The Clansman
BOOK III
THE REIGN OF TERROR
CHAPTER IV
AT THE POINT OF THE BAYONET
WITHIN an hour from Ben's encounter, he was arrested without warrant
by the military commandant, handcuffed, and placed on the train for
Columbia, more than a hundred miles distant. The first purpose of
sending him in charge of a negro guard was abandoned for fear of a
riot. A squad of white troops accompanied him.
Elsie was waiting at the gate, watching for his coming, her heart
aglow with happiness.
When Marion and little Hugh ran to tell the exciting news, she
thought it a joke and refused to believe it.
“Come, dear, don't tease me; you know it's not true!”
“I wish I may die if 'taint so!” Hugh solemnly declared. “He run Gus
away 'cause he scared Aunt Margaret so. They come and put handcuffs on
him and took him to Columbia. I tell you Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt
Margaret are mad!”
Elsie called Phil and begged him to see what had happened.
When Phil reported Ben's arrest without a warrant, and the indignity
to which he had been subjected on the amazing charge of resisting
military authority, Elsie hurried with Marion and Hugh to the hotel to
express her indignation, and sent Phil to Columbia on the next train to
fight for his release.
By the use of a bribe Phil discovered that a special inquisition had
been hastily organised to procure perjured testimony against Ben on the
charge of complicity in the murder of a carpet-bag adventurer named
Ashburn, who had been killed at Columbia in a row in a disreputable
resort. This murder had occurred the week Ben Cameron was in Nashville.
The enormous reward of $25,000 had been offered for the conviction of
any man who could be implicated in the killing. Scores of venal
wretches, eager for this blood-money, were using every device of
military tyranny to secure evidence on which to convict—no matter who
the man might be. Within six hours of his arrival they had pounced on
Ben.
They arrested as a witness an old negro named John Stapler, noted
for his loyalty to the Camerons. The doctor had saved his life once in
a dangerous illness. They were going to put him to torture and force
him to swear that Ben Cameron had tried to bribe him to kill Ashburn.
General Howle, the commandant of the Columbia district, was in
Charleston on a visit to headquarters.
Phil resorted to the ruse of pretending, as a Yankee, the deepest
sympathy for Ashburn, and by the payment of a fee of twenty dollars to
the Captain, was admitted to the fort to witness the torture.
They led the old man trembling into the presence of the Captain, who
sat on an improvised throne in full uniform.
“Have you ordered a barber to shave this man's head?” sternly asked
the judge.
“Please, Marster, fer de Lawd's sake, I ain' done, nuttin'—doan'
shave my head. Dat ha'r been wropped lak dat fur ten year! I die sho'
ef I lose my ha'r.”
“Bring the barber, and take him back until he comes,” was the order.
In an hour they led him again into the room, blindfolded, and placed
him in a chair.
“Have you let him see a preacher before putting him through?” the
Captain asked. “I have an order from the General in Charleston to put
him through to-day.”
“For God's sake, Marster, doan' put me froo—I ain't done nuttin'
en I doan' know nuttin'!”
The old negro slipped to his knees, trembling from head to foot.
The guards caught him by the shoulders and threw him back into the
chair. The bandage was removed, and just in front of him stood a brass
cannon pointed at his head, a soldier beside it holding the string
ready to pull. John threw himself backward, yelling:
“Goddermighty! “
When he scrambled to his feet and started to run, another cannon
swung on him from the rear. He dropped to his knees and began to pray:
“Yes, Lawd, I'se er comin'. I hain't ready—but, Lawd, I got ter
come! Save me!”
“Shave him!” the Captain ordered.
While the old man sat moaning, they lathered his head with two
scrubbing-brushes and shaved it clean.
“Now stand him up by the wall and measure him for his coffin,” was
the order.
They snatched him from the chair, pushed him against the wall, and
measured him. While they were taking his measure, the man next to him
whispered:
“Now's the time to save your hide—tell all about Ben Cameron
trying to hire you to kill Ashburn.”
