“Gad! Larry, we are undone. It’s that Leech who used to live with old Bolter, and about whom they told the story of his trying to persuade his wife to let him get a divorce, and who shirked all through the war. Unless we can get rid of him it’s all up. We’re ruined.”
“Freeze him out,” Middleton said, briefly. “You’ve begun well.”
“Freeze——? Freeze a snow-bank! That’s his climate. He’d freeze in ——!” The little Lieutenant named a very hot place.
Thurston had not been too soon in placing the line of discrimination clearly between themselves and the Provost Marshal, for the arrival of the latter in the county at once caused a change of conditions.
On receipt of Mrs. Dockett’s decisive and stinging reply Leech immediately made application to Captain Middleton to enforce his requisition, but, to his indignation, he was informed that they were the only boarders, and that Mrs. Dockett managed her own domestic affairs: which, indeed, was no more than the truth. To revenge himself, the Provost took possession of Mr. Dockett’s office, and opened his bureau in it, crowding the old official into a back room of the building. Here, too, however, he was doomed to disappointment and mortification; for, on the old clerk’s representation of the danger to his records, and of their value, enforced by Mrs. Dockett’s persuasive arguments, Leech was required by Middleton to surrender possession and take up his quarters in an unoccupied building on the other side of the road. Here he opened his office under a flaring sign bearing the words, “FREEDMEN’S BUREAU.”
So the Provost, being baffled here, had to content himself, as he might, at the court-house tavern, where he soon laid off a new campaign. His principal trouble there, lay in the presence of the dark, sallow Captain McRaffle, whose saturnine face scowled at him from the upper end of the table, and kept him in a state of constant irritation. The only speech the Captain ever addressed to him was to ask if he played cards, and on his saying he “never played games,” he appeared to take no further interest in him. The Provost, however, kept his eye on him.
The effect of the Provost’s appearance was felt immediately. The news of his arrival seemed to have spread in a night, and the next day the roads were filled with negroes.
“De wud had come for ’em,” they said. They “had to go to de Cap’n to git de papers out o’ de buro.” Only the old house-servants were left, and even they were somewhat excited.
This time those who left their homes did not return so quickly. Immediately after the news of the surrender came, a good many of the negroes had gone off and established settlements to themselves. The chief settlement in the Red Rock neighborhood was known as “The Bend,” from the fact that it was in a section half surrounded by a curve of the river. It was accessible from both sides of the river, and in the past had been much associated with runaway negroes.