6 The Raiders

Harry, contrary to his expectations, but much to his pleasure, did not hear anything more about the Band of Justice for a while, nor did anything come from the Logsdons. After the first search the officials displayed no great energy in attempting their capture. Although everybody knew it was they who had attempted the lynching nobody could swear positively to the fact, and since Parker had escaped, with an acquittal following, the people settled back into their old easy way of letting things go. Dick himself soon reappeared in the mountain villages and hamlets, and no one molested him.

Harry and the Herald, the new press having been installed with state and ceremony, entered upon a month or two of smoothness and prosperity. The character and individualism that he had given to his newspaper were, as he had foreseen, of great money value. The margin of receipts over expenses was steadily growing larger. He was now able to employ an advertising solicitor on commission, and to raise the salary of Dick Flynn five dollars a week. Moreover, Mr. Flynn was allowed to take proudly to himself an official title. A small space in the main room was boarded off for him, and upon this was placed in large letters, “Mr. Flynn, City Editor.” Harry, although young, was old enough to know that an employee’s pride is entitled to some recognition, the cheapest pay an employer can give. Mr. Flynn ’s staff, besides himself, consisted of a lad just out of school.

In May Harry was able to pay Christopher Lucas a second thousand on the press, and he foresaw another such payment in the summer. He felt so much pride and satisfaction that he could not refrain from speaking to his father and aunt about it.

“How much do you owe yet on the press?” asked Mr. Beauchamp.

“Six thousand, but I’ll pay another thousand in the summer, and, if things keep increasing the way they are, two more thousands before the year is out. I’m getting along swimmingly.”

After dinner Harry sat a while on the porch with his father before returning to the office. Mrs. Leroy was inside directing household operations. Harry and his father did not always talk–they had reached that high stage of understanding when they could enjoy each other’s presence without words—and they were silent now.

It was a pleasant porch, running the entire front of the house, shaded and adorned with vines, and reached from the ground by three short steps. Many of Harry’s pleasantest memories clustered around that porch on which he had played in his babyhood and boyhood, and where he often sat in his manhood, planning what he wished to do.

Mr. Beauchamp was at ease in a deep chair. His hair was snow white now, although he was not a feeble man, and, thick and long, it looked in the dusk, like an immense snowball. He was smoking his long-stemmed pipe, and now and then fire gleamed from the bowl. It seemed to Harry that these were happy days for his father, and it was not the least cause of his own satisfaction that he should feel himself a contributor to the effect.

The night advanced, but the moonlight brightened. Groveton lay before them in a silvery haze, with lights twinkling here and there. The faint night breeze was touched with the perfume of young grass, and delicate early flowers. Mr. Beauchamp presently took his pipe from his mouth and held it carefully in his right hand.

“Harry,” he said, “you owe six thousand yet on your press to Mr. Lucas. Christopher Lucas is a good man, but you’d like to pay him as soon as you can. I have saved money, as you may know, not much a year but the years have been many, and tomorrow, I will pay this note for you. I would have offered it sooner, but you’ve an independent mind.”

Harry did not rise from his chair. His world was not a demonstrative one, but his voice was full of deep feeling, when he replied:

“Father, I did not start the Herald in order to rob you. I should feel that I was doing so, were I to take your money.” He had bought the old weekly with a small sum, inherited from his mother, refusing to use any of his father’s money.

“But may not a father help his son?”

“Not in this case”—Harry here assumed a light humorous tone—“I’ve had a particular ambition, Father, to build up the Herald all by myself, and I’ve got far enough now to know that I can do it. If I were to take your money I’d feel that I’d done it with your help. Don’t you see, Father, that you’ll be kinder to me, if you let me go on and win my victory unaided.”

Mr. Beauchamp seemed to be impressed. The moonlight was falling now upon his fine, spiritual face, and Harry could read his expression.

“I cannot urge you to take the money, since you put it that way,” he said, “but don’t forget Harry that if you were to get into deep financial troubles I might buy in your note, without asking your leave.”

“And what a Shylock you’d prove!” said Harry. “You don’t know, Father, what a terrible reputation for financial hardness you have in Groveton!”

