CHAPTER IV
AT THE POINT OF THE BAYONET
Within an hour from Ben's encounter he was arrested without warrant by themilitary commandant, handcuffed, and placed on the train for Columbia,more than a hundred miles distant. The first purpose of sending him incharge of a negro guard was abandoned for fear of a riot. A squad of whitetroops accompanied him.
Elsie was waiting at the gate, watching for his coming, her heart aglowwith happiness.
When Marion and little Hugh ran to tell the exciting news, she thought ita joke and refused to believe it.
"Come, dear, don't tease me; you know it's not true!"
"I wish I may die if 'tain't so!" Hugh solemnly declared. "He run Gus away'cause he scared Aunt Margaret so. They come and put handcuffs on him andtook him to Columbia. I tell you Grandpa and Grandma and Aunt Margaret aremad!"
Elsie called Phil and begged him to see what had happened.
When Phil reported Ben's arrest without a warrant, and the indignity towhich he had been subjected on the amazing charge of resisting militaryauthority, Elsie hurried with Marion and Hugh to the hotel to express herindignation, and sent Phil to Columbia on the next train to fight for hisrelease.
By the use of a bribe Phil discovered that a special inquisition had beenhastily organized to procure perjured testimony against Ben on the chargeof complicity in the murder of a carpet-bag adventurer named Ashburn, whohad been killed at Columbia in a row in a disreputable resort. This murderhad 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 beimplicated in the killing. Scores of venal wretches, eager for this bloodmoney, were using every device of military tyranny to secure evidence onwhich to convict--no matter who the man might be. Within six hours of hisarrival they had pounced on Ben.
They arrested as a witness an old negro named John Stapler, noted for hisloyalty to the Camerons. The doctor had saved his life once in a dangerousillness. They were going to put him to torture and force him to swear thatBen Cameron had tried to bribe him to kill Ashburn. General Howle, theCommandant of the Columbia district, was in Charleston on a visit toheadquarters.
Phil resorted to the ruse of pretending, as a Yankee, the deepest sympathyfor 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 saton an improvised throne in full uniform.
"Have you ordered a barber to shave this man's head?" sternly asked thejudge.
"Please, Marster, fer de Lawd's sake, I ain' done nuttin'--doan' shave myhead. Dat ha'r been wropped lak dat fur ten year! I die sho' ef I lose myha'r."
"Bring the barber, and take him back until he comes," was the order. In anhour they led him again into the room blindfolded, and placed him in achair.
"Have you let him see a preacher before putting him through?" the Captainasked. "I have an order from the General in Charleston to put him throughto-day."
"For Gawd's sake, Marster, doan' put me froo--I ain't done nuttin' en Idoan' 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 cannonpointed 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 onhim from the rear. He dropped to his knees and began to pray.
"Yas, 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 twoscrubbing-brushes and shaved it clean.
"Now stand him up by the wall and measure him for his coffin," was theorder.
They snatched him from the chair, pushed him against the wall, andmeasured him. While they were taking his measure, the man next to himwhispered:
"Now's the time to save your hide--tell all about Ben Cameron trying tohire you to kill Ashburn."
"Give him a few minutes," said the Captain, "and maybe we can hear whatMr. Cameron said about Ashburn."
"I doan' know nuttin', General," pleaded the old darkey. "I ain't heardnuttin'--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 telling de truf!"
"Put him in the dark cell and keep him there the balance of his lifeunless 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 inthe walls of the fort just big enough to admit the body, with anadjustable top to press down too low for the head to be held erect. Thedoor closed tight against the breast of the victim. The only air admittedwas 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 Captainsaid:
"Keep him there for thirty days unless he tells."
He was left in the agony of the sweat-box for thirty-three hours and takenout. His limbs were swollen and when he attempted to walk he tottered andfell.
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 goback and finish the month out."
The poor old negro dropped in a faint, and they carried him back to hiscell.
Phil determined to spare no means, fair or foul, to secure Ben's releasefrom the clutches of these devils. He had as yet been unable to locate hisplace of confinement.
He continued his ruse of friendly curiosity, kept in touch with theCaptain, and the Captain in touch with his pocketbook.
Summoned to witness another interesting ceremony, he hurried to the fort.
The officer winked at him confidentially, and took him out to a row ofdungeons built of logs and ceiled inside with heavy boards. A single paneof glass about eight inches square admitted light ten feet from theground.