“Give him a few minutes,” said the Captain, “and maybe we can hear
what Mr. Cameron said about Ashburn.”
“I doan' know nuttin', General,” pleaded the old darkey. “I ain't
heard nuttin'—I ain't seed Marse Ben fer two monts.”
“You needn't lie to us. The rebels have been posting you. But it's
no use. We'll get it out of you.”
“'Fo' Gawd, Marster, I'se er telling de truf!”
“Put him in the dark cell and keep him there the balance of his life
unless he tells,” was the order.
At the end of four days, Phil was summoned again to witness the
show.
John was carried to another part of the fort and shown the
sweat-box.
“Now tell all you know or in you go!” said his tormentor.
The negro looked at the engine of torture in abject terror—a
closet in the walls of the fort just big enough to admit the body, with
an adjustable top to press down too low for the head to be held erect.
The door closed tight against the breast of the victim. The only air
admitted was through an auger-hole in the door.
The old man's lips moved in prayer.
“Will you tell?” growled the Captain.
“I cain't tell ye nuttin' 'cept'n' a lie!” he moaned.
They thrust him in, slammed the door, and in a loud voice the
Captain said:
“Keep him there for thirty days unless he tells.”
He was left in the agony of the sweat-box for thirty-three hours and
taken out. His limbs were swollen, and when he attempted to walk he
tottered and fell.
The guard jerked him to his feet, and the Captain said:
“I'm afraid we've taken him out too soon, but if he don't tell he
can go back and finish the month out.”
The poor old negro dropped in a faint, and they carried him back to
his cell.
Phil determined to spare no means, fair or foul, to secure Ben's
release from the clutches of these devils. He had as yet been unable to
locate his place of confinement.
He continued his ruse of friendly curiosity, kept in touch with the
Captain, and the Captain in touch with his pocket-book.
Summoned to witness another interesting ceremony, he hurried to the
fort.
The officer winked at him confidentially, and took him out to a row
of dungeons built of logs and ceiled inside with heavy boards. A single
pane of glass about eight inches square admitted light ten feet from
the ground.
There was a commotion inside, curses, groans and cries for mercy
mingling in rapid succession.
“What is it?” asked Phil.
“Hell's goin' on in there!” laughed the officer.
“Evidently.”
A heavy crash, as though a ton-weight had struck the floor, and then
all was still.
“By George, it's too bad we can't see it all!” exclaimed the
officer.
“What does it mean?” urged Phil.
Again the Captain laughed immoderately.
“I've got a blue-blood in there taking the bruin' out of his system.
He gave me some impudence. I'm teaching him who's running this
country!”
“What are you doing to him?” Phil asked with a sudden suspicion.
“Oh, just having a little fun! I put two big white drunks in there
with him—half-fighting drunks, you know—and told them to work on
his teeth and manicure his face a little to initiate him into the ranks
of the common people, so to speak!”
Again he laughed.
Phil, listening at the keyhole, held up his hand: “Hush, they're
talking—”
He could hear Ben Cameron's voice in the softest drawl: “Say it
again.”
“Please, Marster!”
“Now both together, and a little louder.”
“Please, Marster!” came the united chorus.
“Now what kind of a dog did I say you are?”
“The kind as comes when his marster calls.”
“Both together—the under dog seems to have too much cover, like
his mouth might be full of cotton.”
They repeated it louder.
“A common-stump-tailed—cur-dog?”
“Yessir.”
“Say it.”
“A common-stump-tailed—cur-dog—Marster!”
“A pair of them.”
“A pair of 'em.”
“No, the whole thing-all together—'we—are-—a- pair.' “
“Yes-Marster.” They repeated it in chorus.
“With apologies to the dogs—”
“Apologies to the dogs—”
“And why does your master honour the kennel with his presence
to-day?”
“He hit a nigger on the head so hard that he strained the nigger's
ankle, and he's restin' from his labours.”
“That's right, Towser. If I had you and Tige a few hours every day I
could make good squirrel-dogs out of you.
There was a pause. Phil looked up and smiled.
