Gabriel had remained in the tree, and with good reason. He knew that whoever fired the pistol, the reports of which added so largely to the panic among the negroes, was very close to the tree where he had hid himself, and so he waited, not patiently, perhaps, but with a very good grace. When Hotchkiss was out of sight, and presumably out of hearing, Gabriel heard some one calling his name. He made no answer at first, but the call was repeated in a tone sufficiently loud to leave no room for mistake.
"Tolliver, where are you? If you're asleep, wake up and show me a near-cut to town."
"Who are you?" Gabriel asked.
"One," replied the other.
"I don't know your voice," said Gabriel; "how did you know me?"
"That is a secret that belongs to the Knights of the White Camellia," answered the unknown. "If you don't come down, I'm afraid I'll have to shake you out of that tree. Can't you slide down without hurting your feelings?"
Gabriel slid down the trunk of the small tree as quickly as he could, and found that the owner of the voice was no other than Major Tomlin Perdue, of Halcyondale.
"You didn't expect to find me roosting around out here, did you?" the irrepressible Major asked, as he shook Gabriel warmly by the hand. "Well, I fully expected to find you. Your grandmother told me an hour ago that I'd find you mooning about on the hills back there. I didn't find you because I didn't care to go about bawling your name; so I came around by the road. I was loafing around here when you came up, and I knew it was you, as soon as I heard you slipping up that tree. But that hill business, and the mooning—how about them? You're in love, I reckon. Well, I don't blame you. She's a fine gal, ain't she?"
"Who?" inquired Gabriel.
"Who!" cried Major Perdue, mockingly. "Why, there's but one gal in the Dale. You know that as well as I do. She never has had her match, and she'll never have one. And it's funny, too; no matter which way you spell her first name, backwards or forwards, it spells the same. Did you ever think of that, Tolliver? But for Vallic—you know my daughter, don't you?—I never would have found it out in the world."
Gabriel laughed somewhat sheepishly, wondering all the time how Major Perdue could think and talk of such trivial matters, in the face of the spectacle they had just witnessed.
"Well, you deserve good luck, my boy," the Major went on. "Everybody that knows you is singing your praises—some for your book-learning, some for your modesty, and some for the way you ferreted out the designs of that fellow who was last to leave the church."
"I'm sure I don't deserve any praise," protested Gabriel.
"Continue to feel that way, and you'll get all the more," observed the Major, sententiously. "But for you these dirty thieves might have got the best of us. Why, we didn't know, even at Halcyondale, what was up till we got word of your discovery. Well, sir, as soon as we found out what was going on, we got together, and wiped 'em up. Why, you've got the pokiest crowd over here I ever heard of. They just sit and sun themselves, and let these white devils do as they please. When they do wake up, the white rascals will be gone, and then they'll take their spite out of the niggers—and the niggers ain't no more to blame for all this trouble than a parcel of two-year-old children. You mark my words: the niggers will suffer, and these white rascals will go scot-free. Why don't the folks here wake up? They can't be afraid of the Yankee soldiers, can they? Why the Captain here is a rank Democrat in politics, and a right down clever fellow."
"He is a clever gentleman," Gabriel assented. "I have met him walking about in the woods, and I like him very much. He is a Kentuckian, and he's not fond of these carpet-baggers and scalawags at all. But I never told anybody before that he is a good friend of mine. You know how they are, especially the women—they hate everything that's clothed in blue."
"Well, by George! you are the only person in the place that keeps his eyes open, and finds out things. You saw that rascal talking to the niggers awhile ago, didn't you? Well, he's the worst of the lot. He has been preaching his social equality doctrine over in our town, but I happened to run across him t'other day, and I laid the law down to him. I told him I'd give him twenty-four hours to get out of town. He stayed the limit; but when he saw me walk downtown with my shot-gun, he took a notion that I really meant business, and he lit out. Minervy Ann found out where he was headed for, and I've followed him over here. He's the worst of the lot, and they're all rank poison."
Major Perdue paused a moment in his talk, as if reflecting. "Can you keep a secret, Tolliver?" he asked after awhile.
"Well, I haven't had much practice, Major, but if it is important, I'll do my best to keep it."