Mr. Beauchamp smiled at his son’s raillery. He had never thought much of money. He was aware, now, that he ought to have thought more, but he was resolved to use his savings for Harry, if ever his situation grew desperate. Meanwhile he held his peace. He put the stem of his pipe back in his mouth, and drew a long breath. He was mentally and bodily soothed. Harry was not wrong, when he had inferred that these were happy days for his father.

They sat a half hour longer, and then Harry rose to go to his office.

“I’ll be home at the usual time, 3:30 in the morning,” he said lightly. “If you happen to wake up, Father, you’ll know that it’s not a burglar.”

Mr. Beauchamp sat, still smoking, after his son had gone. Mrs. Leroy joined him, and after a while she went inside to read. When Mr. Beauchamp retired to his room he took from a locked drawer in his bureau an old-fashioned daguerreotype. It showed the face of a young girl, with the hair drawn over the temples in the way of long ago. It was a beautiful face, innocent, frank and brave, one of the wild Masons.

“Ah, Mary! Mary!” he said, “If you were only here with me to see him now, and to be proud of him as I am proud of him!”

His eyes were wet with tears, but he put the daguerreotype back in the drawer, and sat long at his window before going to bed.

Harry went to Louisville in June to see Cynthia graduate at Miss Payson’s school. Judge Braxton and Mrs. Braxton were already there, very proud of their daughter, who was the valedictorian of her class. Harry was introduced to Miss Payson who had heard often of him as he was now becoming a figure in the state.

“Don’t you all think a great deal of Miss Braxton,” she said. “We do here, and Mr. Newton, our Chicago friend, fully agrees with us.”

“Mr. Newton!” exclaimed Harry, “A Chicago man! Who is he, Miss Payson?”

“The son of the great iron manufacturer. He comes to Louisville now and then, and he met Cynthia several days ago. There he is now, talking to her.”

The son of a steel king! of a Chicago multi-millionaire, coming down to Kentucky! arrogant and supercilious of course! Harry’s heart throbbed with anger, and he looked promptly. He saw a tall young man, a year or two older than himself, dressed, as Harry fondly imagined, a little gaudily.

Harry’s anger increased. Illinois was a larger, richer and more populous state than Kentucky. Chicago was a larger, richer and more populous city than Louisville, and he had a right to be resentful when any Chicago man made a presumptuous incursion into the Kentucky garden. His state pride was touched, he told himself, and he was prepared to give the steel king’s son a hearty dislike. Yet his native courtesy came to his aid when Cynthia introduced them, “Mr. Herbert Newton, Mr. Harry Beauchamp. Mr. Beauchamp and I grew up together, Mr. Newton, and he is one of our most distinguished editors.”

“Ah,” said Mr. Newton politely, “glad to meet you Mr. Beauchamp. May I—ah, inquire what is it that you edit?”

Harry’s anger returned. He was like an author, who is asked by someone whom he has just met, if he won’t kindly give the name of some of his books.

“A little paper down in our little town of Groveton,” he replied vaguely.

“Ah!” said the steel king’s son in a tone of satisfaction.

Harry regarded him attentively. He was quite convinced now that the attire of Mr. Newton was really a little too gaudy. Moreover his collar was a prodigious height, enclosing a long thin neck. “This,” thought Harry, “is a clothes-horse not a man.” But one could never tell what would attract a woman, and there was the glamor of millions.

Harry remained talking to Cynthia. His blood was up, and he resolved that he would not retreat before the son of a Chicago steel king. He could see that Mr. Newton was interested and that Cynthia was flattered, but he kept his place, until both had to give way to Charlie Wentworth and Tom Kidd, who had also cone to see Cynthia graduate.

When the three comrades walked together to their hotel in the twilight Charlie Wentworth nudged Tom Kidd, and then gave him a genuine and undoubted wink which even literal Tom understood.

“Fine fellow that Chicago man, Newton!” said Charlie, “Great head on him! I could tell that from a few minutes talk.”

“Right you are,” said Tom “The Northern climate to harden the faculties. Makes men strong and decisive. Distinguished presence too.”

“Yes,” said Charlie, “The very kind that always appeals to women. Don’t you think that such a man, with his intellect, looks and money, is sure to be a great lady-killer, Harry.”

