“But I say you are worse than that,” Welborne snarled, “and you've got to set thar before us all an' chaw my statement an' gulp it down.”
“You fellows have laid a trap for me,” Hoag muttered, desperately. He glanced around at the older men. How strange it was that no word of rebuke came from even the wisest of them! Surely they didn't believe the charge of this wild young drunkard after all those years in which he had led them, and had their homage and respect.
“I see you don't mean to defend yourself,” Welborne went on, glancing around at the gathering, “an' that's proof enough of what I say. You've held your post not because you was a brave man, Jim Hoag, but because you had money that some men are low enough to bow before; but us young men in these mountains will have a leader with sand in his craw, or none at all.” The speaker paused, and his fellows stood up around him. There was a warm shaking of hands, a rising clamor of approval, and this spread even to the older men, who were excitedly talking in low tones.
“Come on, boys, let's go home!” Welborne proposed. “We'll have that meetin' to-morrow night, an' we'll do things. Next time a good man gits in jail no low-lived skunk will keep him thar!”
“Good, good!” several voices exclaimed. The entire assemblage was on its feet. Hoag rose as if to demand order, but the purpose was drowned in the flood of dismay within him. He saw Welborne and his friends moving away. They were followed by others more or less slowly, who threw awkward backward glances at him. Presently only Purvynes and he remained.
The sentinel leaned on the barrel of his gun and chewed his tobacco slowly.
“I seed this thing a-comin' a long time back.” He spat deliberately, aiming at a stone at his feet. “They've talked too much behind your back to be true to your face. I can say it now, I reckon, for I reckon you want to understand the thing. Do you, or do you not?”
“Well, I don't know what to make of it,” Hoag said, with the lips of a corpse, the eyes of a dying man. “I simply don't!”
“Well, it's this a way,” Purvynes explained, with as much tact as he could command. “Welborne didn't tell it all. What really has rankled for a long time was that—they say, you understand—that you just kept this thing a-goin' for a sort o' hobby to ride on when you ain't off in Atlanta havin' a good time. They claim that you just love to set back an' give orders, an' preside like a judge an' be bowed an' scraped to. They say that, here of late, you hain't seemed to be alive to home interests or present issues. They claim the niggers are gittin' unbearable all around, an' that you are afraid they will rise an' burn some o' your property. They say you don't care how much the niggers insult white folks, an' that you'd rather see a decent farmer's wife scared by a black imp than lose one o' your warehouses or mills. They are goin' to reorganize to-morrow night. An' listen to me, Jim—” Hoag heard the man address him for the first time by his Christian name—“they are goin' to raise hell. An' that's whar you an' me come in.”
“Whar we come in? You don't think they would dare to—to—” Hoag began tremulously, and ended in rising dismay.