“Well, I do, if you don't, Cap. We are in, an' we are in deep. You have a curious way about you—you git so mad when things go ag'in' you that you won't admit facts when they are before you. As for me, I've been here thinkin' over it all momin'. It is nasty—the whole damn thing is nasty. The niggers are gittin' bold enough anyway, along with what the Atlanta papers have been sayin' in their favor, an' the Governor talkin' about orderin' troops out, an' the like, an' now this will simply stir up the State. We kin keep the main body of niggers down by what we done—what was done last night; but thar are some sly ones with white blood an' hell in 'em. We are all in danger. Look at this stable.” Trawley waved his damp handkerchief toward the big building and surrounding wagon-sheds. “One of the devils could sneak up here any night and set fire to all I got an' burn it to the ground. It is so dry it would go up like powder. I've got several thousand dollars' worth of vehicles, to say nothin' of live-stock that can't be driv' out at such a time, an' I don't carry insurance, because the rate is too high, owin' to the risk bein' so heavy; Land as for you—your tannery, house, cotton-gin, warehouse, an'—”
“Thar's no good talkin' about all that!” Hoag broke in, with a lowering frown. “We've got to do something, an' do it quick.”
“Wait a minute,” Trawley said. “I hear one o' them niggers whistlin' for me; it may be one o' our—one of—may be somebody lookin' for us now. Thar'll be excitement, big excitement, when it spreads about through the mountains.”
There was an oak in the yard which shaded the well, and Hoag went to the well and sat down on the end of a long dug-out watering-trough. He was beginning to perspire freely, and he took off his hat and fanned himself in a nervous, jerky fashion. His hands were damp, and on their red backs, and along his heavy wrists, the hairs stood like dank reeds in a miniature swamp. He was in high dudgeon; everything seemed to have turned against him. Tye's unconscious lecture and crude object-lessons, combined with the old man's spiritual placidity and saintly aloofness from the horrors he shrank from, were galling in the extreme. Then Trawley's fears that certain property might be destroyed by way of retaliation were worth considering; and, lastly, there was the humiliation of such a grave mistake becoming public, even though the perpetrators themselves might not be known. From where Hoag sat he could look into the stable, and he saw Trawley going from stall to stall showing the horses to a well-dressed stranger, who looked like a traveling salesman of the better class. Presently the man left the stable, and Trawley, still holding his stick and knife in hand, came back to Hoag.
“Damn fool from up North,” he explained, angrily. “Wanted to hire a rig an' hosses to go over the mountain, whar he's got some lumber interests. He talked to me like—I wish you'd a-heard 'im. I couldn't hardly pin 'im down to business, he was so full o' the hangin'. He happened to see 'em cut down the body an' haul it away. Of course, he had no idea that I—he seemed to lay it to a gang o' cutthroats from over whar he was to go, an' wondered if it would be safe for a Northern man to drive out unarmed an' without a bodyguard.”
“Why didn't you slap his jaw?” Hoag growled, inconsistently.
“Yes, an' had 'im ax what it was to me,” Trawley snarled. “I did, in a roundabout way, try to show up our side, an' what we have to contend with; but he just kept groanin', 'My Lord, my Lord,' an' sayin' that old woman an' her children was the pitifulest sight he ever saw! He said”—Trawley shrugged his shoulders and made a grimace as he tugged at his mustache—“he said all of us civilized citizens—them was his words—ought to band together an' 'force law an' order—that it was killin' our interests. He had been countin' on locatin' here, he said, but was afeard, when the thing got in the papers, his company would back out an' not develop their property. He seemed awfully put out. I tried to tell 'im that if he knowed niggers as we do he'd see it our way; but the truth is, I was so bothered over that dang tramp's arrest that—”
“I've been studyin' over that.” Hoag dismissed the stranger from his mind with a fierce frown. “There is only one thing to do. Set down here—set down!”
Sid complied. “If you can think of any way out o' the mess you can beat me,” he said, dejectedly.
“Thar is just one thing for us to do.” Hoag was to some extent regaining his self-possession, his old autocratic mien had returned. “You fellows are all goin' to git rattled an' somebody's got to keep a clear head an' plan how to act. The klan will naturally look to me; it is really on my shoulders; we'll sink or fall by my judgment. Some of us have got to git together to-night an' march over thar to the Canton jail an' take that tramp out.”