“What do I know about it?” replied Harry shortly. “I’m not interested in Newton. I’ve seen men from Chicago before.”

Wentworth, the volatile and Kidd, the solemn, broke into a simultaneous laugh. Harry left them abruptly and went to his room.

Harry returned home the next morning, and went at once to the office, where he found Mr. Flynn presiding.

“Any news of special interest coming in?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

“What do you mean by not yet?”

“There were some rumors that may develop, and I hear talk about that Band of Justice tobacco business. Strong has been pretty active, and he’s covering a lot of ground. Here are letters from two of our correspondents, telling of his movements, but we can’t get anything definite.”

Harry mounted his horse the following afternoon, and rode to the Westward, deep into the Dark Tobacco region. Here the great staple grew rich and long, producing heavily to the acre. In the woods he marked the burnt rectangles, where the plant beds had been, but the ploughed fields were green now with the young crop, the rows criss-crossed like a checker board. In all these fields men and boys were at work, and theirs was invariably a stooping attitude. The particular task depended upon the progress that the field had made. Some were “topping,” that is breaking out the top, to keep the plant from running to seed, others were breaking off the bottom leaves which were dwarfed by the shade of those above them, or muddied by the rains. These were no loss, as the vitality of the stalk, when it was relieved of them, went to the central leaves, making them longer, broader and heavier than they would have been otherwise. Still others were “worming,” that is searching for the tobacco worm which they pulled from the leaf with bare hands, crushing the head between thumb and forefinger. If the worm were left undisturbed it would eat up the entire leaf.

It was now the middle of the afternoon, and the sun was a ball of brass in a cloudless sky. The earth seemed to reflect the rays of heat. The men and boys all wore broad-brimmed straw hats, but their faces were sunburnt. Nevertheless they toiled steadily on among the young plants, and Harry’s heart was full of sympathy.

He dismounted, when he saw a farmer working near the roadside and spoke to him, the man answering civilly enough.

“What’s the prospect this year?” asked Harry.

“Good so fur,” said the farmer, “but it’s too early yet. The crop ain’t got more’n a start.”

“Prices seem to be holding up pretty well.”

The farmer gave a knowing look from under the wide, tattered brim of his hat.

“As good as they are usually are,” he said, “but they’re goin’ to be better. We’ve never been mor’n half paid for our tobacco. We’re goin’ to get full pay now.”

“Through the Band of Justice?”

“Yes, that’s it. We who make it are goin’ to control the tobacco crop.”

“Do you propose to limit the size of the crop too?”

“Well, not this year maybe, but sooner or later it’ll come to that.”

Harry thanked him and rode on. He saw that the fields were many, and that they were flourishing. A big crop would be sure to depress prices, unless they were kept up by artificial means, and he became more nearly certain than ever that there was likely to be a conflict somewhere.

Harry was not a farmer, but he had an eye for the surface aspects of farming. Tobacco fields seemed ugly to him, and he did not like the sight of the stooping men and boys. But he was delighted when he saw a field of young corn, the slender stalk standing up so straight, and the fine green blades waving in the slight breeze. A farmer was ploughing between the rows with the light plough, called “bull tongue,” but he was not stooped. He stood erect as he held the plough handles, and he whistled to the big black mule that drew the plough. The mule, worth two hundred dollars at the least, as big as a war-horse and stronger, seemed to regard the light plough as nothing more than a toy. Here were vigor and independence.

The next farm, where not in corn and wheat, was wholly in grass. The wheat was high, thick and green. So was the corn, but Harry was pleased above all by the sight of the beautiful pasture lands. Everywhere the grass was magnificent, and fine horses and fat cattle grazed contentedly or lay in the shade of the trees. This was the land of a man whose thrift, foresight, and energy had taken him beyond tobacco. Standing back from the road on a low hill, and surrounded by a cluster of maples and beeches was his house, a solid red brick. His fences were good, and his farm bore all the signs of care and attention.