"Oh, it is not so important. That fellow you saw talking to the negroes awhile ago is named Bridalbin."
"Bridalbin!" exclaimed Gabriel.
"Yes; he goes by some other name, I've forgotten what. He used to hang around Malvern some years before the war, and a friend of mine who lived there knew him the minute he saw him. He's the fellow that married Margaret Gaither; you remember her; she came home to die not so very long ago. Pulaski Tomlin adopted her daughter, or became the girl's guardian. Now, Tolliver, whatever you do, don't breathe a word about this Bridalbin—don't mention his name to a soul, not even to your grandmother. There's no need of worrying that poor girl; she has already had trouble enough in this world. I'm telling you about him because I want you to keep your eye on him. He's up to some kind of devilment besides exciting the niggers."
Gabriel promptly gave his word that he would never mention anything about Bridalbin's name, and then he said—"But this parade—what does it mean?"
The Major laughed. "Oh, that was just some of the boys from our settlement. They are simply out for practice. They want to get their hands in, as the saying is. They heard I was coming over, and so they followed along. They don't belong to the Kuklux that you've read so much about. A chap from North Carolina came along t'other day, and told about the Knights of the White Camellia, and the boys thought it would be a good idea to have a bouquet of their own. They have no signs or passwords, but simply a general agreement. You'll have to organise something of that kind here, Tolliver. Oh, you-all are so infernally slow out here in the country! Why, even in Atlanta, they have a Young Men's Democratic Club. You've got to get a move on you. There's no way out of it. The only way to fight the devil is to use his own weapons. The trouble is that some of the hot-headed youngsters want to hold the poor niggers responsible, as I said just now, and the niggers are no more to blame than the chicken in a new-laid egg. Don't forget that, Tolliver. I wouldn't give my old Minervy Ann for a hundred and seventy-five thousand of these white thieves and rascals; and Jerry Tomlin, fool as he is, is more of a gentleman than any of the men who have misled him."
They walked back to the village the way Gabriel had come. On top of the Bermuda hill, Major Perdue paused and looked toward Shady Dale. Lights were still twinkling in some of the houses, but for the most part the town was in darkness.
The Major waved his hand in that direction, remarking, "That's what makes the situation so dangerous, Tolliver—the women and the children. Here, and in hundreds of communities, and in the country places all about, the women and children are in bed asleep, or they are laughing and talking, with only dim ideas of what is going on. It looks to me, my son, as if we were between the devil and the deep blue sea. I, for one, don't believe that there's any danger of a nigger-rising. But look at the other side. I may be wrong; I may be a crazy old fool too fond of the niggers to believe they're really mean at heart. Suppose that such men as this—ah, now I remember!—this Boring—that is what Bridalbin calls himself now—suppose that such men as he were to succeed in what they are trying to do? I don't believe they will, even if we took no steps to prevent it; but then there's the possibility—and we can't afford to take any chances."
Gabriel agreed with all this very heartily. He was glad to feel that his own views were also those of this keen, practical, hard-headed man of the world.
"But men of my sort will be misjudged, Tolliver," pursued the Major; "violent men will get in the saddle, and outrages will be committed, and injustice will be done. Public opinion to the north of us will say that the old fire-eaters, who won't permit even a respectable white man to insult them with impunity—the old slave-drivers—are trying to destroy the coloured race. But you will live, my son, to see some of these same radicals admit that all the injustice and all the wrong is due to the radical policy."
This prophecy came true. Time has abundantly vindicated the Major and those who acted with him.
"Yes, yes," Major Perdue went on musingly, "injustice will be done. The fact is, it has already begun in some quarters. Be switched if it doesn't look like you can't do right without doing wrong somewhere on the road."
Gabriel turned this paradox over in his mind, as they walked along; but it was not until he was a man grown that it straightened itself out in his mind something after this fashion: When a wrong is done the innocent suffer along with the guilty; and the innocent also suffer in its undoing.
