 15 I made pretty good time, and in a couple of days I was in Atlanta. I know the doctor must have gone back into some branch of the medicine game. The bottles told me that. I noted must be something that he needed some special kind of bottles for a tour, or he wouldn't have had them shipped all that distance, but would have bought them nearer. I seen I was a darn fool for rushing off and not inquiring what kind of bottles so I could trace what he was in too easier. It's hard work looking for a man in a good-sized town. I hung around hotel lobbies and places till I was tired of it, thinking he might come in. And I looked through all the office buildings, and read all the advertisements in the papers. Then the second day I was there, the State Fair started up, and I went out to it. I run across the couple I knowed out there the first thing. It was Wattie and the Snake Charmer Woman. Only she wasn't charming them now. Her and Wattie had a Parisian model show. I asked Wattie where Dali was. He says he don't know that Dali has quit him, by which I guess he means he has quit her. I asked where Reginald is, and the human ostrich. But from the way they answered my questions I seen I wasn't welcome none around there. I suppose that Mrs. Ostrich and Wattie had met up again somewheres, and had just naturally run off with each other and left their families. Like as not she had left poor old Reginald with that idiotic ostrich fella to sell to strangers that didn't know his disposition. Or maybe by now Reginald was turned loose in the open country to shift for himself, among wild snakes that never had no human education nor experience. And what chance would a friendly snake like Reginald have in a gang like that? Some women has just simply got no conscience at all about their husbands and families, and that there Mrs. Ostrich was one of them. Well, a fella can be a dirn fool sometimes. For all my looking around I wasted a lot of time before I thought of going to the one natural place. The freight depot of the road them bottles had been shipped by. I had lost a week coming down, but freight often loses more time than that, and it was at the freight depot that I found him. Tickled? Well, yes, both of us. Well, by George says he, you're good for sore eyes. Before he told me how he haven't not to have drowned it or blowed away or anything, he says we better fix up a bit, which he meant I better. So he buys me duds from head to heel and we goes to a Turkish bath place and I puts him on. And then we goes and eats, hearty. Now, he says, Fido, cut up, how did you find me? I told him about the bottles. A dead lost those bottles, he says. I wanted some non-refillable ones for a little scheme I had in mind, and I had to get them at a certain place. And now the scheme's up in the air and I can't use them. The doctor had changed some in looks in the year or more that had passed since I saw him floating away in that balloon, and not for the better. He told me how he had blowed clean across Lake Erie in that there balloon. And then when he got over land again and went to pull the cord that lets the parachute loose, it wouldn't work at first. He just naturally drifted on into the midst of nowhere, he said, miles and miles into Canada. When he lit the balloon, had lost so much gas and was flying so low that the parachute didn't open out quick enough to do much floating. So he lit hard and came near being knocked out for good. But that wasn't the worst of it, for the exposure had crawled into his lungs by the time he found a house, and he got pneumonia into them also and liked to have died. Whilst I was laying sick, he had been sick also, only hisen lasted much longer. But he tells me he's just naturally struck an idea for a big scheme. No little schemes go for him any more, he says. He wants money, real money. How are you going to get it, I asked him. Come along and I'll tell you, he says, we'll take a walk, and I'll show you how I got my idea. We left the restaurant, and I went along the Bragg Street of that town, which it is awful proud of, past where the store stops and the houses begins. We come to a fine looking house on a corner, a swell place it was, with lots of palms and ferns and plants setting on the veranda and showing through the windows, and stables back of it, and back of the stables, a big yard with noises coming from it like they were circus animals there, which I found out later they really was, yet for pets. You can tell the people that lived there had money. This, says Dr. Kirby as we walk by, is the house that Jackson built. Dr. Julius Jackson, old Dr. Jackson, the man with an idea. The idea made all the money you smell around here. What idea? The idea, the glorious humanitarian and philanthropic idea of taking the kinks and curls out of the hair of the Afro-American brother, says Dr. Kirby, at so much per kink. This Dr. Jackson, he says, sells what he calls anti-curl to the niggers. It is to straighten out their hair so it will look like white people's hair. There is millions and millions of niggers, and every nigger has millions and millions of kinks, and so Dr. Jackson has got rich at it. So rich he can afford to keep that their personal circus menagerie in his backyard for his little boy to play with, and many other interesting things. He must be worth two, three million dollars, Dr. Kirby says, and still are making it, with more niggers growing up all the time for to have their hair unkinked, especially mulattoes and yellow niggers. Dr. Kirby says, thinking what a great idea that anti-curl was to give him his own great idea. There is a gold-blind there, he says, and Dr. Julius Jackson has only scratched a little off the top of it, but he is going to dig deeper. Why is it that Afro-American brother buys anti-curl, he asks? Why, I asks. Because, he says, he wants to be as much like a white man as he possibly can. He strives to burst his births in vidious bar, Danny. They talk about progress and education for the Afro-American brother, and uplift and advancement, and industrial education, and manual training, and all that sort of thing, especially we Northerners. But what the Afro-American brother thinks about and dreams about and longs for and prays to be, when he thinks it all, is to be white. Education to his mind is learning to talk like a white man. Progress means aping the white man. Religion is dying and going to heaven and being a white angel. Listen to his prayers and sermons and you'll find that out. He'll do anything he can, or give anything he can, to get his Ethiopian grub hooks on for something that he thinks is going to make him more like a white man. Poor devil. Therefore the millions of Dr. Jackson anti-curl. All this Dr. Jackson anti-curl has discovered and thought out and acted upon. If he had gone just one step farther, the Afro-American brother would have hailed him as a greater man than Abraham Lincoln, or either of the Washington's, George or Booker. It remains for me, Danny, for us to carry the torture-head, to take up the work with the imagination of Dr. Jackson anti-curl has laid it down. How, asks I, we'll put up and sell the preparation to turn the Negroes white. That was his great idea. He was more excited over it than I ever seen him before about anything. It sounded like so easy a way to get rich it made me wonder why no one had ever done it before. If it could really be worked, I didn't believe much it could be worked. But Dr. Kirby, he says, he has begun his experiments already with arsenic. Arsenic, he says, will bleach anything. Only he is kind of afraid of arsenic, too. If he could only get hold of something that didn't cost much, and that would whiten them up for a little while, he says, it wouldn't make no difference if they did get black again. This here anti-curl stuff works like that. It takes the kinks out for a little while and they come back again. But that don't seem to hurt the sale none. It only calls for more of Dr. Jackson's medicine. The doctor takes me around to the place he boards at and shows me a nigger waiter he has been experimenting on. He had paid the niggers fine in a police court for slashing another nigger, some with a knife, and kept him from going into the chain gang. So the nigger agreed he could use his eye to try different kinds of medicines on. He was a velvety-looking chocolate-colored kind of nigger to start with, and the best Dr. Kirby had been able to do so fur-er was to make a few little liver-colored spots come on to him. But it was making the nigger sick, and the doctor was afraid to go too fur-er with it. For Sam might die and we would be at the expense of another nigger. Paroxide of Hittigan hadn't even phased him, nor a lot of other things we tried on to him. You never seen a nigger with his color running into him so deep as Sam's did. Sam, he was always apologizing about it too. You could see it made him feel real bad to think his color was so stubborn. He felt like it wasn't being polite to the doctor and me, Sam did, for his skin to act that away. He was a willing nigger, Sam was. The doctor, he says, he will find out the right stuff. If he has to start up a letter A and work Sam through every drug in the whole blame alphabet down to Z. Which he finally struck it. I don't exactly know what she had in her, but she was a mixture of some kind. The only trouble with her was she didn't work equal and even. Left Sam's face looking peeled and spotty in places, but still in them spots. Sam was six shades lighter. The doctor says that is just what he wants. That they're passing on to the next cage, we have the spotted Giro Cutter's look as he calls it. The chocolate brown on the lighter spot side by side, he says, makes a regular before and after out of Sam's face, and was the best advertisement you could have. And then we goes and has a talk with Dr. Jackson himself. Dr. Kirby has the idea maybe he will put some money into it. Dr. Jackson was sitting on his front veranda with his chair tilted back, and his feet with red carpet slippers on him was on the railing. And he was smoking one of those long black cigars that come each one in a little glass tube all by itself. He looks Sam over very thoughtful and he says, Yes, it will do the work well enough. I can see that. But will it sell? Dr. Kirby made him quite a speech. I never hear in him make a better one. Dr. Jackson, he listens very calm with his thumbs in the arm holes of his vest, and moving his eyebrows up and down like he enjoyed it. But he don't get excited none. Finally Dr. Kirby says he will undertake to show him that it will sell. Me and him will take a trip down into the black country ourselves and show what can be done with it and take Sam along for an object lesson. Well, there was a lot of rag chewing. Dr. Jackson don't warm up none. And he asked some million questions like how much it costs a bottle to make it. And what was our idea about how much it ought to sell for? He says, finally, if we can sell a certain number of bottles in so long a time, he will put some money into it. Only he says they will be a stock company and he will have to have 51% of the stock or he won't put no money into it. He says if things go well, he will let Dr. Kirby be manager of that company and let him have some stock in it too. And he will be president and treasurer of it himself. Dr. Kirby, he didn't like that and said so. Said he was going to organize that stock company and control it himself. But Dr. Jackson said he never put money into nothing he couldn't run, so it was settled we would give the stuff a try out and report to him. Before we went away from there it looked to me like Dr. Kirby and me was going to work furthest here, Dr. Jackson, instead of making all them their millions for ourselves, which I didn't take much to, that anti-curlman myself. He was so cold-blooded like. I didn't like the scheme itself any too well, neither. Not any way you could look at it. In the first place it seemed like a mean trick on the niggers, and then I didn't much believe we could get away with it. The more I looked him over, the more I seen Dr. Kirby had changed considerable. When I first knowed him, he liked to hear himself talking, and he liked to live free and easy, and he liked to be running around the country and all them things more and he liked to be making money. Of course he wanted it, but that wasn't the only thing he was into the sagro game fur. If he had money he was free with it and would help most anyone out of a hole, but he wasn't thinking it and talking it all the time then. Now he was thinking money and dreaming money and talking of nothing but how to get it, and planning to make it out of skinning them niggers. He didn't care a darn how he worked on their feelings to get it. He didn't even seem to care whether he killed Sam trying them drugs on to him. He wanted money, and he wanted it so bad he was ready and willing to take up with most any wild scheme to make it. There was something about him now that didn't fit in much with the Dr. Kirby I had known. It seemed like he had spells when he saw himself how he had changed. He wasn't gay and joking all the time like he had been before, neither. I guess the doctor was getting along toward fifty years old. I suppose he thought if he ever was going to get anything out of his gift of the gab, he'd better settle down to something and quit fooling around and do it right away. But it looked to me like he might never turn the trick, for he was drinking right smart all the time. Drinking made him think a lot, and thinking was making him look old. He was more and one year older than he had been a year