2 On the “Breaks”

Harry Beauchamp stepped into the street and smelt, like a keen odor, the new fresh air that had come in the wake of the storm and rain. It was grateful alike to the nostrils and the lungs, and vigor flowed into every vein. Brilliant day enfolded the snug little city, and people were abroad and stirring. They rose early in Groveton.

At the second corner from his office he met Cynthia, Judge William Braxton’s daughter. The simile of the rising young day occurred at once to his imaginative mind. Cynthia, always fresh and rosy, seemed to be fresher and rosier than every now. Slender, and not tall, quick and light in her movements, there was a certain quality or manner about her that always reminded him of a flame. She was in simple white, as became a summer day in the south, and her wonderful black hair, so striking a contrast to her fair complexion was piled high in a shining mass. She regarded Harry a moment with eyes that might be black in some lights, and a very dark blue in others.

“What has kept the Herald so late, Harry?” she asked—they had known each other all their lives.

He hesitated a moment, and then he decided to tell. In any event, it would be known soon and probably in exaggerated form.

“I had visitors at a very late hour, and the Herald was delayed in going to press.”

He spoke in a light tone, and smiled as he spoke, but her intuition detected a faint note of the unusual, and she asked quickly:

“What do you mean, Harry? Visitors?”

“Yes, visitors at nearly two in the morning. They sent in no cards and they left none. I don’t know their names, although I might make a good guess at one who did all the talking.”

She was eager, full of interest, bright like a flame. It was at such moments that the simile always occurred to Harry with the most force.

“You have been threatened!” she exclaimed, intuition still her correct guide.

“I suppose you might call it that or some sort of a warning,” replied Harry lightly. “To tell you the truth, Cynthia, a number of gentlemen with white cloth faces, all singularly alike, filed up in front of my desk, and told me that they didn’t like my stand in regard to the tobacco question. I really ought not to condemn the poor fellows who beat farmers and burn barns, so they said, and they gave me a gentle intimation that they would like to have it stopped.”

“And you?”

The flame was intensely bright now.

“I? Oh I filed a demurrer, as Charlie Wentworth would say.”

“I’m glad you did not let them bully you, Harry.”

She, too, was the descendant of fighting pioneers.

“And your sympathies are to a certain extent with these raiders?” he said.

“But to be threatened! That is different!”

Harry smiled again. Cynthia and he were not always the same in opinion, but he liked her none the less because of it. She always whipped his blood like an autumn wind.

“Don’t bother about this, Cynthia,” he said. “It’s a trifle, and nothing will come of it.

“Be careful, Harry,” was her reply.

“I will,” he said, and went on. It pleased him to know that she felt some anxiety about him.

“He walked briskly and soon came to the outskirts of Groveton, which stood on picturesque hills, half hidden among green trees. Presently he reached a large cottage, set back on a lawn amid masses of foliage. He opened the yard gate and went briskly up the brick walk.

The door stood open and Harry Beauchamp entered. He stopped a moment, as the sounds of a violin came to his ears. It was a plaintive old world air that he had heard many times, and he let the cadence linger. Then he stepped lightly into the room, where his father was playing.

Henri Jean Louis Beauchamp heard the footstep, looked up and smiled, but did not cease playing. Harry stood by the window and waited patiently. The elder Beauchamp was past sixty, rather short, but with a magnificent dome-like head. A short mustache, white and thick, and a short beard, also white and thick, would have given to the head a leonine appearance, had it not been for the singulary soft and dreamy expression of the eyes. But his was an unusual face in the foothills of Kentucky.

Mr. Beauchamp finished the air that he was playing, laid aside the bow and violin, and said affectionately, but with a marked foreign accent:

“You are late, Harry. It isn’t often that you do not come home until the sun has risen.”

“Things were slow at the office last night, Father,” said Harry, “and I couldn’t come any earlier.”

“Then you can take breakfast with us,” said Mr. Beauchamp, an unworldly man, who feeling no curiosity about the incidents that had delayed Harry, asked no questions.

“So I will,” said Harry, as his aunt, Mrs. Leroy came into the room, and gave him a light kiss on the brow. Emma Leroy, long a widow, was the elder sister of the young mother, whom he could not remember, and she had ruled the Beauchamp household many years in brusque and effective but kindly fashion.

