It was natural that the news should eventually reach Nancy Ware and Tom Tracy and, last of all, Kenneth. Mrs. Amos, bustling with importance, hastened as fast as her rheumatism would allow to tell Mrs. Harper what the Klansmen had said or, to be more accurate, what Dame Rumour said the Klansmen had said, about Kenneth and Bob. It was obvious the two men had taken on a new importance in her eyes in being singled out for the attention of the clandestine organization.
That night in Kenneth’s office the brothers talked over the news. Kenneth scoffed at what seemed to him a fantastic and improbable tale. He looked searchingly at his brother.
“Well Bob, what do you make of it?”
“Trouble for somebody,” said Bob positively. “And I have a sort of feeling that that somebody is us,” he added after a pause.
“I’m not so sure,” was Kenneth’s doubtful rejoinder. “Some of these Crackers are just mean enough to start something, but I’m pretty sure there are enough decent white people in Central City to check any trouble that might start.”
Bob said nothing, though his face showed plainly he did not share his brother’s confidence. Kenneth went on:
“Besides, they must have sense enough to know that a sheet and pillow-case won’t scare coloured folks to-day as they did fifty years ago. It wasn’t hard to scare Negroes then—they’d just come out of slavery, and believed in ghosts and spooks and all those other silly things. But to-day⸺”
“I think white people are right sometimes,” broke in Bob with conviction, “when they say education ruins a Negro. One of those times is when you talk like that.”
The irony in his voice was but thinly veiled. He continued:
“The Southern white man boasts he knows the Negro better than anybody else, but he knows less what the coloured man is really thinking than the man in the moon. I’ll bet anything you say, that seven out of every ten men in town believe that you and I and all the rest of us coloured folks are scared to death every time we hear the word ‘Ku Klux.’ They believe the sight of one of those fool robes’ll make us run and hide under a bed⸺”