ago. He kept a quart bottle in his room now. The night after we had took Sam to see Dr. Jackson, we were sitting in his room and he was hitting it pretty hard. Danny, he says to me after a while like he was talking out loud to himself too, what did you think of Dr. Jackson? I don't like him much, I says. Nor I, he says frowning and takes a drink. Then he says after quite a few minutes of frowning and thinking under his breath like, he's a blamesight more decent than I am for all of that. Why, I asked him. Because Dr. Jackson, he says, hasn't the least idea that he isn't decent and getting his money in a decent way, while at one time I was. He breaks off and don't say what he was. I asked him. I was going to say a gentleman, he says, but on reflection I doubt if I ever was anything but a cheap imitation. I never heard a man say that he was a gentleman at one time that I didn't doubt him. Also he goes on, working himself into a better humor again with the sound of his own voice. If I had ever been a gentleman at any time, enough of it would surely have stuck to me to keep me out of partnership with a man who cheats niggers. He takes another drink and says even twenty years of running around the country couldn't have took all the gentleman out of him like this, if he had ever been one. For you can break, you can scatter the vase, if you will, but the smell of the roses will stick round it still. I see now the kind of conversations he is always having with himself when he gets just so drunk and is thinking hard. Only this time it happens to be out loud. What is a gentleman, I asked him, thinking, if he wasn't one it might take his mind off himself a little to tell me. What makes one? Authorities differer, says Dr. Kirby, slouching down in his chair, and grinning like he noted joke he wasn't going to tell no one. I heard Dr. Jackson describe himself that way the other day. Well speaking, personal, I never had smelled none of roses. I wasn't nothing but trash myself, so being a gentleman didn't bother me one way or the other. The only reason I didn't want to see them niggers bunked so very bad was only just because it was such a low-down, ornery kind of trick. It ain't too late, I says, to pull out of this nigger scheme yet and get into something more honest. I don't know, he says, thoughtful. I think perhaps it is too late. And he sits there looking like a man that is going over a good many years of his life in his mind. Pretty soon, he says, as far as honesty goes, it isn't that so much. Oh, Daniel, come to judgment. It's about as honest as most medicine games. It's— He stopped and frowned again. What is it? It's there being niggers, he says. That made the difference for me, too. I don't know how nor why. I tried nearly everything but blackmail, he says, and I'll probably be trying that by this time next year, if this scheme fails. But there's something about there being niggers that makes me sick of this thing already, just as the time has come to make the start, and I don't know why it should either. He slipped another big slug of whiskey into him, and pretty soon he asks me, Do you know what's the matter with me? I asks him what. I'm too decent to be a crook, he says, and too crooked to be decent. You've got to be one thing or the other steady to make it pay. And then he says, Did you ever hear of the dissent to Avernus, Danny? I'm my, I tells him, and then again I'm mightn't. But if I ever did, I don't remember what she is. What is she? It's the chute to the infernal regions, he says. They say it's greased. But it isn't. It's really no easier sliding down than it is climbing back. Well, I seen this nigger scheme of iron weren't the only thing that was troubling Dr. Kirby that night. It was thinking of all the schemes like it in the years past he went into, and how he had went into him light-hearted and mourn half for fun when he was a young man, and now he wasn't fitting for nothing else but them kind of schemes, and he known it. He was seeing himself how he had been changing like another person could have seen it. That's the main trouble with drinking to forget yourself. You forget the wrong part of yourself. I left him pretty soon, and went along to bed. My room was next to hisen, and there was a door between so the two could be rented together as they wanted. I suppose. I went to sleep and woke up again with a start out of a dream that had in it millions and millions and millions of niggers everywhere you looked, and their mouths was all open red in their eyes, walled white, fit to scare you out of your shoes. I hear in Dr. Kirby moving around in his room that pretty soon he sets down and begins to talk to himself. Everything else was quiet. I was kind of worried about him. He had taken so much, and hoped he wouldn't get a notion to go downtown that time of night. So I think I will see how he is acting and steps over to the door between the rooms. The key happened to be on my side, and I unlocked it. But he only opens a little ways, for his wash stand was near to the hinge end of the door. I looked through. He is sitting by the table looking at a woman's picture that is propped up on it, and talking to himself. He has never here in me opened the door. He is so interested, but somehow he don't look drunk. He looks like he had fought his way up out of it somehow. His forehead was sweaty and there was one intoxicated lock of hair sticking to it. But that was the only unsober looking thing about him. I guess his legs would have been unsteady if he had tried to walk, but his intellects was uncomfortable and sober. He is still keeping up that same argument with himself, or with the picture. It isn't any use, I hear in him say, looking at the picture. Then he listened, like he hear in it answering him. Yes, you always say just that. Just that, he says, and I don't know why I keep on listening to you. The way he talked and harkened for an answer, when there was nothing there to answer, gave me the creeps. You don't help me, he goes on. You don't help me at all. You only make it harder. Yes, this thing is worse than the others. I know that. But I want money. And full things like this have sometimes made it. No, I won't give it up. No, there's no use making any more promises now. I know myself now, and you ought to know me by this time, too. Why can't you let me alone all together? I should think when you see what I am, you'd let me be. God help you. If you'd only stay away, it wouldn't be so hard to go to hell. Then his own story, by Don Marquis, Chapter 16. There's a lot of counties in Georgia where the blacks are equal in numbers to the whites, and two or three counties where the blacks number over the whites by two to one. It was for a little town in one of the letter that we pointed ourselves, Dr. Kirby and me and Sam, right into the blackest part of the black belt. That country is full of big sized plantations where they raise cotton, cotton, cotton, and then more cotton. Some of them raises fruit, too, and other things, of course, but cotton is the main standby, and it looks like it always will be. Some places there shows that things can't be so awful much changed since slavery days, and most of the niggers are sure enough country niggers yet. Some rents the land right out from the owners, and some of them crops it on the shares, and very many of them just works as hands. A lot of them don't do nice or well now as they did when their bosses was their masters, they tell me. And then again, some have done right well on their own hook. They interested me, because I never had been used to looking at so many niggers. Everywhere you turn, there is niggers, and then more niggers. Them that thinks they is awful easy to handle, out of a natural respect for white folks, has got another gas coming. They ain't so bad to get along with if you keep it most pointedly shoved into the heads, they is niggers. You got to do that especially in the black belt, just because they is so many of them. They is children all their lives, maybe. Till some one minute of craziness may strike one of them, and then he's a devil temporary. Maybe, when the crazy fit has passed, some white woman is worse off than if she was dead. Or maybe she is dead. Or maybe a lunatic for life. And that nigger is a candidate for a lynching bee, and generally elected by an anonymous majority. Not that all niggers is that way. No half of them. Not very many of them even. But you can never tell which nigger is going to be. So in the black belt, the white folks is mighty particular who comes along fooling with their niggers. For you can never tell what turn a nigger's thoughts will take once anything at all stirs him up. We didn't know them things then, Dr Kirby and me didn't. We didn't know we was moving light-hearted right into the middle of the biggest question that has ever been asked. Which I just remember exactly, how that nigger question is worded, but there is always asking it in the south, and answering of it different ways. We had no idea how suspicious the white people in them awful black spots on the map can get over anyone that comes along talking to the niggers. We didn't know anything about niggers much, being both from the north, except what Dr Kirby had counted on when he made his medicine, and that he knowed second-hand from other people. We didn't take him very serious, nor all the talk we heard about him down south. But even at that we mightn't have got into any trouble if it hadn't of been for old Bishop Warren, but that is getting ahead of the story. We got into that little town on my chest as well called Cottonville, just about supper time. Cottonville is a little place of not more than 600 people. I guess 400 of them must be niggers. After supper we got acquainted with Party Nigh, all the prominent citizens in town. They was friendly with us, and we was friendly with them. Georgia had just went for prohibition a few months before that, and they hadn't opened up these here-near-beer barrooms in the little towns yet, like they had in Atlanta and the big towns. Georgia had went prohibition so the niggers couldn't get whiskey, some said. But others said they didn't know what its excuse was. Them prominent citizens was loafing around the hotel, and every now and then inviting each other very mysterious into a back-room that used to be a pool-parlor. They had been several chucks, come to town by express that day. We went back several times ourselves, and soon began to get along pretty well with them prominent citizens. Talking about this and that they finally edges around to the one thing everybody is sure to get talking about sooner or late in the south. Niggers. And then they get so telling us about this here Bishop Warren I has mentioned. He was a nigger bishop, Bishop Warren was, and had a good deal of white blood into him, they say. And as she called it, nigger, with bumps on his face, fed as a possum, and as cunning as a fox. He had plenty of brains into his head too. But his brains had turned sour in his head the last few years, and the bishop had crazy streaks running through his sense now, like fat and lean mixed in a slab of bacon. He used to be friends with a lot of big white folks, and the whites depended on him at one time to preach orderliness, and obedience, and agriculture, and being in their place to the niggers. For years they thought he breached that away. He always did breach that away. When any whites was around. And he sat on platforms, sometimes with white breaches, and he got good donations from schemes of different kinds. But gradually the suspicion got around that when he was alone with a lot of niggers, his nigger blood would get the best of him, and what he breached wasn't white supremacy at all, but hopefulness of being equal. So the whites had fell away from him, and then his graph was gone, and then his brains turned sour in his head, and got to working and fermenting in it like cider getting hard, and he made a few bad breaks by not being careful what he said before white people. But the niggers liked him all the better for that. They always had been more or less hell in the bishop's head. He had brains and he noted, and the white folks had let him see, they noted too, and he was part white, and his white forefathers had been big men in their day, and yet, in spite of all of that, he had to hurt with niggers and to pretend he liked it. He was both white and black in his feelings about things, so some of his feelings counted dictated others, and one of these, he raised riots, went on all the time in his own insights. But gradual, he got to the place where there were spells he hated both whites and niggers, but he hated the whites the worst. And now, in the last two or three years, since his crazy streaks had grown, as big as his sensible streaks, or bigger, there was no telling what he would preach to the niggers. But whatever he preached, most of them would believe. It might be something crazy and harmless, or it might be crazy and harmful. He had been holding some revival meetings in nigger charges, right there in that very county, and was it not further away, from there right then? The idea had got around, he was preaching some most unusual foolishness to the blacks, for the niggers was all acting like they knowed something too good to mention to the white folks, all about there. But some white man had gone to one of the meetings, and the bishop had preached one of his old time summons, whilst there was there. Telling the niggers to be orderly and agricultural, he was considerable of a fox yet. But he, and the rest of the niggers, was so giant anxious, to be