There was a commotion inside, curses, groans, and cries for mercy minglingin 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 allwas 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 bluin' out of his system. Hegave 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 withhim--half-fighting drunks, you know--and told them to work on his teethand manicure his face a little to initiate him into the ranks of thecommon 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 mouthmight 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 couldmake 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 hisvoice.
"Sounds to me like a Sunday-school teacher taking his class through a newcatechism."
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 headstogether as they repeated each chorus.
"Walk in, gentlemen. The show is going on now--the animals are doingbeautifully," 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-fourhours I'll have you behind the bars. I have all the evidence I need. I'man ex-officer of the United States Army, of the fighting corps--not thevulture division. This is my friend. Accompany us to the street and strikeyour charges from the record."
The coward did as he was ordered, and Ben hurried back to Piedmont with afriend toward whom he began to feel closer than a brother.
When Elsie heard the full story of the outrage, she bore herself towardBen with unusual tenderness, and yet he knew that the event had driventheir lives farther apart. He felt instinctively the cold silent eye ofher father, and his pride stiffened under it. The girl had neverconsidered the possibility of a marriage without her father's blessing.Ben Cameron was too proud to ask it. He began to fear that the differencesbetween her father and his people reached to the deepest sources of life.
Phil found himself a hero at the Cameron House. Margaret said little, buther bearing spoke in deeper language than words. He felt it would be meanto take advantage of her gratitude.
But he was quick to respond to the motherly tenderness of Mrs. Cameron. Inthe groups of neighbours who gathered in the evenings to discuss with thedoctor the hopes, fears, and sorrows of the people, Phil was a charmedlistener to the most brilliant conversations he had ever heard. It seemedthe normal expression of their lives. He had never before seen people cometogether to talk to one another after this fashion. More and more thesimplicity, dignity, patience, courtesy, and sympathy of these people intheir bearing toward one another impressed him. More and more he grew tolike them.
Marion went out of her way to express her open admiration for Phil andtease him about Margaret. The Rev. Hugh McAlpin was monopolizing her onthe Wednesday following his return from Columbia and Phil sought Marionfor 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 eyesdancing 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 ownhome--and never do a thing I can make my husband do for me! How do youlike it?"
"I think it very sweet," Phil answered soberly.
At noon on the following Friday, the Piedmont _Eagle_ appeared with aneditorial signed by Dr. Cameron, denouncing in the fine language of theold school the arrest of Ben as "despotism and the usurpation ofauthority."
At three o'clock, Captain Gilbert, in command of the troops stationed inthe village, marched a squad of soldiers to the newspaper office. One ofthem carried a sledge-hammer. In ten minutes he demolished the office,heaped the type and their splintered cases on top of the battered press inthe middle of the street, and set fire to the pile.
On the courthouse 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 exampleof Dr. Cameron, as the leader of public opinion in the county.
He ordered a squad of his negro troops to arrest him immediately and takehim to Columbia for obstructing the execution of the Reconstruction Acts.He placed the squad under command of Gus, whom he promoted to be acorporal, 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 theoffice. Margaret had gone for a ride with Phil, and Ben had strolled withElsie to Lover's Leap, unconscious of the excitement in town.
Dr. Cameron himself had heard nothing of it, having just reached home froma visit to a country patient.
Gus stationed his men at each door, and with another trooper walkedstraight into Mrs. Cameron's bedroom, where the doctor was resting on alounge.
Had an imp of perdition suddenly sprung through the floor, the master ofthe 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 formerslave, his slender frame erect, his face a livid spot in its snow-whitehair, 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 tonesgripped him by the throat, said:
"How dare you?"
The gun fell from the negro's hand, and he dropped to the floor on hisface.
His companion uttered a yell and sprang through the door, rallying the menas he went:
"Fall back! Fall back! He's killed Gus! Shot him dead wid his eye. He'sconjured him! Git de whole army quick."
They fled to the Commandant.
Gilbert ordered the negroes to their tents and led his whole company ofwhite regulars to the hotel, arrested Dr. Cameron, and rescued hisfainting trooper, who had been revived and placed under a tree on thelawn.
The little Captain had a wicked look on his face. He refused to allow thedoctor a moment's delay to leave instructions for his wife, who had goneto visit a neighbour. He was placed in the guard-house, and a detail oftwenty soldiers stationed around it.