Shady Dale woke up the next morning to find the walls and the fences in all public places plastered with placards, or handbills, printed in red ink. The most prominent feature of the typography, however, was not its colour, but the image of a grinning skull and cross-bones. The handbill was in the nature of a proclamation. It was dated "Den No. Ten, Second Moon. Year 21,000 of the Dynasty." It read as follows:
"To all Lovers of Peace and Good Order—Greeting: Whereas, it has come to the knowledge of the Grand Cyclops that evil-minded white men, and deluded freedmen, are engaged in stirring up strife; and whereas it is known that corruption is conspiring with ignorance—
"Therefore, this is to warn all and singular the persons who have made or are now making incendiary propositions and threats, and all who are banded together in secret political associations to forthwith cease their activity. And let this warning be regarded as an order, the violation of which will be followed by vengeance swift and sure. The White Riders are abroad.
"Thrice endorsed by the Venerable, the Grand Cyclops, in behalf of the all-powerful Klan. (. (. (. K. K. K. .) .) .)"
Now, if this document had been in writing, it might have passed for a joke, but it was printed, and this fact, together with its grave and formal style, gave it the dignity and importance of a genuine proclamation from a real but an unseen and unknown authority. It had the advantage of mystery, and there are few minds on which the mysterious fails to have a real influence. In addition to this, the spectacular performance at the Rev. Jeremiah's church the night before gave substance to the proclamation. That event was well calculated to awe the superstitious and frighten the timid.
The White Riders had disappeared as mysteriously as they came. Only one person was known to have seen them after they had left the church—it was several days before the Rev. Jeremiah could be induced to relate his experience—and that person was Mr. Sanders. What he claimed to have witnessed was even more alarming than the brief episode that occurred at the Rev. Jeremiah's church. Mr. Sanders was called on to repeat the story many times during the next few weeks, but it was observed by a few of the more thoughtful that he described what he had seen with greater freedom and vividness when there was a negro within hearing. His narrative was something like this:
"Gus Tidwell sent arter me to go look at his sick hoss, an' I went an' doctored him the best I know'd how, an' then started home ag'in. I had but one thought on my mind; Gus had offered to pay me for my trouble sech as it was, an' I was tryin' for to figger out in my mind what in the name of goodness had come over Gus. I come mighty nigh whirlin' roun' in my tracks, an' walkin' all the way back jest to see ef he didn't need a little physic. He was cold sober at the time, an' all of a sudden, when he seed that I had fetched his hoss through a mighty bad case of the mollygrubs, he says to me, 'Mr. Sanders,' says he, 'you've saved me a mighty fine hoss, an' I want to pay you for it. You've had mighty hard work; what is it all wuth?' 'Gus,' says I, 'jest gi' me a drink of cold water for to keep me from faintin', an' we'll say no more about it.'
"Well, I didn't turn back, though I was much of a mind to. I mosied along wondering what had come over Gus. I had got as fur on my way home as the big 'simmon tree—you-all know whar that is—when all of a sudden, I felt the wind a-risin'. It puffed in my face, an' felt warm, sorter like when the wind blows down the chimbley in the winter time. Then I heard a purrin' sound, an' I looked up, an' right at me was a gang of white hosses an' riders. They was right on me before I seed 'em, an' I couldn't 'a' got out'n the'r way ef I'd 'a' had the wings of a hummin'-bird. So I jest ketched my breath, an' bowed my head, an' tried to say, 'Now I lay me down to sleep.' I couldn't think of the rest, an' it wouldn't 'a' done no good nohow. I cast my eye aroun', findin' that I wasn't trompled, an' the whole caboodle was gone. I didn't feel nothin' but the wind they raised, as they went over me an' up into the elements. Did you ever pass along by a pastur' at night, an' hear a cow fetch a long sigh? Well, that's jest the kind of fuss they made as they passed out'n sight."
This story made a striking climax to the performances that the negroes themselves had witnessed, and for a time they were subdued in their demeanour. They even betrayed a tendency to renew their old familiar relations with the whites. The situation was not without its pathetic side, and if Mr. Sanders professed to find it simply humourous, it was only because of the effort which men make—an effort that is only too successful—to hide the tenderer side of their natures. But the episode of the White Riders soon became a piece of history; the alarm that it had engendered grew cold; and Hotchkiss, aided by Bridalbin, who called himself Boring, soon had the breach between the two races wider than ever.