thought agricultural and servitude-iness, that the whites smelled the red, and wished he would go, for they didn't want to chase him without they had to. Just when he was getting along fine, one of the prominent citizens asked, the doctor, was we there figuring on buying some land? No, says the doctor. We wasn't. They were silent for quite a little spell. Each prominent citizen had maybe had his hopes of unloading them. They all looked a little sad, and then another prominent citizen asked us into the backroom again. When we returned to the front room, another prominent citizen makes a little speech, that was quite beautiful to hear, and says, maybe we represent some new concern, that ain't never been in them parts, and is figuring on buying cotton. No, the doctor says. We ain't cotton buyers. Another prominent citizen has the idea, maybe we is figuring on one of these, here in the room trolley lines, so the rubes in one village can ride over, and visit the rubes in the next. And another one thinks, maybe we is figuring on a telephone line. And each one makes a very eloquent little speech, about them things. And drinks in something about our fair south end. And when both of them misses their gas, it is time for another visit to the backroom. Was we selling something? We was. Was we selling fruit trees? We wasn't. Finally, after everyone has a chew of natural leaf tobacco all around, one prominent citizen makes a bold as to ask us, very courteous, if you might inquire what it was we was selling. The doctor says, medicine. Then there was a slow grin went around that, the crowd of prominent citizens. And once again, we has to make a trip to that backroom. For they are all sure we must be taking orders for something to beat that dare, prohibition game. When he misses that gas, they all gets kind of thoughtful and sad. A couple of them don't take no more interest in us, but goes along home, sighing like, as if it was no difference what we sold, as long as it wasn't what he was looking for. But very soon, one of them asks, what kind of medicine? The doctor, he tells about it. When he finishes, he never seen such a change as had come onto the faces, of that bunch. I never seen such disgusted prominent citizens in my whole life. They looked at each other embarrassed, like they had been catched at something ornery. And they went out, one at a time, saying good night to the hotel keeper, and in the most pointed way, taking no notice of us at all. It certainly was a chill. We see something is wrong, and we begin to have a notion of what it is. The hotel keeper, he spits out his chew, and goes behind his little counter, and takes a five cent cigar out of his little showcase, and bites the end of, careful. Then he leans his elbows onto his counter, and reads our names to himself, out of the register book, and looks at us. And from us, to the names. And from the names, to us. Like he is trying to figure out how he come to let us ride him there. Then he wants to know where we come from, before we come to Atlanta, where we had registered from. We tells him, we is from the north. He louts his cigar, like he didn't think much of that cigar, and sticks it in his mouth, and looks at us so long, in an absent-minded kind of way, it goes out. Then he says, we ought to go back north. Why? asked the doctor. He chewed his cigar, purting-eye, up to the middle of it, before he answered. And when he spoke, it was a soft kind of troll, not mad or loud, but like there were sorrowful thoughts working him. You all unstuck the war's path, or the south, to peddle your nigger medicine in, sa. I reckon, you must love him a heap, to be dead concerned over the color of their skins. And he turned his back on us, and went into the back room, all by himself. We seen, we wasn't wrong in that town. The doctor says, it will be no use trying to introduce our staff there, and we might as well leave there, in the morning, and go over to Burdstown, which was a little place about ten miles off the railroad, and make our staff there. So we got a rig, the next morning, and drove across the country. No one bid us good-bye neither, and Dr. Kirby says, it's a wonder, they rented us the rig. But before we started the morning, we noticed a funny thing. We hadn't so much as spoke to any nigger, except our own nigger Sam. And he couldn't have told all the niggers in that town about the staff to turn niggers white, even if he had set up all night to do it. But every last nigger we saw looked like he notes something about us, even after we left town, our nigger driver hailed two or three niggers in the road that acted that way. It seemed like they was all awful polite to us, and yet, they was different in their politeness, than they was to them Georgia folks, which is the natural bombosses, acted more familiar somehow, as if they note we must be thinking about the same thing they was thinking about. About half way to Birdstone we stopped at the place to get a drink of water. Seemingly the white hoax was away for the day, and an old nigger come up and talk to our driver, while Sam and us was at the well. I seen them cutting their eyes at us, whilst they was unchecking the hosses, to let them drink too, and then I heard the one that belonged to say, Is your sewer that heat air them? Soar, says the driver. How come your so all-powerful sewer about it? The driver pretended the harness needed some fixing, and he went around to the other side of the team, and tinkered with one of the tracers, are talking to each other. I heard the old nigger say, kind of wanderized. Is there a grinder now? Sam, he was pulling a bucket of water up out of the well for us, with a windlass. The doctor says to him, Sam, what does all this mean? Sam, he pretends he didn't know what the doctor is talking about, but Dr. Kirby, he finally pins him down. Sam hemmed and hard, considerable, making up his mind whether he better lie to us or not. Then, all of a sudden, he buzzed it out into an awful fit of laughing, and liked to a fell in the well. Seemingly, he decided for to tell us the truth. From what Sam says, that the bishop has been holding revival meetings in big Bethel, which is a nigger church right on the edge of Birdstown, and niggers for miles around has been coming night after night, and some of them whooping her up day times too. And the bishop has worked himself up the last three or four nights to where he has been predicting and prophesying, for the spirit has hit the meeting hard. What he has been prophesying, Sam says, is the coming of a messiah for the nigger race, a new Alicia, he says, as will lead them from out in their inequality and bring them up to white standards right on the spot. The whites has had their messiah, the bishop says, but the niggers ain't never had none of their special own yet, and they NEEDS one bad, and one is sure a coming. It seems the whites don't know yet just what the bishop's been abrading, but every nigger for miles on every side of Big Bethel is a listening, and a looking for signs and omens, and has been for two, three days now. This year half-crazy bishop has gotten worked up to where he is ready to believe anything or do anything. So the night before, when the word got out in Cottonville, that we had some scheme to make the niggers white, the niggers there took up with the idea that the doctor was maybe the fellow the bishop had been prophesying about, and for a sign and the omen and the miracle of his grace and powers was going out to Big Bethel to turn them white. They didn't see, but what being turned white ought to be a part of what they was to get from the coming of that their messiah. News spreads among niggers quicker than among whites. No one knows how they do it, but I've heard tales about how, when war times was there, they would frequent have the news of a big fight before the white folk's papers would. Soldiers has told me that in them their Philippine islands were conquered from Spain, where there is so much nigger blood mixed up with all kinds in the islandless. This mysterious spreading around of news is just the same. And just since nine o'clock the night before, the news had spread for miles around that Bishop Warren's messiah was on his way, and was going for to turn the bishop white to show his power and grace, and he had with him one he had turned part white, and that was Sam, and one he had turned clear white, and that was me. And they was to be signs and wonders to behold at big battle, with pillars of cloud and sirens of dampets, and fires squirting down from heaven, like it always used to be in them old Bible days, and them the niggers to be led singing and shouting, and rejoicing into a land of milk and honey, for evermore. Amen. That's what Sam says they are looking for, dozens and scores and hundreds of the niggers round about. Sam, he had lived in town five or six years, and he looked down on all these here, ignore almost country niggers. So he bust out laughing at first, and he pretends, like it don't take no stock in any of it. Besides, he knowed well enough he wasn't spotted up by no messiah, but it was a dope in the bottles done it. But as he told about them going on, Sam got more and more interested and warmed up to it, and his voice went into a kind of a sing-song, like he was prophesying himself. And the other niggers quit pretending to fool around the team, and edged a little closer to, and a little closer to yet, with the mouths open, and the heads are nodding, and the whites of their eyes are rolling. For my part, I never heard such a lot of darn foolishness in all my life. But the doctor, he says nothing at all. He listens to Sam ranting, and rolling out big words, and raving, and only frowns. He climbs back into the buggy again, silent, and all the rest of the way to Birdstown, he sat there with the scowl on his face. I guess as he was thinking there, the way things had shaped up, he wouldn't sell none of his stuff at all, without he were right in, with the reception chance had planned for him. But if he did fall in with it, and pretend like he was a messiah, to them niggers, he could get all they had. He was maybe thinking, how much an area that would make the whole scheme. End of Chapter 16. Recording by Jule Niedermeyer. Recording by Kay Hand. Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis. We got to Birdstown early enough, but we didn't go to work there. We wasted all that day. They was something working in the doctor's head he wasn't talking about. I suppose he was getting cold feet on the whole proposition. Anyhow, he just sat around the little tavern in that place and done nothing all afternoon. The weather was fine, and we set out in front. We hadn't set there more than an hour till I could tell what was being noticed by the blacks, not out open and above board. But every now and then one or two or three would pass along down the street, and lazy about, and take a look at us. They pretended they wasn't noticing, but they was. The word had got around, and there was a feeling in the air I didn't like at all. Too much caged up excitement among the niggers. The doctor felt it too, I could see that. But neither one of us said anything about it to the other. Along toward dusk we take us a walk. There was a good-sized creek at the edge of that little place, and on it an old-fashioned water mill. Above the mill a little piece was a bridge. We crossed it and walked along a road that followed the creek bank close to fir quite a spell. It wasn't much of a town, something betwixt a village and settlement, although they was going to run a branch of the railroad over to it before very long. It had had a chance to get a railroad once, years before that, but it had said then it didn't want no railroad, so until lately every branch built through that part of the country grinned very sarcastic and give it the go-by. There was considerable woods standing along the creek, and around a turn in the road we come unto Sam, all of a sudden, talking with another nigger. Sam was just a-landed off to that nigger, but he kind of hushed as we come nearer. Down the road quite a little piece was a good-sized wooden building that had never been painted and looked like it was a big barn. Without knowing it the doctor and me had been pintting ourselves right toward big Bethel. The nigger with Sam yells out when he sees us, Glory be! Hayaday comes! Hayaday comes now! And he throwed up his arms and started on a lope up the road toward the church, singing out every ten or fifteen yards. A little knotted niggers come out in front of the church when they hear in him coming. Sam, he stood his ground and waited for us to come up to him, kind of apologetic and sneaking, looking about something or other. What kind of lies have you been telling these niggers, Sam, says the doctor, very sharp and short and mad like? Sam, he digs a stone out in the road with the toe of a shoe, kind of grins to himself, still looking sheepish. But he says he opinionates he's been telling them nothing at all. I don't know how comes they get all them nigger notions in their full head, Sam says, but they all waitin' to our inside the church, though. Some of the most faithful and the most prayerful ones at a big Bethel congregation been there for the last hour, a waitin' and a watchin', spite of the fact that regular meetin' ain't going to be called twill after supper. Debyship heed our too. They got some of these Hayekolile lamp-star does inside the church, though, nine times for two days now, because they say they ain't going to for it to be caught to nappin' when the bridegroom cometh. Yes, Sam, there's ten