The rich farm was soothing and pleasant to Harry’s eyes and, for a moment or two, he was sorry, as he had often been sorry before, that the tobacco plant had ever cone into Kentucky. It was money, every pound of it, but it had bent the farmer’s back, and now it might put poison in his blood. The farmer had said that in time they would regulate the size of tobacco crop, but as far back as he could remember he heard such talk, and nothing had ever come of it. And nothing would come of it! The plan was too unwieldy, it depended upon the agreement of too many thousands of people.

He rode on, and the grass farms disappeared. He was coming now into a long narrow valley that shot up toward the higher hills, one of the richest sections of the Dark Tobacco region. On either side the tobacco fields, with the bent forms at work, chained to them, stretched away. This soil would produce fifteen hundred pounds of the long heavy staple to the acre, and that meant much money. The tobacco sucked strength from both land and man, but it must be grown, and the farmer and his family served the voracious plant from dawn until dark, all the year around.

Harry galloped back in the twilight, and that night he wrote a flaming editorial on tobacco. He urged that Kentucky farmers give it up as fast as possible. It was eating up both themselves and their farms. It was better to acquire independence more slowly through corn, wheat, grass and cattle. Then when a man achieved it, both he and his farm were unexhausted and fresh. He made it a personal appeal, he did not seek any sort of organization. He merely asked every man to take thought of it for himself.

There was a spark of fire in Harry Beauchamp’s nature. When he was deeply stirred by anything this spark leaped up into a blaze, and he wrote at fever-heat. The words came rushing forth so fast that he had nothing to do but arrange them on the page, and perhaps trim down their exuberance. The result was always the conveyance of the impression from himself to the reader, and it was so now. His tobacco editorial was quoted throughout the country, and attracted further attention to Harry Beauchamp, and the Groveton Herald, although such had not been his purpose.

But Harry was not thinking much of tobacco the next day because Cynthia Braxton returned that afternoon to Groveton, and with her were her parents and Charlie Wentworth and Tom Kidd. The Judge gave a mighty sigh of pleasure, as he stepped from his train in the Groveton station.

“Four or five days of life in a great city are too much for me,” he said, “Do you know, Harry, I couldn’t breathe well up there in Louisville. Even Groveton is getting too big. I’m going to ride out on the hills tomorrow, and fill my lungs.”

“I’m afraid of the reverse for you,” said Harry to Cynthia. “We’ll seem too small to you. You’ll find Groveton dull.”

“Oh no, I won’t,” she said, “I’ve a lot to do here. You and Charlie and Tom are helping to build up Groveton, and maybe I can take a little share in it. It’s a great work.”

The three comrades called in the late afternoon of the following day at the Braxton home. They were now deep in June, and the little city seemed to be embowered in foliage. Not the least attractive place in it was the Braxton lawn, a very large one even for Groveton, with many great shade trees, a croquet ground and a tennis court. Cynthia was there, and two or three other girls, friends of hers, were welcoming her home.

They did not go inside, but sat under the shade of the trees, and, presently, cooling drinks were brought to them there. Charlie Wentworth at first did most of the talking. His oratorical spirit was inspired by the sylvan beauty of the lawn and the peace and spirit of June, and the words trickled from him pleasantly and smoothly. Harry’s time came by and by, when he could speak to Cynthia unnoticed by the others.

“This home-coming of yours,” he said “reminds me of Charlie’s, Tom’s and mine, when we returned together from the university.”

“Yes,” she replied, “it is in a way similar. But the similarity stops with the act of homecoming. You three, before you arrived in Groveton, had chosen your careers, and all of you have made progress. Think how much has happened to you since then. But I don’t have any career. Very few girls have. They can’t have. It seems to me that the only women who have careers, in the sense that men have them, are great singers and great actresses, and they are so very few in number. ”

“And maybe they are unhappy. because they have missed what most women have.”

“Maybe,” she said and laughed, coloring a little.

Harry thought that she spoke rather gravely. It had not occurred to him that Cynthia Braxton would talk of women’s rights. He had always had a vague conviction that she would marry young. He was trying to frame an adequate answer, when she called his attention to two men passing on the road in front of the lawn.

“There is Dave Strong,” she said. “He was in Louisville and he came down on our train, but he avoided us. Father says he went to Louisville on some business with the tobacco warehousemen, but they didn’t agree. He says Mr. Strong is very angry. ”

“I fancy he has been angry for some time,” said Harry.

