of prompt reorganisation, and was elected Chief of the county by the younger element which now had a large majority.