Henri Beauchamp, the grandson of a stern Republican soldier of Bonaparte, had wandered years before into the remote little town of Groveton. He had inherited the appearance, but not all the qualities of his military grandfather, and taught music for a living, and occupation that seemed, at the time, to the stalwart people of the town to border upon effeminacy. But he was a good man, gentle and brave, cultivated far beyond any other then in Groveton, and he won the liking and respect of those around him. One of his pupils, shy, handsome Alice Mason, a member of the Mason clan, gave him more than liking, and they were married, despite the difference of age and race. It was a happy union too. It was said that no harsh word was ever spoken in the Beauchamp house, and, when Alice Beauchamp died, yet a young woman, her husband mourned with a grief that would last as long as life.

And Henri Beauchamp, having married among the people, was adopted after the fashion of the country. He was taken at once into the Mason clan. He was not a stranger in a strange land any longer, and had never been since that day.

“Harry tells me that he was detained at the office, Emma,” said Mr. Beauchamp.

Mrs. Leroy, large and strong of figure, lived in the present, and was always a keen observer of external affairs. She glanced at once at Harry, and noticed a slight change of his countenance.

“Something has happened and you might as well tell us what it was,” she said.

“I know it, Aunt Emma, since you’ve got your hand on the probe,” said Harry humorously, and he promptly furnished them the story, touched here and there with grotesque effects that he could see, now that his anger was somewhat abated.

He hoped that they would take it chiefly as a jest.

“Ah, violence! violence!” said Mr. Beauchamp, “Why do a people as good as ours so often turn to it?”

“It’s because we’ve grown up that way,” said Mrs. Leroy defiantly. “I hope Harry, that you, a Mason, didn’t yield any promise to those masked men.”

Harry started a little. He had incessantly preached through the columns of the Herald the necessity of law and order in Kentucky, but within an hour both Cynthia and his aunt had reminded him that he came of pioneer fighting stock.

“No, Aunt Emma,” he replied, and there was some pride in his tone, “I promised them nothing.”

“Then you did not forget that you were a Mason.”

“It’s not likely that we’ll hear anything more about it,” said Mr. Beauchamp.

But Harry and his aunt were born to the land, and they exchanged glances.

“It’s safe to guess from what you say that the leader of the band was Dave Strong,” said Mrs. Leroy.

Harry was silent. Dave Strong had a large farm on Deer Creek, a few miles from Groveton. He raised much tobacco, and, in the preceding year, had been a candidate for the Legislature. The Herald had opposed him, supporting instead Charlie Wentworth, a promising young lawyer, who had been at the university with Harry. Wentworth had won, and Strong, who was vindictive, remembered Harry’s part in the contest.

Mrs. Leroy noted Harry’s silence and did not repeat the question. The silence was sufficient.

Harry did not sleep late that day, and, immediately after luncheon, left the house, having in mind a particular errand.

Groveton, always a tobacco centre, was growing in importance in that market. It drew heavily from the Dark Tobacco region to the west and south, and nearly all of the product of the thin fields on the mountains to the Eastward came there. The development had been so great that an auction market on the plan of the great central one at Louisville had been organized. Four flourishing warehouses were joined in an association, and auction sales were held at each, the buyers going from one to another in turn. The great trusts and the regie contractors were all represented in Groveton by buyers.

Harry went down Main Street directly to the Green River Warehouse, where the sale was going on. The group of buyers, warehousemen and farmers had just come from another warehouse, and the bidding had not yet begun. Harry, after responding to various inquiries and jests about the masked men who had visited his office, regarded the preparations with an renewed and freshened interest.