of these Hayek virgins there, five of them sleepin' and five of them watchin' and takin' tons at hit, and maybe that how come free of folly de best young colored men's been pro-jickin' round, dar, all afternoon, a helpin' dem that's a waitin' twill the bridegroom cometh. We seen a little knot of them, down the road, there in the front of the church, gatherin' round the nigger that had been with Sam. They all start towards us, but one man steps out in front of them all and turns toward them and holds his hands up and waves them back. They all stops in their tracks. Then he turns his face towards us and comes slow and solemn down the road in our direction, walking with a cane and moving very dignified. He was a couple of hundred yards away. But as he came closer we gradually seen him planer and planer. He was a big man in stout, and dressed very neat in the same kind of rig as white bishops wear, with one of these white collars that buttons in the back. I suppose he was comin' on to meet us alone, because no one was fitin' for to give us the first welcome but himself. Well, it was all darn foolishness, and it was hard to believe that it could all happen, and there ain't so many places in this here country it could happen. But for all of it bein' foolishness, when he come down the road toward us so dignified and solemn and slow, I catched myself for a minute feelin' like we really had been elected to something and was goin' to take office soon. And Sam, as the bishop came closer and closer, got to jerkin' and twitchin' with the excitement that he had been keepin' in. And yet all the time, Sam knowed it was dope and works and not faith that had made him spotted that away. He stops, the bishop does, about ten yards from us and looks over. I owed a gentleman, known to this here sinful generation, by the style and the entitlement of Dr. Hotley Kirby. He asked the doctor, very ceremonious and grand. The doctor gave him a look that wasn't very encouraging, but he nodded to him. Were you a dismissious servant in order that we can hold converse and communion into mist or privacy? The doctor nods to Sam, and Sam mows his along toward the church. Now then, says the doctor, sudden sharp, take off your hat and tell me what you want. The bishop's hand goes up to his head with a jerk before he thought. Then it stops there, while him and the doctor looks at each other. The bishop's mouth opens like he was wondering, but he slowly pulls his hat off and stands there bare-headed in the road. But he wasn't really humble, that bishop. Now, says the doctor, tell me, in as straight talk as you've got, what all this damned foolishness among you niggers means. A queer kind of look passed over the bishop's face. He hadn't been expected to be met just that way, maybe. Whether he himself had really believed in the coming of that there new messiah he had been predicted. I never could settle my mind. Maybe he had been getting ready to pass himself off, for one, before we come along and the niggers got all the full idea Dr. Kirby was it. Before the bishop spoke again, you could see his craziness and his cunningness, both working in his face. But when he did speak, he didn't quit being ceremonious nor dignified. DeWood has gone forth among defaithful and a pure and hot, he says. That a man has come accredited with signs and with marvels, and to power a spirit for to lay his hands on the sun a ham, and to make them dust the same in color as your sons of earth. Then that word is a lie, says the doctor. I did come here to try out some stuff to change the color of negro skins. That's all. And I find your idiotic followers are all stirred up and waiting for some kind of miracle monger. What you have been preaching to them you know best. Is that all you want to know? The bishop hems and haws and fiddles with a stick, and then he says, Sir, will dish your preparation surely due to work? Dr. Kirby tells him it will do the work all right. And then the bishop, after beating around the bush some more, comes out with his idea. Whether he expected there would be any messiah come or not, of course he knowed the doctor wasn't him. But he is willing to boost the doctor's game as long as it boosts his game. He wants to be in on the deal. He wants part of the graft. He wants to get together with the doctor on a plan before the doctor sees the niggers. And if the doctor don't want to keep on with the miracle end of it, the bishop shows him how he could do him good with no miracle attachment. For he has an awful halt on them niggers, and his say so will sell thousands and thousands of bottles. What he is looking for just now is his little takeout. That was his craftiness and his cunningness working in him. But all of the sudden one of his crazy streaks came bulging to the surface. It come with a wild eager look in his eyes. Sir, he cries out, all of a sudden. If you can make me white for God's sakes, do it. Do it. If you does, I go in to bless you all your days. You don't know, no one can guess or comprehend. What this being white would mean to me. Lord, Lord, he says. His voice soft-spoken, but more eager than ever as he went on and pleading something pitiful to hear. Just think about a Caucasian blood in me. God knows the nights of my youth. As light awake till the dawn come in red and to ease a crying out to him to only for to be white. Just to be white. Don't mind them black, black niggers, Dar. Don't thinker them. They ain't worth nothing nor fitting for no fate but what they got. But me. What's done kept me from going to the top but that one thing. I wasn't white. It air too late now. Too late for them ambitions I'd done trifle with and shove behind me. It's too late for that. But if I was just to get one little year of it, one little year of being white before I died. And he went on like that, shaking and stuttering there in the road like a fit had struck him, crazy as a loon. But he got hold of himself enough to quit talking in a minute, and his cunning came back to him before he was through trembling. Then the doctor says, slow and even, but not severe. You go back to your people now, Bishop, and tell them they've made a mistake about me. And if you can, undo the harm you've done with this Messiah business. As far as this stuff of mine is concerned, there's none of it for you, nor for any other Negro. You tell them that. There's none of it been sold yet, and there never will be. Then we turned away and left him standing there in the road, still with his hat off and his face working. Walking back toward the little tavern, the doctor says, Danny, this is the end of the game. These people down here in that half-cracked, half-crooked old bishop had made me see a few things about the Afro-American brother. It wasn't a good scheme in the first place, and this wasn't the place to start it going anyhow. I should have tried the niggers in the big towns. But I'm out of it now, and I'm glad of it. What we want to do is to get away from here tomorrow, go back to Atlanta and fix up a scheme to rob some widows in orphans, or something halfway respectable like that. Well, I drew a long breath. I was with Dr. Kirby and everything he'd done, for he was my friend, and I didn't intend to quit him. But I was glad we was out of this, and hadn't sold none of that dope. We both felt better because we hadn't. All them millions we was going to make, shucks. We didn't either one of us give a durn about them getting away from us. All we wanted was just to get away from there and not get mixed up with no nigger problems any more. We eat supper, and we sit around awhile, and we went to bed pretty midland-early, so as to get a good start in the morning. We got up early. But early as it was, the devil had been up earlier in that neighborhood. About four o'clock that morning a white woman, about a half a mile from the village, had been attacked by a nigger. There was doubt as to whether she would live, but if she lived, there wasn't no doubt she would always be more or less crazy. For besides everything else, he had beat her insensible, and he had choked her nearly to death. The countryside was up, with guns and pistols looking for that nigger. There wasn't no trouble guessing what would happen to him when they catched him, neither. And, says Dr. Kirby when we heard of it, I hope to high heaven they do catch him. There wasn't much doubt they would, either. They was already beaten up the woods and bushes and gangs was riding up and down the roads, and every nigger's house for miles was being searched and watched. We soon seen we would have trouble getting hosses and a rig in the village to take us to the railroad. Many of the hosses was being ridden in the manhunt, and most of the men who might have done the driving was busy at that, too. The hotel keeper himself had left his place standing wide open and went out. We didn't get any breakfast, neither. Danny, says the doctor, will just put enough money to pay the bill and an envelope on the register here and strike out on shank ponies. It's only nine or ten miles to the railroad. We'll walk. But how about our stuff, I asked him. We had two big cases full of sample bottles of that dope, besides our suitcases. Hanging the dope, says the doctor, I don't ever want to see it or hear of it again. We'll leave it here. Put the things out of your suitcase into mine and leave that here, too. Sam can carry mine. I want to be on the move. So we left with Sam carrying the one suitcase. It wasn't nine in the morning yet, and we was starting out pretty empty for a long walk. Sam, says the doctor, as we was passing that there big Bethel church, and it showed up there silent and shabby in the morning, like a old-colored man that knows a heap more than he's going to tell. Sam, were you at that meeting here last night? Yes, sir. I suppose it was a pretty tame affair after they found out that Elisha wasn't coming after all? Sam, he walled his eyes and then he kind of chuckled. Well, sir, he says, I spitions to most on of them don't know that yet. The doctor asks him what he means. It seems the bishop must have done some thinking after we left him in the road or on his way back to that church. They had all begun to believe that their Elisha was on their way to them, and the bishop's credit was more or less wrapped up with R being it. It was true he hadn't started that belief, but it was believed and he didn't dares to stop it now. For if he stopped it, they would all think he had fell down on his prophetic, even although he hadn't prophesied just exactly us. He was in a tight place that bishop, and I bet you could always depend on him to get out of it with his flock. So what he told them niggers at the meeting last night was that he brung him a message from Elisha, Sam says, that Elisha was to come. And the message was that the time was not ripe for him to reveal himself as Elisha unto the eyes of all men, for they had been too much sinfulness and wickedness in walking into the ways of evil right amongst that very congregation and disobedience of the bishop which was their guide. And he had sent him word Elisha had, that the bishop was his trusted servant, and into the keeping of the bishop was give the power to deal with his people and prepare them for the great day to come. And the bishop would give the word of his coming. He was a box, that bishop was, if in spite of his crazy streaks, and he had found a way to make himself stronger than ever with his bunch out of the very kind of thing that would have spoiled most people's graft. They had had a big meeting till nearly morning, and the power had hit him strong, Sam told us all about it. But the thing that seemed to interest the doctor, and made him frown, was the idea that all them niggers round about there still had the idea he was the feller that had been prophesied to come. All except Sam, maybe. Sam had spells when he was real sensible, and other spells when he was as bad as the believingest of them all. It was a fine day, and really joyous to be a walkin'. It would have been a good deal joyous, sir, if we had had some breakfast, but we figured we would stop somewheres at noon and lay in a good square country meal. That wasn't such a very thick settled country, but everybody seemed to know about the manhunt that was going on here, there, and everywhere. People would come down to the roadside as we passed and gazed after us, or maybe asked us if we had known whether he had been catched yet. Women and kids mostly are old men, but now in that a younger man, too. We noticed there wasn't no niggers to speak of that wasn't busy or not get out workin' at somethin' or other that day. There is a considerable woods in that country yet, though lots has been cut off, but there was sometimes right long stretches where there would be woods on both sides of the road, more or less thick, with underbrush between the trees. We tramped along, each busy thinkin' his own thoughts, and havin' a pretty good time just doin' that without there bein' no use of talkin'. I was thinkin' that I liked the doctor better for turnin' his back on all this gain, just when he might've made some sort of deal with the bishop and really made some money out of it in the end. He was never so good a businessman as he thought he was, Dr. Kirby wasn't. He always could make himself think he was, but when it came right down to brass tax he wasn't. He'd give him a scheme that would talk well, the kind of a Josh talk he liked to get off for his own enjoyment, and he would take up with it every time instead of one that had more promise of money to it if it was worked harder. He was thinkin' of the