“What does it sound like?” asked the Captain, with a shade of doubt
in his voice.
“Sounds to me like a Sunday-school teacher taking his class through
a new catechism.”
The Captain fumbled hurriedly for his keys.
“There's something wrong in there.”
He opened the door and sprang in.
Ben Cameron was sitting on top of the two toughs, knocking their
heads together as they repeated each chorus.
“Walk in, gentlemen. The show is going on now—the animals are
doing beautifully,” said Ben.
The Captain muttered an oath. Phil suddenly grasped him by the
throat, hurled him against the wall, and snatched the keys from his
hand.
“Now open your mouth, you white-livered cur, and inside of
twenty-four hours I'll have you behind the bars. I have all the
evidence I need. I'm an ex-officer of the United States Army, of the
fighting corps—not the vulture division. This is my friend. Accompany
us to the street and strike your charges from the record.”
The coward did as he was ordered, and Ben hurried back to Piedmont
with a friend toward whom he began to feel closer than a brother.
When Elsie heard the full story of the outrage, she bore herself
toward Ben with unusual tenderness, and yet he knew that the event had
driven their lives farther apart. He felt instinctively the cold silent
eye of her father, and his pride stiffened under it. The girl had never
considered the possibility of a marriage without her father's blessing.
Ben Cameron was too proud to ask it. He began to fear that the
differences between her father and his people reached to the deepest
sources of life.
Phil found himself a hero at the Cameron House. Margaret said
little, but her bearing spoke in deeper language than words. He felt it
would be mean to take advantage of her gratitude.
But he was quick to respond to the motherly tenderness of Mrs.
Cameron. In the groups of neighbours who gathered in the evenings to
discuss with the doctor the hopes, fears, and sorrows of the people,
Phil was a charmed listener to the most brilliant conversations he had
ever heard. It seemed the normal expression of their lives. He had
never before seen people come together to talk to one another after
this fashion. More and more the simplicity, dignity, patience,
courtesy, and sympathy of these people in their bearing toward one
another impressed him. More and more he grew to like them.
Marion went out of her way to express her open admiration for Phil
and tease him about Margaret. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was monopolizing
her on the Wednesday following his return from Columbia and Phil sought
Marion for sympathy.
“What will you give me if I tease you about Margaret right before
her?” she asked.
He blushed furiously.
“Don't you dare such a thing on peril of your life!”
“You know you like to be teased about her,” she cried, her blue eyes
dancing with fun.
“With such a pretty little friend to do the teasing all by
ourselves, perhaps—”
“You'll never get her unless you have more spunk.”
“Then I'll find consolation with you.”
“No, I mean to marry young.”
“And your ideal of life?”
“To fill the world with flowers, laughter, and music—especially my
own home—and never do a thing I can make my husband do for me! How do
you like it?”
“I think it very sweet,” Phil answered soberly.
At noon on the following Friday, the Piedmont Eagle appeared
with an editorial signed by Dr. Cameron, denouncing in the fine
language of the old school the arrest of Ben as “despotism and the
usurpation of authority.”
At three o'clock, Captain Gilbert, in command of the troops
stationed in the village, marched a squad of soldiers to the newspaper
office. One of them carried a sledgehammer. In ten minutes he
demolished the office, heaped the type and their splintered cases on
top of the battered press in the middle of the street, and set fire to
the pile.
On the court-house door he nailed this proclamation:
“To the People of Ulster County:
“The censures of the press, directed against the servants of the
people, may be endured; but the military force in command of this
district are not the servants of the people of South Carolina. WE ARE
YOUR MASTERS. The impertinence of newspaper comment on the military
will not be brooked UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES WHATEVER.
“G. C. GILBERT,
“Captain in Command.”
Not content with this display of power, he determined to make an
example of Dr. Cameron, as the leader of public opinion in the county.
He ordered a squad of his negro troops to arrest him immediately and
take him to Columbia for obstructing the execution of the
Reconstruction Acts. He placed the squad under command of Gus, whom he
promoted to be a corporal, with instructions to wait until the doctor
was inside his house, boldly enter it and arrest him.