The tobacco hogsheads stood in a long row on a slightly raised platform, each weighing from one thousand to two thousand pounds, according to the quality of the tobacco within—the better the tobacco the lighter the hogshead. Two stout negroes went to the head of the line, cut with sharp hatchets the hoops of the first hogshead, and then lifted off the hogshead itself, leaving the bare tobacco. It stood up, a tightly-prized brown circular mass, nearly as high as a man’s head, four feet through, and weighing perhaps fifteen hundred pounds, The closely-tied heads of the “hands” were turned outward and the leaves could not be seen. Four big negroes, their huge black arms bare, sprang forward. One ran a steel bar into the very centre of the tobacco, two others lifted up the mass of the tobacco above the bar, and a fourth drew out two or three of the “hands.” This operation was repeated three times on other parts of the mass, the four insertions being as wide apart as possible. Then the “hands” were passed around among the buyers, and upon these, as samples, the hogshead was to be bought.

The buyers felt carefully of the “hands” and then smelled them. Upon their judgment much depended. No two hogsheads of tobacco are ever alike. One hogshead might be worth three cents a pound and another next to it, grown perhaps on the adjoining farm, might be worth thirty cents; it all depended on length of leaf, color and flavor. The buyers were as expert and as delicate as tea-tasters. They bought different kinds of tobacco for different markets, and some did not notice the present hogshead at all; they knew that it was not for them.

The auctioneer stepped forward, held up two or three of the “hands” and said “How much am I offered for this hogshead of fine dark tobacco? Did you say $4.50 Mr. Baker! $4.75 Mr. Gerald! $5.00! $5.05! $5.10!

His voice was perfectly metallic. He went on that way for days and days, and months and months, year in and year out. All the bids were in dollars, as they bought by the hundred pounds, and the bidding was very rapid. “$5.15! $5.20! $5.30! $5.35! $5.40!” called the auctioneer, “one at $5.40 to Earl Niehaus.”

It was “low” leaf and a German regie buyer had bought it, to be mixed with the weaker tobacco of the Fatherland, and thus strengthen the latter for the German taste. The whole operation had not taken more than three minutes, and a sunbrowned, gnarled man in shirt sleeves and gray jeans trousers, standing at the edge of the crowd, frowned. He was the farmer who had raised and prized the tobacco, and he had expected at least seven dollars a hundred. Even now he was reckoning whether the seventy-five dollars, less expenses, that the hogshead paid him would meet the dry goods bill of his family at the store in Groveton.

The group moved on to the second hogshead. The board covering was stripped off and revealed a shining black heap, weighing nearly two thousand pounds, and giving of a strong odor. A laugh arose. “Luggs!” said someone. He meant the thick short black leaves growing at the bottom of the tobacco stalk, the coarsest and least desirable of all. There was only a single bid, and it went at $2.25 per hundred to the regie buyer for Spain, where it would be sold at an extravagant price by his Bourbon Majesty’s Government to his most loyal and ignorant subjects. Even the farmer who bought it gave a sniff of contempt and muttered: “much as it was worth.”

The selling of the “luggs” had not occupied two minutes. The air in the warehouse had grown thick, hot and close, permeated with crumblings of dry tobacco, like a fine impalpable dust. Some of the less experienced coughed and sneezed, but the veteran buyers and warehousemen took no notice. Black beads of sweat stood out on the blacker faces and arms of the big negroes, but they grinned, and showed their magnificent white teeth at the running chaff that always went on in the group. This was man’s work, work for men chosen for strength, and for skill too. There was an art in the way in which they lifted and handled these immense weights, and they always did it gracefully. They were proud of their task, but they rarely spoke, merely grinned.

The third hogshead was laid bare, and an involuntary cry of delight came from the crowd. It was of a beautiful color, approaching white, prized highly, the whole not weighing more than a thousand pounds. It was White Burley of the finest and most delicate variety, grown in “new ground” in the hills in the Northern edge of the county.

“That’s Tom Mace’s tobacco,” said an American buyer named Hardy, “I’d know it anywhere in the world.”

“Right you are,” said the warehouseman. “Here, Tom, don’t be bashful. Step out and let ’em see you.”

A middle-aged farmer, grinning but embarrassed too, was pushed forward by the crowd. He looked much more intelligent than the first farmer and he was better dressed. To all his farming operations he applied sense as well as labor, and he had made a reputation as a producer of White Burley, the finest of all the Kentucky tobaccoes—none of this was for cigar-making, all for pipes and chewing—that he sustained year after year on the “breaks,” as the auction floors were called.

