The mob waited all the afternoon and throughout the night for Bettis but he never came. So early the next morning they called in person at the Bettis’ home. He received them with great kindness, and although he knew the object of their visit, showed no excitement whatever.
When informed that his death had been decided on, and that he had but little time in which to live, Bettis displayed a calmness and self-control that would have stripped Zeno of his honors at the shrine of stoicism.
“Well, ef dat be de way der gud Lawd hab fer me ter go” said Bettis, “I’s re’dy, but yo’ genermen luk lak yer is pow’rful hungry, an’ befo’ yer tends ter de bisness at han’ pleas let mer ole lady fix yer a bit’ ter ete.”
As something to eat in those days was very welcome and there was unusual hunger among the party, the consent of the mob to have Mrs. Bettis prepare the meal was readily obtained. During the interval between its preparation and consumption Bettis entertained his guests with talks relating to his crops, the condition of crops generally throughout his circuit of churches and kept repeating at the end of each subject: “But laws er mercy, youn’ marsters, its a heap wusser fer de po’ nigger dan it wus befo’ de wah. Now, he’s got nuttin but freedum, whiles fo’ freedum he hab all he wants ter ete an’ mo’ ter boot, an’ hab close to ware and ebbryting ter kep hissef wa’m.”
If these bad men were not wholly disarmed by the simple, rustic beauty of the Negro’s unaffected discourse in the presence of death, during the whole of which not once did he evince any sign that a single thought of his sad fate had ever passed through his troubled brain, they were certainly deeply affected by it, as well as by that act of his in desiring to feed them, they who had come, not to feed him but to make food of him for the worms of old graves in the silent woods of sighing forest trees!
When the hungry had been fed and all had returned to the sitting room of the humble Negro home, Mr. Bettis said, “Well, youn’ marsters, I g’ess yo’ is ’er wantin’ ter go, and so I’se not er goin’ ter dela’ yo’ lon’, but I do wants ter pra’, ef yo’ pleas’es suhs.”
CHAPTER XI.
Mob Spirit of Lick Skillet.
At the time of this dramatic period in the life of “Uncle” Alex, the greatest excitement prevailed elsewhere in Lick Skillet neighborhood, as Allen Dodson and his neighbors, armed with rifles and led by blood hounds, pursued the trail of Leslie Duncan, a son of Laura, whom the reader met in the first chapter of this story, firmly determined to hang him to the first convenient limb and riddle his body with bullets. With a pitch-fork he had stabbed Willie Hudson, Allen’s 15 year old son and inflicted a severe wound in the stomach, for whipping him with a lash. Besides, in leaving the Dodson farm he had broken a labor contract which he had made with Mr. Dodson at one dollar per week and board, and deserved to be captured and shot without the expense and formality of a trial in a legalized court of justice!
“Unless we make an example of this ‘nigger,’” said the leader of the party, as they took a short rest, propped up on their guns, “it will soon come to a pass that we might as well try to control the winds as these terrifying black brutes. If we don’t subdue them they will subdue us. That’s what old Ben Tillman says, and he knows. Good God, fellows, you ought to have heard that old one-eyed rebel speak the other night at Daleyville. I’d vote for him for any position he might want. I would even vote to change the form of government in America and make him Emperor if I only had the chance!”