“I believe in getting right down to business,” he began, in a crisp, rasping voice that reached well to the outskirts of the crowd. “There's nothing today that is as important to you, fellow-citizens, as the correct use of the ballot. I am a candidate for your votes. I mean to represent you in the next legislature, and I don't intend to be foiled by the tricks, lies, and underhand work of a gang of stuck-up town men who laugh at your honest appearance and homely ways. God knows you are the salt of the earth, and when I hear men of that stamp making fun of you behind your backs it makes me mad. My father was a mountain farmer, and when men throw dirt on folks of your sort they throw it into the tenderest recesses of my being and it smarts like salt in a fresh cut.”
There was applause from a group in the edge of the crowd led by long, tall Dan Willis, and it spread uncertainly to other parts of the gathering.
“Hit 'em, blast 'em, hit 'em, Wiggin,” a man near Willis shouted; “hit 'em!”
“You bet I'll hit 'em, brother,” Wiggin panted, as he rolled up his coat-sleeve and pulled down his rumpled cuff. “That's what I'm here for. I'm here, by the holy stars, to show you people a few things which have been overlooked. I intend to go into the history of this case. I want you all to look back a few weeks. A gang of worthless negroes in Darley became so bad and openly defiant in their rowdyism that they were literally running the town. Whenever they would be hauled up before the mayor for disgraceful conduct some old slave-holder, who used to own them or their daddies, would come up and pay their fine and they'd be turned loose again. The black scamps became so spoiled that whenever country people would come in town they would laugh at them, imitate their talk, call them po' white trash, and push them off the sidewalks. Some of you mountain men stood it, God bless your Caucasian bones, just as long as human endurance would let you, and then you formed a secret gang that went into Darley one night and pulled their dives and gave them a lashing on their bare backs that brought about a reform. As every Darley man will tell you, it purified the very air. The negroes were put to work, and they didn't hover like swarms of buzzards round the public square. All of which showed plainly that the cowhide was the only corrective that the niggers knew about or cared a cent for. Trying them in a mayor's court was elevating them to the level of a white man, and they liked it.”
“You bet!” cried out Dan Willis, and a laugh went round which spurred Wiggin to further flights of vituperation.
“Now to my next step in this history,” he thundered. “In that gang of soundly thrashed scamps there were two who were chums, as I could prove by sworn testimony. Those black fiends refused to submit passively. They skulked around making sullen threats and trying to incite race riot. Failing in this, what did they do? One of them, being hand in glove with Carson Dwight, who says he's going to beat me in this election, applied to him for a job and was sent out to Dwight's farm near to that of Abe Johnson, who is thought—by some—to have been the leader of the thrashing delegation. That nigger, Pete Warren, was promptly joined by his black pal, and Johnson and his wife, one of the best women in this State, were foully murdered in the dead hours of the night as they lay sleeping in their beds. Who did it? I know who did it. You know who did it. Fellow-citizens, those two niggers, with their backs still smarting and their tongues still wagging, were the devils who did the deed.”
Low muttering was heard throughout the crowd as men turned to one another to make comment on the statement. In its incipiency it meant no more, perhaps, than that reason, hard driven by rising emotion, was honestly striving to keep the equitable poise which had recently governed it, but it sounded to the thoughtless, inflammable element like sullen, swelling acquiescence to the bitter charges, and they took it up. Wiggin paused, drank from the tumbler, and watched his flashing fuse in its sinuous course through the assemblage.
Mrs. Parsons was near the edge of the platform, and Pole Baker, rising from the grass near by, where he had been coolly whittling a stick, stealthily approached her.
“Great goodness, Mrs. Parsons,” he whispered in her ear, “that skunk is cutting a wide swath to-day, sure! He could git up a lynching-bee right here in five minutes if he had any sort of material. The only thing of the right color is that old woman selling ginger-cakes and cider at the spring. Don't you think I'd better slip down and tell her to go home?”
“It might save the old thing's neck,” Mrs. Parsons answered, in the same half-amused spirit. “If he keeps on I don't think I'll be able to hold my seat. Why don't you say something?”