“Step up, gentlemen, step up!” cried the auctioneer, and now his tone was not mechanical, “We are about to sell Tom Mace’s tobacco and you all know who Tom Mace is, and what his tobacco is! Here you Jim, you black rascal, don’t you bruise a single leaf of that ‘hand’! Draw it out, as I would draw off a lady’s glove!”

“Shore, Marse Bill, I wouldn’t bruise a leaf for nothin’,” said the negro grinning, and speaking for the first time. “Oh my soul ain’t that finer than split silk!”

He had tenderly drawn out the “hand,” and while he held it up he regarded it with the loving eye of an expert and an artist. The leaves were very light in color, long and broad, and with a fine silky texture. The veriest tyro could see that this was something special. The hogshead gave forth a delightful aroma.

The European regie buyer stepped back. Everybody knew that this was not for them. The standing of the nations was disclosed upon the “breaks,” with far more certainty than it could be shown in any treatise of philosopher or economist. The buyers of the finest tobacco were Americans. Next in order came the English, then the Germans, then the French, then the Austrians, then the Italians and last the Spanish. National averages were infallibly fixed on the tobacco “breaks” of Groveton, as they were on the greater “breaks” of Louisville, and the other “breaks” throughout the state, always in just the same order. It was known already that only American houses would bid on Tom Mace’s tobacco, with a possible English bid on his lowest grades.

“Gentlemen how much am I offered for this hogshead of Tom Mace’s prime long white Burley leaf!” said the auctioneer.

“Fifteen dollars!” said the representative of a New York house.

The auctioneer burst into a laugh of derision.

“Pete,” he said to the buyer, “you think you are bidding on calico; this is silk.”

“Pete” not at all abashed joined in the laugh against him. Another man bid sixteen, “Pete” promptly replied with seventeen, a third man came in with eighteen, a fourth with eighteen and a half, and then the bidding went on, hot and swift, going up by half-dollar leaps. Harry pressed forward into the throng. He did not have much of the farming instinct, but the high quality of the tobacco, and the dramatic aspect of the contest appealed to him. The air in the warehouse grew closer than ever. The powder of dry tobacco floated about in clouds. The big negroes leaned against the tobacco hogshead, absorbed in the bidding,

The bid reached twenty-five dollars and passed on, still making half-dollar leaps. It reached thirty and Harry thought that it would surely halt at this barrier, but someone bid a half more, and a rival responded with another half. Tom Mace’s intelligent face expanded in a happy smile.

“Bid up! bid up gentlemen!” cried the auctioneer. This is a banner hogshead! The best this year so far, fit for the pipe of a New York millionaire. It will be a standing advertisement to the house that gets it.”

The bidding reached thirty-two dollars, and then thirty-three and at thirty-three it was knocked down to a great Louisville factory. Another of Tom Mace’s hogsheads, almost but not quite as good, brought $31.15, and eight, the total of his sale, averaged twenty-five dollars a hundred, netting him for his entire crop over two thousand dollars. Another man who owned the adjoining farm, land quite as good, received an average of less than one-third that paid to Mace. Harry knew that it was not luck, but the difference in the men. Tom Mace had nursed his crop from the plant bed to the hogshead. He had been skillful in curing, as well as raising, and his skill had come from thought, and an immense attention to detail.

He followed the sale a half-hour longer, and he was interested in observing what absolute confidence the buyers had in the “hands” or samples drawn from the hogsheads. To pack good tobacco on the outer rim from which the sample would be drawn, and to fill in the interior with tobacco of a much lower grade was known as “nesting,” but the fraud was exceedingly rare, so rare indeed that a buyer need not take it into account. It speaks highly for the Kentucky farmer that a man known to be a “nester” is as one branded in the community.

Harry followed the sale to a second warehouse, but there he left it and he was glad to escape from the heated, permeated atmosphere into a clean, beautiful spring day. The first sight that met his eyes as he stepped into the street was a farmer hauling tobacco to the very warehouse he had left.