talk more than he was of the money, mostly, and he was always sayin' somethin' about art for art's sake, which was a plumb foolishness, for he never painted no pictures. Well, he never got over bein' more or less of a puzzle to me, but for some reason or other this morning he seemed to be in a better humor with himself after we had walked awhile than I had seen him in for a long time. We come to the top of one long hill, which it had made a sweat to climb, and without sayin' nothin' to each other we both stopped and took off our hats and wiped our foreheads, and drawed long breaths, content to stand there for just a minute or two and look around us. The road runs straight ahead and dipped down, and then clump up another hill about an eighth of a mile in front of us. It made a little valley. Just about the middle, between the two hills, a creek meandered through the bottom land. Woods growed along the creek, and along both sides of the road we was travelin'. Right, nigh the creek, there was another road come out of the wood to the left-hand side, and switched into the road we was travelin' and used the same bridge across the creek by. There was three or four houses here and there, with chimblies built up on the outside of them and blue smoke comin' out. We stood and looked at the site before us, and forgot all the troubles we had left behind for a couple minutes. It all looked so peaceful and quiet, and home-ified, and nice. Well, says the doctor, after we had stood there apiece, I guess we better be movin' on again, Danny. But just as Sam, who was fallin' along behind with that suitcase, picks it up and puts it on his head again, they come a sound, from away off in the distance somewhere, that made him set it down quick. And we all stops in our tracks and looks at each other. It was the voice of a hound-dog, not so awful-loud, but clear and mellow and tuneful, and it carried to us on the wind. And then in a minute it come again, sharper and quicker. They yells, like that, when they have struck a scent. As we have stood and looked at each other, they come a crackle in the underbrush just to the left of us. We turned our heads that away, just as a nigger-man gave leap to the top of the rail-fence that separated the road from the woods. He was goin' so fast that instead of climbin' the fence and balancein' on top and jumpin' off, he simply seemed to hit the top rail and bounce on over, like he had been thrown out of the heart of the woods, and he fell sprawlin' over and over in the road right before our feet. He was onto his feet in a second, and for a minute he stood up straight and looked at us. An ashes-colored nigger, ragged and bleedin' from the underbrush, red-eyed, and with slavers tricklin' from his red lips, and sobbin' and gaspin' and patin' for breath. Under his brown skin, where his shirt was torn open across his chest, you could see that nigger's heart a-beatin'. But as he looked at us, they come a sudden change across his face. He must have seen the doctor before, and with a sabb he throwed himself on his knees in a road and clasped his hands and held him out toward Dr. Kirby. Elisha! Elisha! he sings out, rocking of his body in a kind of a tomb. Reveal yourself, reveal yourself, and help me now! Lord God, Elisha, beckon for the chariot, your chariot of fire! Lift me, lift me, lift me away from here in your chariot of fire! The doctor, he turned his head away, and I knowed the thought workin' in him was the thought of that white woman that would always be an idiot for life if she lived. But his lips was dumb, as one hand stretched itself out toward that nigger in the road, and made a wiping motion, like he was tryin' for to wipe the picture of him, and the thought of him, often a slate for evermore. Just then, nearer and louder and sharper, and with an eager sound, like they knowed they almost had him now, them hounds voices come ringin' through the woods, and with them come the mixed-up shouts of men. Run, yell Sam, wavin' of that suitcase round his head, for one nigger will always try to help another, no matter what he's done. Run foot a branch, get ya' foots into water, and fling him off to scent. He bounded down the hill, that red-eyed nigger, and left us standin' there. But before he reached the quick, the whole manhunt came bustin' through the woods, the dogs was straining at their straps. The men was all on foot, with guns and pistols in their hands. They seen the nigger, and they all let out a yell, and was after him. They catched him at the crick, and took him off along the road that turned off to the left. I heard later he was a member of Bishop Warren's congregation, so they hung him right in front of the big Bethel church. We stood there on top of the hill, and saw the chase and capture. Dr. Kirby's face was sweating worse than when we first climbed the hill. He was thinkin' about that nigger that had pleaded with him. He was thinkin' also of the woman. He was glad it hadn't been up to him personal right then and there, to butt in and stop a lynching. He was glad, for with them two pictures in front of him he didn't know what he would have done. Thank heaven, I heard him say to himself, thank heaven that it wasn't really in my power to choose. CHAPTER XVIII. Well, we had pork and greens for dinner that day, with the best corn bread I ever eat anywhere, and butter milk and sweet potato pie. We got him at the house of a fella named Wither's, old daddy Wither's, which, if they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer old woman than his wife, I never run across them yet. They lived all alone, then Wither's is, with only a couple of niggers to help them run their farm. After we eat our dinner and Sam gets hisin' out to the kitchen, we sets out in front of the house, and gets to talkin' with them, and gets real well acquainted. Which we soon found out, the secret of old daddy Wither's is life, that they are innocent, lookin' old jigger was a poet. He was kind of proud of it, and kind of shamed of it, both to once it. The way it come out, was when the doctor says one of them quotations he has always gettin' off, and the old man looks pleased and says the rest of the piece it dropped out of straight through. Then they had a great time quotin' it at each other, them two, and I seen the doctor is good to loaf around there for the rest of the day, like is not. Pretty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud lookin' over somethin' or other, and she leans over and whispers to the old man, Shall I bring it out, Lemuel? The old man he shakes his head no, but she slips into the house anyhow, and fetches out a little book with a pale green cover to it, and hands it to the doctor. Plus my soul, says Dr. Kirby, lookin' at the old man, you don't mean to say you right verse yourself. The old man he gets red all over his face, and up into the roots of his white hair, and down into his white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at the old lady for showin' him off that away. Mother, he says, you shouldn't have done that. They had had a boy years before, and he had died, but he always called her mother the same as if the boy was living. He goes into the house and gets his pipe and brings it out and lights it. Acting like that book of poetry was a mighty small matter to him. But he looks at Dr. Kirby out of the corner of his eyes, and can't keep from getting some sort of eager and trembling with his pipe, and I could see he was really anxious over what the doctor was thinking of them poems he wrote. The doctor reads some of them out loud. Well, it was kind of homemade poetry, old daddy whithers it was. It wasn't like no other poetry I ever struck, and I could tell the doctor was thinkin' the same about it. It sounded somehow like it hadn't been jointed together right. You would keep listening for it to rhyme and get all worked up and watchin' and waitin' for it to, and make bets with yourself whether it would rhyme or it wouldn't. And then it generally wouldn't. I'd never heard such poetry to get a person's expectances all worked up, and then go back on them. But if you could have told what it was all about, you wouldn't have minded that so much. Not that you can tell what most poetry is about, but you don't care so long as it keeps hoppin' along lively. What you want in poetry to make or sound good, according to my way of thinkin', is to make or jump lively and then stop with a bang on the rhymes. But daddy whithers was so independent like he would just naturally try to force two words to rhyme, whether the Lord made them for mates or not, like as if you would try to make a couple kids kiss and make up by bumpin' their heads together. They just simply won't do it. But Dr. Kirby he led on like he thought it was fine poetry, and he read them pieces over and over again, out loud, and the old man and the old woman was both mighty tickled with the way he'd done it. He wouldn't have had him know for anything he didn't believe it was the finest poetry ever wrote. Dr. Kirby wouldn't. There was four little books of it all together, slim books that looked as if they hadn't had enough to eat, like a stray cat whose ribs is rubbin' together. It had cost daddy whithers five hundred dollars a piece to get him published. A fellow in Boston charged him that much, he said. It seems he would go along for years, rakin' and scrappin' of his money together, so as to get enough ahead to get out another book. Each time he had his hopes the big newspapers would maybe pay some attention to it, and he would get recognized. But they never did, said the old man, kinda sad. It always fell flat. Why father, the old lady begins, and finishes by runnin' back into the house again. She is out in a minute with a clipin' from a newspaper and hands it over to Dr. Kirby as proud as a kid with the copper-toed boots. The doctor reads it all the way through, and then he hands it back without saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle around about the housework pretty soon, and the old man looks at the doctor and says, Well, you see, don't you? Yes, says the doctor very gentle. I wouldn't have her know for the world, so daddy whithers I know, and you know that the newspaper piece is simply poking fun at my poetry and making it full of me the whole way through. As soon as I read it over careful I saw it wasn't really praise, though there was a minute or two I thought my recognition had come. But she don't know it ain't serious from start to finish. She was almighty pleased when that piece came out in print, and I don't intend she shall ever know it ain't real praise. His wife was so proud when that piece came out in the New York paper, he said, and she cried over it. She said now she was glad they had been doin' without things for years and years so they could get them little books printed, one after the other, for now fame was comin'. But sometimes daddy whithers says, he suspicions she really knows he has been made a fool of, and is pretendin' not to see it for his sake, the same as he is pretendin' for her sake. Well, there was a mighty nice old couple and the doctor done a heap of pretendin' for both their sakes. There wasn't nothin' else to do. How'd you come to get started at it? he asks. Daddy whithers says he don't rightly know. Maybe he says it was livin' there all his life and watchin' things growin', watchin' the cotton growin' the corn and gettin' acquainted with birds and animals and trees and things. Helpin' of things to grow, he says, is a good way to understand how God must feel about humans. For what you plant and help grow, he says, you are sure to get carein' a heap about. You can't help it. And that is the reason, he says, God can be depended on to pull the human race through in the end, even if appearances do look to be again his doin' it sometimes. For he started it to growin' in the first place, and that a way he got interested personal in it. And that is the main idea, he says. He has all of the time been tryin' to get into that there poetry of hisen. But he reckons he ain't got her in. Least a ways, he says, no one has ever seen her there but the doctor and the old lady in himself. Well, for my part, I would never have seen it there myself. But when he set it out plain like that, anyone could have told what he meant. You hadn't order lay things up again, folks, if the folks can't help him. And I will say Daddy Withers was a fine old boy in spite of his poetry. Which it never really done any harm except bein' expensive to him, and lots will drink that much up and never figure it in expense but one of the necessities of life. We went all over his place with him, and we noticed around his house a lot of tin cans tacked up to posts and trees. They was for the birds to drink out of, and all the birds around here had found out about it and about Daddy Withers and wasn't scared of him at all. He could get acquainted with animals, too, so that after a long spell sometimes they would even let him handle them. But not if anyone was around. They was a crow he had made a pet of, used to hop around in front of him and try for it to talk to him. If he went to sleep in the front yard whilst he was readin', the crow had a favorite trick of stealing his spectacles off in his nose and flying up to the ridgepole of the house and cawing at him. Once he had been settin' out a row of tomato plants, very careful, and he got to the end of the row and turned around, and that there a crow had been hoppin' along behind, very solemn, pullin' up each plant as he had set it out. It acted like it had done somethin' mighty smart and noted that crow. So