The arrest was made so quickly, not a dozen people in town had heard ofit. As fast as it was known, people poured into the house, one by one, toexpress their sympathy. But a greater surprise awaited them.
Within thirty minutes after he had been placed in prison, a Lieutenantentered, accompanied by a soldier and a negro blacksmith who carried inhis hand two big chains with shackles on each end.
The doctor gazed at the intruders a moment with incredulity, and then, asthe enormity of the outrage dawned on him, he flushed
and drew himselferect, 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 youngLieutenant'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 negrosmith to approach. He stepped forward, unlocked the padlock, and preparedthe fetters to be placed on his arms and legs. These fetters were ofenormous weight, made of iron rods three quarters of an inch thick andconnected together by chains of like weight.
"This is monstrous!" groaned the doctor, with choking agony, glancinghelplessly about the bare cell for some weapon with which to defendhimself.
Suddenly looking the Lieutenant in the face, he said:
"I demand, sir, to see your commanding officer. He cannot pretend thatthese shackles are needed to hold a weak unarmed man in prison, guarded bytwo hundred soldiers?"
"It is useless. I have his orders direct."
"But I must see him. No such outrage has ever been recorded in the historyof the American people. I appeal to the Magna Charta rights of every manwho speaks the English tongue--no man shall be arrested or imprisoned ordeprived of his own household, or of his liberties, unless by the legaljudgment of his peers or by the law of the land!"
"The bayonet is your only law. My orders admit of no delay. For your ownsake, I advise you to submit. As a soldier, Dr. Cameron, you know I mustexecute orders."
"These are not the orders of a soldier!" shouted the prisoner, enragedbeyond all control. "They are orders for a jailer, a hangman, ascullion--no soldier who wears the sword of a civilized nation can takesuch orders. The war is over; the South is conquered; I have no countrysave America. For the honour of the flag, for which I once poured out myblood 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 openand exposing his breast. "Kill--I am in your power. I have no desire tolive under such conditions. Kill, but you must not inflict on me and on mypeople this insult worse than death!"
"Do your duty, blacksmith," said the officer, turning his back and walkingtoward the door.
The negro advanced with the chains cautiously, and attempted to snap oneof 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 mustsubmit."
"I am your prisoner," fiercely retorted the doctor. "I have been a soldierin the armies of America, and I know how to die. Kill me, and my lastbreath will be a blessing. But while I have life to resist, for myself andfor my people, this thing shall not be done!"
The Lieutenant called a sergeant and a file of soldiers, and the sergeantstepped 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 inthe padlock on the left.
As he drove the rivet into the shackle on his left arm, a spurt of bruisedblood from the old Mexican War wound stained the iron.
Dr. Cameron lay for a moment in a stupor. At length he slowly rose. Theclank of the heavy chains seemed to choke him with horror. He sank on thefloor, covering his face with his hands and groaned:
"The shame! The shame! O God, that I might have died! My poor, poorwife!"
Captain Gilbert entered and said with a sneer:
"I will take you now to see your wife and friends if you would like tocall 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 theirchief has fallen, or will you force me to drag you?"
Receiving no answer, he roughly drew the doctor to his feet, held him bythe arm, and led him thus in half-unconscious stupor through the principalstreet, followed by a drove of negroes. He ordered a squad of troops tomeet him at the depot. Not a white man appeared on the streets. When onesaw the sight and heard the clank of those chains, there was a suddentightening of the lip, a clinched fist, and an averted face.
When they approached the hotel, Mrs. Cameron ran to meet him, her facewhite as death.
In silence she kissed his lips, kissed each shackle on his wrists, tookher handkerchief and wiped the bruised blood from the old wound on his armthe iron had opened afresh, and then with a look, beneath which theCaptain shrank, she said in low tones:
"Do your work quickly. You have but a few moments to get out of this townwith your prisoner. I have sent a friend to hold my son. If he comesbefore 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 inhalf-unconscious stupor, toward the depot down past his old slavequarters. He had given his negroes who remained faithful each a cabin anda 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 infront of him, looking at the Captain out of the corners of his eyes, andasked:
"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 asledge-hammer, laying him stunned on the pavement.
"Den take dat f'um yo' equal, d--n you!" he cried, bending over hisprostrate figure. "I'll show you how to treat my ole marster, you low-downslue-footed devil!"
The stirring little drama roused the doctor and he turned to his servantwith 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 thenmy horse and buggy. You can take me to the depot. This officer can followwith his men." And he did.