Then he glanced at the horsemen on the other side of Strong, who had been hidden hitherto by his companion’s figure. The second man also was large, black-bearded and riding a big, rawboned horse. Harry felt a sudden thrill of overpowering anger and hate. He tried to control it, but he could not do so, any more than one can control an acute pang of toothache. The rider was Cad Burke.

“You see who it is?” said Cynthia Braxton.

“I cannot help but see.”

“I think he is coming into this tobacco business, or he would not be with Mr. Strong. Some day there will be trouble between you and him, Harry.”

Harry glanced at her. He saw a young girl in white muslin, flecked with pale blue dots, the toe of a white cloth shoe, just showing beneath its hem. Her complexion was unusually fair, but the thick masses of her hair were so black that the coils seemed to sparkle when the sunlight fell upon them. Her dark blue eyes gazed steadily at him, but she did not look in the least like a sibyl. Yet he remembered that night of the attempted lynching, and how she was bright and hard like steel.

“Oh no!” he said, “All that’s past and forgotten, or ought to be. I write in the Herald all the time against that sort of thing. We must get rid of it in Kentucky.”

She made no reply, but Harry was conscious of a fear. Women had intuition. The intuition might be wrong nine times, but the tenth time it might be right, and was there some quality in his nature of which he had had only hints!

Charlie Wentworth announced cheerfully that the sun was now far enough down to throw shade all over the tennis court, and it was time for a game. Harry was soon playing partners with one of the other girls against Charlie and Cynthia. He watched Cynthia perhaps as much as the ball. She was not large, but she was the best player of them all. Her slender, compact figure darted back and forth with singular lightness and ease, and her quick bright eyes were like a flame. She seemed to Harry wonderfully vital, and this vitality was of the spirit as well as the body. He withdrew from the game presently, and sat on the porch in the deep shade with Judge Braxton.

The Judge reposed at ease in a vast arm chair, and on the arm piece of the chair at his right elbow, stood a glass with pleasantly flavored contents. He regarded Harry and the players with an amused smile.

“Things do change Harry” he said, “You young people have to invent games now to keep your muscles at work. When I was a boy we were always seeking some way to keep them from working all the time. Not because we wanted to work, but because we had to. Do you think you could chop down a tree Harry, or split rails, or raise logs to build a house?”

“I prefer, Judge, to remain ignorant of my qualifications in those matters.”

The Judge laughed, and took a sip out of the glass.

“People play much more now,” he resumed, “and I suppose it’s just as well. I’ve heard my father say that he reckoned himself well into middle age at thirty, and my grandmother had been considered an old maid, because she did not marry until she was twenty one.”

Harry leaned back luxuriously in his own chair, and looked at the youthful figures on the lawn, alert and eager. Tennis! How far was this from the dark world of Cad Burke! He looked then at the wide, well-kept lawn and the comfortable, prosperous little city. No, they had passed an age beyond the stage of Cad Burke.

“Come often, boys,” said Judge Braxton hospitably to them as they left, “Cynthia’s here now and she’ll be glad to see you too. I like young men, you know.”

“You’re one yourself,” said Harry.

The three, after repeating emphatically that they would come again and often, walked away together in the twilight. At the office two nights later Dick Flynn brought a despatch to Harry to read before it should be put into type.

“Something’s breaking loose” said Mr. Flynn.

The despatch was a brief one from a neighboring country seat, and it read:

“The tobacco barn of Thomas Jordan, a prosperous farmer, four miles from here, was burned last night by a band of masked men. Ten thousand pounds of tobacco and some agricultural implements were consumed. The loss is about fifteen hundred dollars. It is said that Jordan was asked by the Band of Justice to pledge himself not to sell his tobacco to the trust, but refused.”

The brief despatch gave Harry a shock. The raiders were coming near to Groveton, and back to him in all its vividness returned the visit of the masked men that hot, still night.

“I don’t like that, Dick,” he said to his assistant.

“Be more of ’em!” said Mr. Flynn.

