When, however, Blair arrived at the Stampers’s Mr. Stamper was absent. But she found an heroic enough ally in his representative, Mrs. Delia, to make up for all other deficiencies. The idea of the possibility of an injury to one of her sex fired that vigorous soul with a flame not to be quenched.
“I jest wish my Andy was here,” she lamented. “He’d soon straighten ’em out. Not as I cares, Miss Blair, about the school, or the teacher,” she said, with careful limitation; “for I don’t like none of ’em, and I’d be glad if they’d all go back where they come from. The old school was good enough for me, and them as can’t find enough in white folks to work on, outdoes me. But—a man as can’t git a man to have a fuss with and has to go after a woman, Delia Stamper jist wants to git hold of him. I never did like that Cap’n McRaffler, anyhow. He owes Andy a hundred and twenty-nine dollars, and if I hadn’t stopt Andy from givin’ him things—that’s what I call it—jest givin’ ’em to him—sellin’ on credit, he’d a owed us five hundred. He knows better th’n to fool with me.” She gave a belligerent shake of her head. “I’ll tell you what, Miss Blair,” she suddenly broke out. “Our men folks are all away. If they are comin’ after women, let’s give ’em some women to meet as know how to deal with ’em. I wants to meet Captain McRaffler, anyhow.” Another shake of the head was given, this time up and down, and her black eyes began to sparkle. Blair looked at her with new satisfaction.
“That is what I wish. That is why I came,” she said. “Can you leave your children?”
“They are all right,” said Mrs. Stamper, with kindling eyes. “I ain’t been on such an expedition not since the war. I’ll leave word for Andy to come as soon as he gits home.”
As they sallied forth, Mrs. Stamper put into her pocket a big pistol and her knitting. “One gives me courage to take the other,” she said.
It was a mile or two through the woods to the school-house, and the novel guards arrived at their post none too soon. As they emerged from the woods into the little clearing on one side of which stood the church and on the other the new school-house, the waning moon was just rising above the tree-tops, casting a ghostly light through the trees and deepening the shadows. The school-house was considerably larger than any other in the neighborhood, and over one end of the porch Miss May had trained a Virginia creeper. The two guards took their seats in the shadow of the vine. They were both somewhat awed by the situation, but from different causes. Blair’s feeling was due to the strangeness of her situation out there, surrounded by dark woods filled with the cries of night insects and the mournful call of the whip-poor-will. Mrs. Stamper confessed that the graves amid the weeds around the church were what disquieted her. For she boasted that she “was not afeared of that man living.” But she admitted mournfully, “I am certainly afeared of ghosts.”
The two sentinels had but a short time to wait. They had not been there long before the tramp of horses was heard, and in a little while from the woods opposite them emerged a cavalcade of, perhaps, a dozen horsemen. Mrs. Stamper clutched Blair with a grip of terror, for men and horses were heavily shrouded and looked ghostly enough. Blair was trembling, but not from fear, only from excitement. The presence of the enemy suddenly strung her up, and she put her hand on her companion encouragingly. Just then one of the men burst into a loud laugh. Mrs. Delia’s grip relaxed.
“I know that laugh,” she said, with a sigh of deep relief. “Jest let him ride up here and try some of his shenanigan!” She began to pull at her pistol, but Blair seized her.
“For heaven’s sake, don’t,” she whispered; and Mrs. Stamper let the pistol go, and they squeezed back into the shadow. Just then the men rode up to the school-house door. They were discussing what they should do. “Burn the house down,” declared the leader. “Drive the old hag away.” But this met with fierce opposition.
“I didn’t come out here to burn any house down,” said one of the men, “and I’m not going to do it. You can put your notice up and come along.”