When Gus marched his black janizaries into the house, no one was in
the office. Margaret had gone for a ride with Phil, and Ben had
strolled with Elsie to Lover's Leap, unconscious of the excitement in
town.
Dr. Cameron himself had heard nothing of it, having just reached
home from a visit to a country patient.
Gus stationed his men at each door, and with another trooper walked
straight into Mrs. Cameron's bedroom, where the doctor was resting on a
lounge.
Had an imp of perdition suddenly sprung through the floor, the
master of the house of Cameron would not have been more enraged or
surprised.
A sudden leap, as the spring of a panther, and he stood before his
former slave, his slender frame erect, his face a livid spot in its
snow-white hair, his brilliant eyes flashing with fury.
Gus suddenly lost control of his knees.
His old master transfixed him with his eyes, and in a voice, whose
tones gripped him by the throat, said:
“How dare you?”
The gun fell from the negro's hand, and he dropped to the floor on
his face.
His companion uttered a yell and sprang through the door, rallying
the men as he went:
“Fall back! Fall back! He's killed Gus! Shot him dead wid his eye.
He's conjured him! Git de whole army quick.”
They fled to the Commandant.
Gilbert ordered the negroes to their tents and led his whole company
of white regulars to the hotel, arrested Dr. Cameron, and rescued his
fainting trooper, who had been revived and placed under a tree on the
lawn.
The little Captain had a wicked look on his face. He refused to
allow the doctor a moment's delay to leave instructions for his wife,
who had gone to visit a neighbour. He was placed in the guard-house,
and a detail of twenty soldiers stationed around it.
The arrest was made so quickly, not a dozen people in town had heard
of it. As fast as it was known, people poured into the house, one by
one, to express their sympathy. But a greater surprise awaited them.
Within thirty minutes after he had been placed in prison, a
Lieutenant entered, accompanied by a soldier and a negro blacksmith who
carried in his hand two big chains with shackles on each end.
The doctor gazed at the intruders a moment with incredulity, and
then, as the enormity of the outrage dawned on him, he flushed and drew
himself erect, his face livid and rigid.
He clutched his throat with his slender fingers, slowly recovered
himself, glanced at the shackles in the black hands and then at the
young Lieutenant's face, and said slowly, with heaving breast:
“My God! Have you been sent to place these irons on me?”
“Such are my orders, sir,” replied the officer, motioning to the
negro smith to approach. He stepped forward, unlocked the padlock and
prepared the fetters to be placed on his arms and legs. These fetters
were of enormous weight, made of iron rods three-quarters of an inch
thick and connected together by chains of like weight.
“This is monstrous!” groaned the doctor, with choking agony,
glancing helplessly about the bare cell for some weapon with which to
defend himself.
Suddenly, looking the Lieutenant in the face, he said: “I demand,
sir, to see your commanding officer. He cannot pretend that these
shackles are needed to hold a weak unarmed man in prison, guarded by
two hundred soldiers?”
“It is useless. I have his orders direct.”
“But I must see him. No such outrage has ever been recorded in the
history of the American people. I appeal to the Magna Charta rights of
every man who speaks the English tongue—no man shall be arrested or
imprisoned or deprived of his own household, or of his liberties,
unless by the legal judgment of his peers or by the law of the land!”
“The bayonet is your only law. My orders admit of no delay. For your
own sake, I advise you to submit. As a soldier, Dr. Cameron, you know I
must execute orders.”
“These are not the orders of a soldier!” shouted the prisoner,
enraged beyond all control. “They are orders for a jailer, a hangman, a
scullion—no soldier who wears the sword of a civilised nation can
take such orders. The war is over; the South is conquered; I have no
country save America. For the honour of the flag, for which I once
poured out my blood on the heights of Buena Vista, I protest against
this shame!”
The Lieutenant fell back a moment before the burst of his anger.
“Kill me! Kill me!” he went on, passionately throwing his arms wide
open and exposing his breast. “Kill- I am in your power. I have no
desire to live under such conditions. Kill, but you must not inflict on
me and on my people this insult worse than death!”