Harry Beauchamp was impulsive. The burning of a barn was perhaps not a great affair, but, with the strength of youth and hot blood, he thundered in the columns of the Herald. He said that Kentucky, so far as law and order were concerned, already had a bad name because of its mountain feuds. The Kentuckian and his pistols were a national joke, surely they would not now become noted for another form of violence.

His impassioned comment attracted much notice. The Groveton Herald had already become a habit with many people, and they were continually looking for something striking or original on its editorial page. It also received much attention in Groveton and the surrounding country, and Harry became fully conscious of it when he made another round of the “breaks.” The buyers and warehousemen applauded him, patted him on the shoulder, and told him that he was a young man of courage and discernment. He had hit a good blow at lawlessness, and they hoped that he would continue to strike, and strike hard.

But he noticed that several farmers, large tobacco raisers, regarded him with sour looks. Two or three of these were acquaintances and subscribers to his paper. Harry was a natural democrat, with a strong disposition to be friendly with all kinds of people, and he spoke to one of them, a middle aged man named Calkins with a farm about five miles up Deer Creek.

“How are you today Mr. Calkins? he said in his attractive manner. ”The new tobacco crop coming on well?”

“Well enough for the trust, I suppose,” replied Calkins in a surly tone. “I never thought, Mr. Beauchamp, that you’d be for those people.”

“Why I’m not! what makes you say that?”

“We’ve all read the Herald. Haven’t you been jumping all over us?”

“No, I merely denounced lawlessness.”

The farmer shook his head and walked away. Harry left the “breaks” and returned thoughtfully to his office. He was learning that it was hard to steer a middle course, especially in a community still essentially rural.

There was no one in the editorial office. Mr. Flynn was out seeking news, and all the town idlers were lounging elsewhere. But his clerk came to him presently with three letters from indignant subscribers, asking that their papers be stopped at once. The writers were all farmers, and they denounced him as an enemy of the people. His vivid imagination leaped up, and foresaw many other letters of the save kind. Several of the exchanges, received that day from large and distant cities, had praised the courage of the bright young editor of the Groveton Herald, in making a prompt attack upon lawlessness in his community. Harry had felt a glow when he read them, but now when he looked at them again, the glow did not return.

“It’s easy for them,” he thought “to talk about courage and praise it. It costs them nothing.”

But he had no mind to yield, and defend, or excuse what he knew to be wrong. He received a despatch that day about another barn-burning within three miles of Groveton. He was indignant and all his stubborn courage rose. He wrote a second editorial, more impassioned than the first, calling upon the county authorities throughout that region to put down lawlessness, and he followed it on successive mornings with a third and a fourth in the same vein. But the number of orders to “stop” his paper increased greatly, and farmers began to withdraw their stock advertisements. This hurt. He went down and looked ruefully at his beautiful press. He did not see just when he could make another payment to Christopher Lucas, who had been so kind to him. Moreover it was hard to attack one’s own people. Only those who have been born and bred in closely related rural communities know how very hard it is. But he received strong support from his father.

As Harry walked home that evening just after the twilight he heard the sound of Mr. Beauchamp’s violin from the open window. Mr. Beauchamp had lately given up teaching music, It was no longer necessary. He read a great deal, often played in the evenings, and was always proud of his son Harry.

Harry stopped at the gate to listen. Their little house, half hidden by the green foliage, was looking its best now, comfortable and very cheerful. He realized that his youth had been really a happy one.

He entered the house briskly and Mr. Beauchamp laid down the violin.

“Is everything going well?” he asked presently.

“I’m afraid not,” replied Harry. “I’ve been attacking the Band of Justice people, who I think are responsible for those barn-burnings, and now they are attacking me.”

“In what way?”

“Stopping their papers and withdrawing advertisements. The Herald was doing so well, Father, until this thing came up.”

He spoke in an indignant tone. He was angry that the fortunes of the Herald, should be compelled to turn upon any issue except its own merit or lack of it.

“But you are right Harry,” said Mr. Beauchamp, quietly. “Our people here take too light a view of violence. I think it is an inheritance from fighting frontiersmen and early wars. But the Herald after all may not lose because of your course.

Harry was grateful for such encouragement from such a source and he returned to his work that evening with a lighter heart.

►   ▲