after that the old man named him Satan, for he said it was Satan's trick to keep things from growin'. There was some blue and white pigeons wasn't scared to come and set on his shoulders, but you could see that the old man really liked that crow Satan better than any of them. Well, we hung around all afternoon, listenin' to the old man talk and likin' him better and better. First thing we note it was gettin' along toward Supper Town. And nothing would do but we must stay to Supper too. We was pintin' toward a place on the railroad called Smithtown, but when we found we couldn't get a train from there till ten o'clock that night anyhow, and it was only three miles away, we said we'd stay. After supper we calculated we better move. But the old man wouldn't hear of us walkin' that three miles, so about eight o'clock he hitched up a mule to a one-horse wagon and we jogged along. There was a yaller moon sneakin' up over the edge of the world when we started. It was so low down in the sky that it threw long shatters on the road and they was thick and black ones too. Because there was a lot of trees alongside the road and the road was narrow, we went ahead mostly through the darkness with here and there patches of moonlight splashing onto the ground. Dr. Kirby and old man withers was sittin' on the seat, still gasin' away about books and things, and I was sittin' on the suitcase in the wagon box right behind him. Sam, he was sometimes in the back of the wagon. He had been more in half a sleep all afternoon, but that was night he was waked up, the waitingers and cats'll do, and every once in a while he would get out behind and cut a few capers in a moonlight patch, just for the enjoyment of it, and then run and catch up with the wagon and crawl in again, for it was goin' party slow. The ground was sandy in spots and I guess we made a pretty good load for Beck, the old mule. She stopped, going up a little slope after we had went about a mile from the withers's. Sam says he'll get out and walk for the wheels in pretty deep and it was hard goin'. Get up, Beck, said the old man. But Beck she won't. She don't stand like she has stuck neither, but like she senses danger somewhere's about. Ahas might go into danger, but a mule is more careful of itself and never goes button in, unless it feels sure they is a way out. Get up, says the old man again. But just then the shatters on both sides of the road comes to life. They wakes up and moves all about us. It was done so sudden and quiet it was half a minute before I seen it wasn't shatters, but about thirty men had gathered all about us on every side. They had guns. Who are you? What do you want? Asked the old man, startled as three or four took care of the mules had very quick and quiet. Don't be scared, Daddy Widders, says a drawly voice out of the dark. We ain't gonna hurt you. We got a little matter of business to tend to with them two fellas you toting into town. End of Chapter 18 Chapter 19 of Danny's Own Story This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Arup Sen Danny's Own Story by Don Marquis Chapter 19 Thirty men with guns would be considerable of a proposition to buck against. So we didn't try it. They took us out of the wagon and they pitted us down the road steering us for a country school house which was a judge from their talk about a quarter of a mile away. They took us silent for after we found they didn't answer no questions we quit asking any. We just walked along and guessed what we was up against and why. Daddy Widders, he trail along behind. They had tried to send him along home but he wouldn't go. So they let him follow and paid no more heat to him. Sam, he kept a talking and a begging and a several men are telling of him to shut up and him are not doing it till finally one fella says very disgusted like Boys, I'm gonna turn this nigger loose. We'll want his evidence says another one. Evidence says the first one. What's the evidence of a scared nigger worth? I reckon that one this afternoon was considerable scared. When he gave us that evidence against himself that is if you call it evidence a nigger can give evidence against a nigger and it's alright says another voice which it come from a fella that had hoped my wrist on the left side of me but these are white men we are going to try tonight. The case is too serious to take never evidence. Besides, I reckon we got all the evidence one could need. This nigger ain't charged with any crime himself and my idea is that he ain't to be allowed to figure one way or the other in this thing. So they turn Sam loose and I never seen or heard tell of Sam since then. They fired a couple of guns into the air as he started down the road just for fun and maybe he is running yet. The fella had been talking like he was a lawyer so I asked him what crime he was charged with but he didn't answer me and just then he gets inside of that school house. It's set on top of a little hill partially in the moonlight or the fused side looking pine trees scattered around it and the fence in front broke down even after night you could see it was a shabby looking place. Old daddy withers tied his mule to the broken down fence. Somebody busted the front door down. Somebody else lighted matches. The first thing I knowed we was all inside and four or five dirty little coal oil lamps with tin reflectors to them which I suppose was used for school exhibitions was being lighted. We was waltzed up to the teacher's platform Dr. Kirby and me and sat down in chairs there with too many to each of us and then a tall raw bone fella stalks up to the teacher's desks and wraps on it with the butt end of a pistol and says gentlemen this meeting will come to order which they was orderly enough before that but they all took off their hats when he wrapped like in a courtroom or a church and most of them sat down. They sat down in the school kid's seat or on top of the desks with their legs stuck out at the aisles and they looked uncomfortable and awkward but they looked earnest and they looked solemn too and there wasn't no joking no skylocking going on nor no kind of rowding us neither. These here men wasn't toughs by any manner of means. But the most part of them respectable farmers they had a look of meaning business gentlemen says the fella who had wrapped who would you have for your chairman I reckon you'll do will says another fella to the raw bone man which seemed to satisfy him but he made them vote on it before he took office now then says will the accused must have counsel will says another fella very hasty watch the use of all this fuss and feathers you know as well as I do there's nothing legal about this it's only necessary for my part Buck Hightower says will pounding on the desk you will please to come to order which buck done it now says the chairman turning to Dr. Kirby who had been sitting there looking thoughtful from one man to another like he was sizing each one up now I must explain to the chief defendant that we don't intend to lynch him he stopped a second on that word lynch as if to let it soak in the doctor he bowed toward him very cool and ceremonious and says marking of him you reassure me mister mister what is your name he sat in in a way that would have made a saint mad my name ain't any different says will try and not show he was netled you were quite right says the doctor looking will up and down from head to foot very slow and insulting it's of no consequence in the world will he flushed up but he makes himself steady and cool and he goes on with his little speech there is to be no lynching here tonight there is to be a trial and if necessary an execution would it be asking too much says the doctor very polite if I were to inquire who is to be tried and before what court and upon what charge there was a clearing of throats and a shuffling of feet for a minute one old deaf fella with a red nose who had his hand behind his ear and was leaning forward so as not to miss a breath of what anyone said asked his neighbor in a loud whisper how then an undersized little fella who wasn't a farmer by his clothes got up and moved towards the platform he had a bulging out forehead and thin lips and a quick nervous way about him you are to be tried he says to the doctor speaking in a kind of shrill sing song that cut your nerves in that full room bottled up excitement like a locust on a hot day you are to be tried before this self constituted court of Caucasian citizens Anglo-Saxons sir every man of them whose forebears were at runny mead the charge against you is stirring up the negroes of this community to the point of revolt you are accused sir of representing yourself to them as some kind of a Moses you are arraigned here for endangering the peace of the county and the supremacy of the Caucasian race by inspiring in the negroes the hope of equality all daddy withers had been setting back by the door I seen him get up and slip out it didn't look to me to be any place for a gentle old poet while that little fellow was making that charge you could feel the air getting tingly like it does before a rainstorm some fellas started to clap their hands like at a political rally and to say go it Billy that's right Hardin which I found out later of Billy Hardin was in a state legislator and quiet a speaker and noted will the chairman he pounded down the applause and then he says to the doctor pointing to Billy Hardin no man shall say of us that we did not give you a fair trial in a square deal I'm going to appoint this gentleman as your counsel and I'm going to give you a reasonable time to talk with him in private and prepare your case he is the ablest lawyer in southwest Georgia and the brightest son of Watson County the doctor looks kind of lazy and bill Hardin and back again at will the chairman and smiles out of the corner of his mouth then he says thought of taking in the rest of the crowd with his remark like them two standing there paying each other compliments wasn't nothing but a joke I hope neither of you will take it too much to heart if I'm not impressed by your sense of justice or your friend's ability then said Will I take it that you intend to act as your own counsel you may take it says the doctor rousing of himself up you may take it from me that I refuse to recognize you and your crowd as a court of any kind did I know nothing of the silly accusations against me did I find no reason at all why I should take the trouble of making a defense before an armed mob that can only mean one of two things one of two things says Will yes says the doctor very quiet but raising his voice a little and looking him hard in the eyes you and your gang can mean only one of two things either a bad joke or else and he stopped a second leaning forward in his chair with the look of half rising out of it so as to bring out the word very decided murder the way he'd done it left that their word hanging in the room so you could almost see it and almost felt it there like it was a thing that had to be faced and looked at and took into account they all felt it that way too for they wasn't a sound for a minute then Will says we don't plan murder and you'll find this ain't a joke and since you refuse to accept counsel just then book high tower interrupts him by yelling out I make a motion Billy Hardin to be prosecuting attorney then let's hurry this thing along and several started to applaud and call for Billy Hardin to prosecute but Will he pounded down the applause again and says I was about to suggest that Mr Hardin might be prevailed upon to accept that task yes says the doctor very gentle and easy quiet soul I fancied myself that Mr Hardin came along with the idea of making a speech either for or against and he grinned at Billy Hardin in a way that seems to make him wild though he tried not to show it somehow the doctor seemed to be all keyed up instead of scared like a fella that's had just enough to drink to give him a fighting edge Mr Chairman says Billy Hardin flushing up and stuttering just a little I beg to leave to decline White says the doctor started playing with Billy with his eyes and grin and turning like to let the whole crowd in on the joke decline the imminent gentleman declines and he is going to sit down too with all that speech bottled up in him Oh Demosthenes he says you have lost your pebble in front of all Greece several grinned at Billy Hardin as he sat down and three or four laughed outright I guess about half of them were knowing him for a windbag and some wasn't sorry to see him josh but I seen what the doctor was trying to do he knowed he was in an awful tight place and he was feeling that crowd's pulse so to speak he had been talking to crowds for 20 years and he knowed the kind of sudden turns they would take and how to take advantage of them he was planning and figuring in his mind all the time just what side to catch him on and how to split up the one solid crowd mind to differ minds but the little bit of a laugh he turned against Billy Hardin was only on the surface like a straw floating on a whirlpool these men was here for business Buck Hightower jumps up and says Will I'm getting tired of this court foolishness the question is does this man come into this county to do what he has done and get out again we all know about him he sneaked in here and gave out he was here to turn the niggers white that he was some kind of a newfangled Jesus sent especially to niggers which is blasphemy itself and he's got him stirred up they're boiling and festering with notions of equality till we're lucky if we don't have to lynch a dozen of them like they did in Atlanta