"Look here, what do you think I have been working for--to steal a
few niggers?"
"A few--you've been sending 'em south by the boatload! You ought
to be a rich man, Murrell. If you're not it's your own fault."
"That furnishes us with money, but you can push the trade too
hard and too far, and we've about done that. The planters are
uneasy in the sections we've worked over, there's talk of getting
together to clean out everybody who can't give a good account of
himself. The Clan's got to deal a counter blow or go out of
business. It was so with the horse trade; in the end it became
mighty unhandy to move the stock we'd collected. We've reached
the same point now with the trade in niggers. Between here and
the gulf--" he made a wide sweeping gesture with his arm. "I am
spotting the country with my men; there are two thousand active
workers on the rolls of the Clan, and as many more like you, Tom
--and Fentress--on whose friendship I can rely." He leaned toward
Ware. "You'd be slow to tell me I couldn't count on you, Tom,
and you'd be slow to think I couldn't manage this thing when the
time's ripe for it!"
But no trace of this all-sufficient sense of confidence, of which
he seemed so certain, showed on Ware's hardened visage. He spat
away the stump of his cigar.
"Sure as God, John Murrell, you are overreaching yourself! Your
white men are all right, they've got to stick by you; if they
don't they know it's only a question of time until they get a
knife driven into their ribs--but niggers--there isn't any real
fight in a nigger, if there was they wouldn't be here.
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