“Do your duty, blacksmith,” said the officer, turning his back and
walking toward the door.
The negro advanced with the chains cautiously, and attempted to snap
one of the shackles on the doctor's right arm.
With sudden maniac frenzy, Dr. Cameron seized the negro by the
throat, hurled him to the floor, and backed against the wall.
The Lieutenant approached and remonstrated:
“Why compel me to add the indignity of personal violence? You must
submit.”
“I am your prisoner,” fiercely retorted the doctor. “I have been a
soldier in the armies of America, and I know how to die. Kill me, and
my last breath will be a blessing. But while I have life to resist, for
myself and for my people, this thing shall not be done!”
The Lieutenant called a sergeant and a file of soldiers, and the
sergeant stepped forward to seize the prisoner.
Dr. Cameron sprang on him with the ferocity of a tiger, seized his
musket, and attempted to wrench it from his grasp.
The men closed in on him. A short passionate fight, and the slender,
proud, gray-haired man lay panting on the floor.
Four powerful assailants held his hands and feet, and the negro
smith, with a grin, secured the rivet on the right ankle and turned the
key in the padlock on the left.
As he drove the rivet into the shackle on his left arm, a spurt of
bruised blood from the old Mexican War wound stained the iron.
Dr. Cameron lay for a moment in a stupor. At length he slowly rose.
The clank of the heavy chains seemed to choke him with horror. He sank
on the floor, covering his face with his hands and groaned:
“The shame! The shame! O God, that I might have died! My poor, poor
wife!”
Captain Gilbert entered and said with a sneer:
“I will take you now to see your wife and friends if you would like
to call before setting out for Columbia.”
The doctor paid no attention to him.
“Will you follow me while I lead you through this town, to show them
their chief has fallen, or will you force me to drag you?”
Receiving no answer, he roughly drew the doctor to his feet, held
him by the arm, and led him thus in half- unconscious stupor through
the principal street, followed by a drove of negroes. He ordered a
squad of troops to meet him at the depot. Not a white man appeared on
the streets. When one saw the sight and heard the clank of those
chains, there was a sudden tightening of the lip, a clinched fist, and
an averted face.
When they approached the hotel, Mrs. Cameron ran to meet him, her
face white as death.
In silence she kissed his lips, kissed each shackle on his wrists,
took her handkerchief and wiped the bruised blood from the old wound on
his arm the iron had opened afresh, and then with a look, beneath which
the Captain shrank, she said in low tones:
“Do your work quickly. You have but a few moments to get out of this
town with your prisoner. I have sent
a friend to hold my son. If he comes before you go, he will kill you on
sight as he would a mad dog.”
With a sneer, the Captain passed the hotel and led the doctor, still
in half-unconscious stupor, toward the depot down past his old
slave-quarters. He had given his negroes who remained faithful each a
cabin and a lot.
They looked on in awed silence as the Captain proclaimed:
“Fellow citizens, you are the equal of any white man who walks the
ground. The white man's day is done. Your turn has come.”
As he passed Jake's cabin, the doctor's faithful man stepped
suddenly in front of him, looking at the Captain out of the corners of
his eyes, and asked:
“Is I yo' equal?”
“Yes.”
“Des lak any white man?”
“Exactly.”
The negro's fist suddenly shot into Gilbert's nose with the crack of
a sledge-hammer, laying him stunned on the pavement.
“Den take dat f'um yo' equal, d—m you!” he cried, bending over his
prostrate figure. “I'll show you how to treat my ole marster, you
low-down slue-footed devil!”
The stirring little drama roused the doctor, and he turned to his
servant with his old-time courtesy, and said:
“Thank you, Jake.”
“Come in here, Marse Richard; I knock dem things off'n you in er
minute, 'en I get you outen dis town in er jiffy.”
“No, Jake, that is not my way; bring this gentleman some water, and
then my horse and buggy. You can take me to the depot. This officer can
follow with his men.”And he did.