last summer got him back into their places again do we save ourselves more trouble by stringing him up as a warning to the Negroes or do we invite trouble by turning him loose which all it needs is a vote and he sat down again you could see he had made a hit with the boys they was a kind of growl rolled around the room the feelings in that place was getting stronger and stronger I was scared but trying not to show it my fingers kept feeling around in my pocket for something that wasn't there but my brain couldn't remember what my fingers was feeling for then it come to me a sudden it was a bug guy I picked up in the woods in Indiana one day and I had lost it I ain't superstitious about bug guys or harsh shoes but remembering I had lost it somehow made me feel worse but Dr. Kirby had a good hold on himself his face was a bit redder and usual and his eyes were sparkling and he was both eager and watchful when Buck Hightower sits down the chairman clears his throat like he's he is going to speak but just a moment says Dr. Kirby getting on his feet and taking a step towards the chairman and the way he stopped and stood made everybody look at him then he went on once more he says I call the attention of every man present to the fact that what the last speaker proposes is and then he let him have that word again full in their faces to think about murder merely murder he was bound they shouldn't get away from that word and what it stood for and every man there did think to for they was another little pause and not one of them looked at one another for a minute Dr. Kirby leaned forward from the platform running his eyes over the crowd and just naturally shoved that word into the room so hard with his mind that every mind there had to take it in but as he held them to it they come a bang from one of the windows it broke the charm for everybody jumped I jumped myself when the end of the world comes and the earth busts in the middle it won't sound no louder than that bang did it was a wooden shutter the wind was rising outside and it flew open and whacked again the building then a big heavy set man that hidden spoke before risen up from one of the hind seats like he had heard a dare to fight and walked slowly down toward the front he had a red face which was considerable pockmarked and very deep set eyes and a deep voice since when he says taking up his stand a dozen feet or so in front of the doctor since when has any civilization refused to commit murder when murder was necessary for its protection one of the top glasses of that window was out and with the shutter open they came a breeze through that fluttered some strips of dirty colored papers fly speckled and dusty and spider webbed that hung on strings across the room just below the ceiling I guess they had been left over for some Christmas doings my friend said the pockmarked man to the doctor and the funny thing about it was he didn't talk unfriendly when he said the word you insist on is just a word like any other word they was a spider rusted out of his web by that disturbance among the strings and papers he started down from above on just one string of web seemingly spinning part of it out of himself as he come the way they do I couldn't keep my eyes off in him murder says the doctor is a thing it is a word says the other man for a thing or a thing which sometimes seems necessary lynching war execution murder they are all words for different ways of wiping out human life killing sometimes seems wrong and sometimes seems right but right or wrong and with one word or another tack to it it is done when a community wants to get rid of something dangerous to it that this spider was a squat ugly looking devil hunched up on its string almost all his crooked legs the wind would come in little puffs and swing him a little way towards the doctor's head and then towards the pockmarked man's head back and forth and back and forth between them two as they spoke it looked to me like he was listening to what they said and waiting for something murder says the doctor is murder illegal killing and you can't make anything else out of it or talk anything else into it it come to me all to once that that ugly spider was swinging back and forth like a pendulum on a clock and marking time I wondered how much time they was left in the world it would be nonetheless a murder said the pockmarked man if you were to be hanged after a trial in some county court society had been obliged to deny the privilege of committing murder to the individual and reserve it for the community if our communal sense says you should die the thing is neither better nor worse than if a sheriff hanged you I am not to be hanged by a sheriff says the doctor very cool and steady because I have committed no crime I am to be killed by you because you dare not in spite of all you say outrage the law to that extent and they looked each other into the eyes so long and hard that everyone else in the schoolhouse held their breath dare not says the pockmarked man and he reached forward slow and took that spider in his hand and crushed it there and wiped his hand along his pants leg dare not yes but we dare the only question for us men here is whether we dare to let you go free your defense of lynching says Dr. Kirby shows that you at least are a man who can think tell me what I am accused of and then the trial begun in earnest end of chapter 19 chapter 20 of Danny's own story this is a Libravax recording all Libravax recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit Libravax.org recording by Darren Eigenbauer Danny's own story by Don McCoy the doctor acted as his own lawyer and the pockmarked man whose name was Grimes as the lawyer get us you could see that crowd had made up its mind beforehand and was only giving us what they called a trial to satisfy their own conscience but the fight was betwixt Grimes and Dr. Kirby the whole way through one witness was a fellow that had been in the hotel at Cottonville the night we struck that place we had drunk some of his liquor this man admitted himself that he was here to turn the niggers white said the witness Dr. Kirby had told him what kind of medicine he was selling we both remembered it we both had to admit it the next witness was the fellow that run the tavern at barge town he had with him for proof about all the stuff we had brought with us he told how he went away and left it there that very morning another witness told of seeing the doctor talking in the road to that nigger bishop which anyone could have seen it easy enough for there wasn't nothing secret about it we had met him by accident but you could see it made us yes another witness says he lives not far from that big Bethel church he says he has noticed the niggers was worked up about something for several days they are keeping the cause of its secret he went over to big Bethel church the night before he said and he listened outside one of the windows to find out what kind of doctrine that crazy bishop was preaching to them they was also worked up and the power was with them so strong and they were so excited they wouldn't have heard any army marching by he had heard the bishop deliver a message to its flock for the messiah he had seen him go wild afterward had preached an equality sermon that was a lie message the old bishop had took to him and that Sam had told us about but how was this fellow to know it was a lie he believed in it and he told it in a straight ahead way that would make anyone see he was telling the truth as he thought it to be then they were six other witnesses all had been in the gang that lynched the nigger that day that nigger had confessed his crime before he was lynched he had told how the niggers had been expecting of a messiah for several days and how the doctor was him he had died a preaching and a prophesizing and thinking to the last minute maybe he was going to get took up in a chair to fire things kept looking worse and worse for us they had the story as a nigger started to be they thought the doctor had deliberately represented himself as such instead of which the doctor had refused to be represented as that their messiah more than that he had never sold the bottle that medicine he had flung the idea of selling it way behind him just as soon as he had seen what the situation really was in the black counties he had even despised himself for going into it but the looks of things was all the other way then the doctor give his own testimony gentlemen he says it is true that I came down here to try out that stuff in the bottle there and see if a market could be worked up for it it is also true that after I came here and discovered what conditions were I decided not to sell the stuff I didn't sell any about this messiah business I know very little more than you do the situation was created and I blundered into it I sent the nigger's word that I was not the person they expected the bishop lied to them that is my whole story but they didn't believe him for it was just what he was said if he would have been guilty as they thought him and then Grimes gets up and says gentlemen I demand for this prisoner the penalty of death he has lent himself to a situation calculated to disturb in this county the peaceful domination of the black race by the white he is a northern man but that is not against him if this were a case where leniency were possible it should count for him as indicated in an ignorance of the gravity of conditions which confront us here every day and all the time if he were my own brother I would still demand his death but she should think my attitude dictated by any lingering sectional prejudice I may tell him what you all know you people among whom I lived for thirty years that I am a northern man myself the nigger who was lynched today might never have committed the crime he did had not the wild disturbing dream of equality been stirring in his brain and as God is my witness I speak and act not through passion but from the dictates of conscience he meant it Grimes did and when he sat down there was a hush and then will the chairman begin to call the roll I never been much of a person to have bad dreams or nightmares or things like that but ever since that night in that schoolhouse if I do have a nightmare it takes the shape of that roll being called every word was like a spade grating and gritting and damp gravel when a grave is dug it sounded so to me Samuel polymer how do you vote that chairman would say Samuel polymer whoever it was would his himself to his feet and he would say something like this death he wouldn't say it joyous he wouldn't say it mad he would be pale when he said it maybe and maybe trembling but he would say it like it was his duty he had to do and that couldn't be get out of that their try had lasted so long they wasn't hot blood left and nobody just then only cold blood and determination and duty and principle buck high tower says chairman how do you vote death says buck death for the man but say can we just lick the kid and turn him loose and so it went up one side of the room and down the other Grimes had showed him all their duty not but what they had intended to do before Graham spoke but he had put in such a way they seen it was something with even more principle to it than they had thought it was before Billy Hardin said the chairman how do you vote Billy was a last of the bunch and most had voted for death Billy he opened his mouth and he squared himself away to orate some but just as he done so the door open and old daddy wither stepped in he had been gone so long I had plum forgot him right before him was a tall spare fellow with black eyes and straight iron gray hair I vote says Bill Hardin beginning of his speech I vote for death the reason upon which I based but Dr. Kirby rise up and interrupted him you were going to kill me he said he was pale but he was quiet and he spoke as calm and steady as he ever done in his life you're going to kill me like the crowd and sneaking cowards that you are and you are such cowards that you've talked two hours about it instead of doing it and I'll tell you why you've talked so much because no one of you alone would dare do it and every man of you in the end wants to go away thinking that the other fellow had the biggest share in it and no one of you will fire the gun or pull the rope you all do it all together in a crowd because each one of you will want to tell himself he only touched the rope or that his gun missed I know you by God he shouted flushing up in a passion and it brought blood into their faces too I know you write down to your roots because then you know yourselves he was losing hold of himself and roaring like a bull and flinging out taunts and made him squirm if we wanted to think over quick he was taking just the way to warm him up to it but I don't think he was figuring on anything then or had any plan up his sleeve he had made up his mind he was going to die and he was so mad because he couldn't get in one good lick first that he was not crazy I look to see him lose all sense in a minute and rush amongst them guns and end in a world but just as I figured he was on his tiptoes for that it was getting up in my own sand he's throwing a look my way and something sobered him he stood there digging his fingernails into the palm of his hands for a minute to get himself back and when he spoke he was sort of husky that boy there he says and then he stops and kind of chokes up and in a minute he was begging for me he tells him I wasn't mixed up in nothing he wouldn't have done it for himself but he begged for me nobody had paid much attention