This farmer evidently came from the poorer regions in the hills the eastward of Groveton. The signs of it were all over him. His two horses were ill-kept, ill-fed and bony, his wagon creaked for the lack of axle grease, and the rickety frame barely held the heavy hogshead in place. The man himself, who was now walking beside his horses, holding the lines, was of a piece with his outfit. His shoulders were humped, more from carelessness than toil, and his gait was stumbling. An old, battered straw hat, with part of the brim gone, was perched upon his head, one suspender strove to hold up his ragged jeans trousers, and his toes looked through wide, open spaces in this heavy brogan shoes.

He was a type of laziness and shiftlessness, and Harry knew that Strong’s Band of Justice would make an instant appeal to him. But the afterthought told him such men as he, poor in quality though they might be, should not be subjected to oppression because of it.

It had been his intention to pay two visits, and now he went straight upon the second of them. His destination was Judge Braxton’s office, and he found the Judge there with several clients around him. It was a plain office, a large room over a store, with no carpet on the floor. Four or five chairs and a willow sofa stood about helter-skelter; on a mantle were cob pipes, more or less used, and two cases held a variety of law books, bound in solid sheep.

Judge Braxton was a man of more than sixty, tall and of powerful figure, and with a ruddy square, smoothly-shaven face, every line of which showed strength. His thick white hair formed a beautiful crown for his shapely head. The “Judge” came to him from a brief term at the head of the County Court, in his early days at the bar, but for thirty years he had been the most famous lawyer in criminal cases throughout all the region. A gentle heart and natural fitness put him nearly always on the side of the defense.

The Judge, sitting at ease in an arm chair, by the open window was giving miscellaneous advice, as Harry entered.

“No, Carter,” he said, “What’s the use of entering into a law suit, because Bill Tilton’s cow broke into your wheat field? It’s too trivial. I won’t take your case, and if you go to any other lawyer I’ll take Tilton’s side and beat you. Just wait until your cow breaks into his wheat-field, and then you’ll be even. The fee? Nothing, I won’t charge a man for telling him what a fool ought to know. I’d feel as if I were robbing a baby. Now get out; that corn land of yours needs ploughing, and needs it badly.”

Carter, a tall, bean pole of a man hurried out, his head hanging, and the Judge ran on:

“Yes, Zeke Harris, I’ll take your case, but this is the last time I’ll defend you. You say he hit you first? What of it? You know that, as sure as you get drunk, you are going to get into a fight with somebody. Then why are you fool enough to load up with red-eye, and lose what little sense you have? Go now, I’ve promised to defend you,but the very next time this happens you can be sent to jail for all of me, and that’s where you belong.”

Zeke Harris, a burly young man, with a face in which belligerency and weakness were mingled, stumbled out, and the Judge turned his attention to a woman.

“Claims that ten acre field of yours does he, Mrs. Pelly?” he said, “Says there was a flaw in the deed? Why the old skinflint! I always knew that Hezekiah Burton was mean, ever since I went to school with him fifty years ago, but I didn’t think he’d take advantage of a technicality to rob a widow. Of course I’ll take the case; never mind about the fee. I want a chance at Hez Burton, and we’ll pile costs on him in a way that will make him shudder every night that’s left in his ornery life.”

The Judge chuckled in glee, and Mrs. Pelly, a little old woman, with white hair, went happily out. A fourth client was handily disposed of, and then the Judge turned his attention to the young editor who alone was left.

“Surely you’re not in trouble Harry” he said, “Does Chris Lucas want to foreclose on you?”

“No” replied Harry smiling, “He’s satisfied with his interest and an occasional payment. I’ve come for information, or rather to compare notes, but I warn you, Judge, that there is no fee in me.”

“I suppose you newspaper people always expect to get things free,” laughed the Judge. “You make me think of Bill Langstroth down on Sandy Pork. I defended him last year on a charge of fighting and got him off. When we left the courtroom, says Bill: ‘How much do you charge, Judge.’ ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet,’ said I. ‘I’d advise you to make the bill as small as you can,’ said he, ‘because the less you charge the less you lose.’ Sure enough, time has shown that he was telling the truth.”

“That’s like Appel who keeps the ice cream saloon,” said Harry, “You know how hard up he is. He has owed me an advertising bill dating from the first week of my management. Six months ago he gave me his note for the amount, and last week when I was urging him to pay at least a little on it he said in a most injured tone: ‘I don’t see why you want me to pay anything on that note, it’s accumulating interest all the time’.”

Judge Braxton leaned back in his chair and laughed long, and with intense enjoyment.

“I’m glad to see” he said, “that I’m not the only victim.”

He showed no regret whatever at the loss of his fee. The old fashioned southern lawyer, one of Judge Braxton’s heart and distinction, was a patriarch, as well as a man of the courtroom.

“Go ahead Harry,” he said, “You are not bashful, or you wouldn’t be in your present business.”

“That’s a popular superstition,” said the editor, “but we’ll let it pass. What do you know about the Band of Justice, Judge?”

Judge Braxton’s face became grave, and he sat up in his chair. “I think Harry,” he replied “that it’s gone further than those who are outside of it know. Dave Strong’s a leader in it, and the skeleton of it already stretches over a half-dozen counties. They bind one another not to sell to any of the buyers of the great Eastern trust, and they go further. They are to hold back what’s left of last year’s crop, and, if need be, all the coming crop of this year. Moreover they pledge themselves to cut down the production, when the association sees fit, each man according to his percentage.”

“A big task,” said Harry, “a very big one.”

“I’ve a lot of sympathy for them,” said Judge Braxton. “At one end of the line you have a perfect organization, with the power in a few hands, at the other the individual farmer, helpless, his back bent over his tobacco plant.”

“And fearfully hard work it is!” said Harry.

“None harder,” said Judge Braxton.

He was regarding Harry Beauchamp with those wonderfully keen eyes of his that had spent many years reading the human mind. Judge Braxton was essentially a man of the people, by nature and by cultivation, a democrat of democrats. His sympathies were always instinctively for the underdog, and his judgment always confirmed the opinion afterward. He could tell now by the frank face before him how Harry Beauchamp was swayed by differing views.

“Well, what is the Herald going to say about it?” he asked at last, almost repeating Strong’s own question. “Of course it’s known in the town that masked riders visited you last night. It was a bold thing to do in as big a place as Groveton; the people are not talking about much else.”

“I’ve a lot of sympathy with the tobacco raisers,” replied Harry, “but it doesn’t seem to me that such a movement should be in the hands of men like Strong.”

“If the movement is right it doesn’t matter about the men,” said Judge Braxton, “although they do some wrong things, as they did when that masked band threatened you.”

“But we don’t know where it will stop,” said Harry who still had his doubts.

“No, son,” said Judge Braxton—he was in the habit of applying the word “son” to any young man whom he knew well, “we do not, but we never know where anything will end.”

“I’ve just been down on the ‘breaks’,” said Harry, “and I saw a great deal of activity there. Our market here has grown wonderfully. A lot of money is coming into Groveton and the country around it.”

“So it is, but the farmers think it ought to be more. Come, we’ll walk down the street together.”

The Judge put on his hat and the two went toward the centre of the town, the tiny park in which the magnificent new courthouse stood. This building, completed at a cost of $60,000, was itself a conspicuous mark of Groveton’s prosperity and progress. It was of reddish, soft-colored brick, trimmed with blue-tinted limestone, and the architecture was good. The little park was filled with splendid shade trees, now in the early green of spring, and the grass grew thickly everywhere, except on the brick walls. Harry opened the iron gate and the two entered. The attention of both was attracted at once by a group under one of the great shade trees, gathered around a thick-set, dark man who was talking earnestly, even violently.

“You see, the pot is boiling,” said Judge Braxton.

It was Dave Strong, haranguing a dozen farmers, and Harry knew, just as well as if he had heard him, that he was arousing angry feelings in them over the tobacco question. With the perfect freedom that prevailed everywhere he might have gone over and joined the group, but he chose not to listen, and continued, with the Judge into the courthouse. There Judge Braxton said to him with much gravity.

“You know, Harry, that in the South we are still partisans in all things. This tobacco issue is going to be the biggest with which the Herald will have to deal, and you’ll be compelled to choose sides.”

“Yes, and whatever I do the Herald will make enemies.”

He was troubled over the outlook, and partly for his newspaper.

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