to me from the first except buck high tower had put in a good word for me but somehow the doctor had got the crowd listening to him again and they all looked at me it got next to me I seen by the way they was looking and I felt it in the air that they was going to let me off but dr. Kirby he'd always been my friend it made me so refer to see him thinking I wasn't with him so I says you better can that line of talk they don't get you without they get me too you ought to know I ain't a quitter you give me a pain and the doctor and me stood and looked at each other for a minute he grinned at me and all of a sudden we was neither one of us giving much a whoop for it had come to us both at once at what awful good friends we was with each other but just then they came a slow easy going sort of a voice from the back part of the room that fellow that had come in along with old daddy withers come sauntering down the middle aisle fumbling this coke pocket and spinking as he come I've been here in a great deal to talk about killing people in the last few minutes he says everybody rubbered at him and chapter 20 chapter 21 of Danny's own story this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Kay Hand Danny's own story by Don Marquis chapter 21 there was something sort of careless in his voice like he had just dropped in to see a show and it had come to him sudden that he would enjoy himself for a minute or two taking part in it but he wasn't going to get too worked up about it either for the show might end by making him tired after all as he come down the aisle fumbling in his coat he stopped and begun to slap all his pockets then his face cleared and he dived into a vest pocket everybody looked like they thought he was going to pull something important out of it but he didn't all he pulled out was just one of these here little ordinary red books a cigarette papers then he dived for some loose tobacco and began to roll one I noticed his fingers was long and white and slim and quick but not excited fingers only the kind that seems to say as much as talking says he licked a cigarette and then he sauntered ahead looking up as he looked up the light fell full on his face for the first time he had high cheekbones and iron gray hair which he wore a rather long and very black eyes as he lifted his head and looked close at Dr. Kirby a change went over both their faces Dr. Kirby's mouth opened like he was going to speak so did the other fellers one side of his mouth twitched into something that was too surprised to be a grin and one of his black eyebrows lifted itself up at the same time but neither him nor Dr. Kirby spoke he stuck his cigarette into his mouth and turned sideways from Dr. Kirby like he hadn't noticed him particular and he turns to the chairman will he says and everybody listens you could see they all know him and that they all respected him too by the way they was waiting to hear what he would say to will but they was all impatient and eager to and they wouldn't wait very long although now they was hush in each other and leaning forward will he says very polite and quiet can I trouble you for a match some with a snort like they know they was being trifled with and it made them sore his eyebrows goes up again like it was awful and polite and folks to snort that away and he is surprised to hear it and will he digs for a match and finds her and passes her over he lights a cigarette and he draws a good inhale and he blows a smoke out like it done him a heap of good he sees something so interesting and that little cloud of smoke that everybody else looks at it too do I understand he says that someone is going to lynch someone or something of that sort that's about the size of it colonel says will um he says what for that everybody starts to talk all at once half of them jumping to their feet and making a perfect hullabaloo of explanations you couldn't get no sense out of in the midst of which the colonel takes a chair and sets down and crosses one leg over the other swinging the loose foot and smiling very patient which will remembers he is chairman of that meeting and pounds for order think you will says the colonel like getting order was a personal favor to him then Billy Harden gets the floor and squares away for a long winded speech telling why but Buck Hightower jumps up in patient and says we've been through all that Billy that man there has been tried and found guilty colonel and there's only one thing to do string him up buck I wouldn't says the colonel very mild but that their man grimes gets up very sober and steady and says colonel you don't understand and he tells them the whole thing as he believed it to be why they has voted the doctor must die the room warming up again as he talks and the colonel listening very interested but you could tell by the looks of him that colonel wouldn't never be interested so much in anything but himself and his own way of doing things in a way he was like a feller that enjoys having one part of himself stand aside and watch the play actor game another part of him is acting out Grimes he says when the pockmarked man finishes I wouldn't I really wouldn't colonel says Grimes showing his knowledge that they are all standing solid behind him we will ah says the colonel eyebrows going up and his face lighting up like he is really beginning to enjoy himself and glad he has come indeed yes says Grimes we will but not says the colonel before we have talked the thing over a bit I hope there's been too much talk here now yells buck high tower talk talk till by God I'm sick of it where's that rope but listen to him listen to the colonel someone else sings out and then there was another hullabaloo some yelling no and the colonel very patient rolls himself another smoke and lights it from the butt of the first one but finally they quiet down enough so we'll can put it to a vote which vote goes for the colonel to speak boys he begins very quiet I wouldn't lynch this man in the first place it would look bad in the newspapers and the newspapers be damned says someone and then the second place goes on the colonel it would be against the law and the lobby damned says buck high tower there's a higher law says Grimes against the law says the colonel rising up and throwing away a cigarette and getting interested I know how you feel about all this Negro business and I feel the same way we all know that we must be the Negro's masters Grimes there found that out when he came south and the idea pleased him so he hasn't been able to talk about anything else since Grimes has turned into what the northern papers think a typical southerner is boys this lynching thing gets to be a habit there's been a Negro lynched today he's the third in this county in five years they all needed killing if the thing stopped there I wouldn't care so much but the habit of illegal killing grows when it gets started it's grown on you you're fixing to lynch your first white man now if you do you'll lynch another easier you'll inch one for murder and the next for stealing hogs and the next because he's unpopular and the next because he happens to done you for a debt and in five years life will be as cheap in Watson County as it is in New York slum where they feed immigrants to the factories you'll all be toting guns and grudges and trying to lynch each other the place has to stop the thing is where it starts you can't have it both ways you've got to stand pat on the law or i'll see the law spit on right and left and in the end nobody's safe it's either law or but says Grimes there's a higher law than that on the statue books there's there's a lot of flub dub says the colonel about higher laws and unwritten laws but we've got high enough for law written if we live up to it there's colonel tom buckner said buck high tower what kind of law was it when you shot ed Howard 15 years ago what you're out of order says the chairman colonel buckner has the floor and i'll remind you buck high tower that on the occasion you drag in colonel buckner didn't do any talking about higher laws or unwritten laws he sent word to the sheriff to come and get him if he dared boys says the colonel i'm preaching you higher doctrine than i've lived by and i've made no claim to be better or more moral than any of you i'm not i'm in the same boat with all of you and i tell you it's up to all of us to stop lynchings in this county to set our faces against it i tell you is that all you've got to say to us colonel the question came out of a group that had drawed nearer together whilst the colonel was talking they was tired of listening to talking arguments and showed it the colonel stopped speaking short when they flung that question at him his face changed he turned serious all over and he let loose just one word no not very loud but with a ring in it that sounded like danger and he got him waiting again and hanging on his words no he repeats louder not at all i have this to say to you and he paused again putting one long white finger at the crowd if you lynch this man you must kill me first i couldn't get away from thinking as he stood there making them take that in that they was something like a play actor about him but he was in earnest and he would play it to the end for he liked the feelings it made circulate through his fame and they saw he was in earnest you'll lynch him will ya he says a kind of passion getting into his voice for the first time and his eyes glittering you think you will well you won't you won't because i say not do you hear i came here tonight to save him you might string him up and not be called to account for it but how about me he took a step forward and looking from face to face with the deer in his eyes he went on is there a man among you full enough to think that you killed tom buckner and not pay for it he let them all think of that for just another minute before he spoke again his face was as white as a piece of paper and his nostrils was working but everything else about him was quiet he looked to the master of them all as he stood there colonel tom buckner did straight and splendid and keen and they felt the danger in him and they felt just how furry it would go now he was started you didn't want to listen to me a bit ago he said now you must listen and choose you can't kill that man unless you kill me too try it if you think you can he reached over and took from the teacher's desk the sheet of paper will had used to check off the name of each man and how he voted he held it up in front of him and every man looked at it you know me he says you know i do not break my word and i promise you that unless you do kill me here tonight yes god is my witness i threaten you i will spend every dollar i own and every adamant influence i possess to bring each one of you to justice for that man's murder they knowed that crowd did that killing a man like colonel buckner a leader any big man in that part of the state was a different proposition from killing a stranger like dr curbie the sense of what it would mean to kill colonel buckner was sinking into them and showing on their faces and no one could look at him stand in there with his determination blazing out of him and not understand that unless they did kill him as well as dr curbie he'd do just what he said i told you he said not raising his voice but dropping it may he had somehow come creeping nearer to every one of them by doing that i told you the first white man you lynched would lead to other lynchings let me show you what you're up against tonight kill the man and the boy here and you must kill me kill me and you must kill old man withers too everyone turned toward the door as he mentioned old man withers he had never been very far into the room oh he's gone said colonel tom as they turned toward the door and then looked at each other gone home gone home with the name of every man present don't you see you'd have to kill old man withers too if you killed me and then his wife and then how many more do you see it widen that pool of blood do you see it spread and spread he looked down at the floor like you really seen it there he had him going now they showed it if you shed one drop he went on you must shed more can't you see it widening and deepening widening and deepening till you're waiting knee deep in it till it climbs to your waist till it climbs to your throats and chokes you it was a horrible idea the way he played that their pool of blood and he shuddered like he felt a climate up himself and they felt it if you men can't kill a whole darn county and get away with it the way he put it that's what they was up against now says colonel tom what man among you wants to start it nobody moved he waited a minute still nobody moved they all looked at him it was awful plain just where they would have to begin it was awful plain just what it would all end up in and i guess when they looked at him stand in there so fine and straight and splendid it just seemed plum impossible to make a move there was a spirit in him that couldn't be killed dr. Kirby said afterward that what was come of being real quality which was what colonel tom was it was that in him that licked him it was the best part of their own selves and the best part of their own country speaking out of him to them that done it maybe so anyhow after a minute more of that strain a fella by the door picks up his gun out of the corner with a scrape and his to his shoulder and walks out and then colonel tom says to will with his eyebrows going up and that one-sided grin coming onto his face again will perhaps a motion to adjourn would be in order end of chapter 21