The Quest of the Silver Fleece Part 72

"You can't do nothing on twenty acres--" began Johnson, but Tylor laid his huge hand right over his mouth and said briefly:

"Shut up!"

Alwyn started again: "We shall sell a few twenty-acre farms but keep one central plantation of one hundred acres for the school. Here Miss Zora will carry on her work and the school will run a model farm with your help. We want to centre here agencies to make life better. We want all sorts of industries; we want a little hospital with a resident physician and two or three nurses; we want a cooperative store for buying supplies; we want a cotton-gin and saw-mill, and in the future other things. This land here, as I have said, is the richest around. We want to keep this hundred acres for the public good, and not sell it. We are going to deed it to a board of trustees, and those trustees are to be chosen from the ones who buy the small farms."

"Who's going to get what's made on this land?" asked Sanders.

"All of us. It is going first to pay for the land, then to support the Home and the School, and then to furnish capital for industries."

Johnson snickered. "You mean youse gwine to git yo' livin' off it?"

"Yes," answered Alwyn; "but I'm going to work for it."

"Who's gwine--" began Simpson, but stopped helplessly.

"Who's going to tend this land?" asked the practical Carter.

"All of us. Each man is going to promise us so many days' work a year, and we're going to ask others to help--the women and girls and school children--they will all help."

"Can you put trust in that sort of help?"

"We can when once the community learns that it pays."

"Does you own the land?" asked Johnson suddenly.

"No; we're buying it, and it's part paid for already."

The discussion became general. Zora moved about among the men whispering and explaining; while Johnson moved, too, objecting and hinting. At last he arose.

"Brethren," he began, "the plan's good enough for talkin' but you can't work it; who ever heer'd tell of such a thing? First place, the land ain't yours; second place, you can't get it worked; third place, white folks won't 'low it. Who ever heer'd of such working land on shares?"

"You do it for white folks each day, why not for yourselves," Alwyn pointed out.

"'Cause we ain't white, and we can't do nothin' like that."

Tylor was asleep and snoring and the others looked doubtfully at each other. It was a proposal a little too daring for them, a bit too far beyond their experience. One consideration alone kept them from shrinking away and that was Zora's influence. Not a man was there whom she had not helped and encouraged nor who had not perfect faith in her; in her impetuous hope, her deep enthusiasm, and her strong will. Even her defects--the hard-held temper, the deeply rooted dislikes--caught their imagination.

Finally, after several other meetings five men took courage--three of the best and two of the weakest. During the Spring long negotiations were entered into by Miss Smith to "buy" the five men. Colonel Cresswell and Mr. Tolliver had them all charged with large sums of indebtedness and these sums had to be a.s.sumed by the school. As Colonel Cresswell counted over two thousand dollars of school notes and deposited them beside the mortgage he smiled grimly for he saw the end. Yet, even then his hand trembled and that curious doubt came creeping back. He put it aside angrily and glanced up.

"n.i.g.g.e.r wants to talk with you," announced his clerk.

The Colonel sauntered out and found Bles Alwyn waiting.

"Colonel Cresswell," he said, "I have charge of the buying for the school and our tenants this year and I naturally want to do the best possible. I thought I'd come over and see about getting my supplies at your store."

"That's all right; you can get anything you want," said Colonel Cresswell cheerily, for this to his mind was evidence of sense on the part of the Negroes. Bles showed his list of needed supplies--seeds, meat, corn-meal, coffee, sugar, etc. The Colonel glanced over it carelessly, then moved away.

"All right. Come and get what you want--any time," he called back.

"But about the prices," said Alwyn, following him.

"Oh, they'll be all right."

"Of course. But what I want is an estimate of your lowest cash prices."

"Cash?"

"Yes, sir."

Cresswell thought a while; such a business-like proposition from Negroes surprised him.

"Well, I'll let you know," he said.

It was nearly a week later before Alwyn approached him again.

"Now, see here," said Colonel Cresswell, "there's practically no difference between cash and time prices. We buy our stock on time and you can just as well take advantage of this as not. I have figured out about what these things will cost. The best thing for you to do is to make a deposit here and get things when you want them. If you make a good deposit I'll throw off ten per cent, which is all of my profit."

"Thank you," said Alwyn, but he looked over the account and found the whole bill at least twice as large as he expected. Without further parley, he made some excuse and started to town while Mr. Cresswell went to the telephone.

In town Alwyn went to all the chief merchants one after another and received to his great surprise practically the same estimate. He could not understand it. He had estimated the current market prices according to the Montgomery paper, yet the prices in Toomsville were fifty to a hundred and fifty per cent higher. The merchant to whom he went last, laughed.

"Don't you know we're not going to interfere with Colonel Cresswell's tenants?" He stated the dealers' att.i.tude, and Alwyn saw light. He went home and told Zora, and she listened without surprise.

"Now to business," she said briskly. "Miss Smith," turning to the teacher, "as I told you, they're combined against us in town and we must buy in Montgomery. I was sure it was coming, but I wanted to give Colonel Cresswell every chance. Bles starts for Montgomery--"

Alwyn looked up. "Does he?" he asked, smiling.

"Yes," said Zora, smiling in turn. "We must lose no further time."

"But there's no train from Toomsville tonight."

"But there's one from Barton in the morning and Barton is only twenty miles away."

"It is a long walk." Alwyn thought a while, silently. Then he rose. "I'm going," he said. "Good-bye."

In less than a week the storehouse was full, and tenants were at work.

The twenty acres of cleared swamp land, attended to by the voluntary labor of all the tenants, was soon bearing a magnificent crop. Colonel Cresswell inspected all the crops daily with a proprietary air that would have been natural had these folk been simply tenants, and as such he persisted in regarding them.

The cotton now growing was perhaps not so uniformly fine as the first acre of Silver Fleece, but it was of unusual height and thickness.

"At least a bale to the acre," Alwyn estimated, and the Colonel mentally determined to take two-thirds of the crop. After that he decided that he would evict Zora immediately; since sufficient land was cleared already for his purposes and moreover, he had seen with consternation a herd of cattle grazing in one field on some early green stuff, and heard a drove of hogs in the swamp. Such an example before the tenants of the Black Belt would be fatal. He must wait a few weeks for them to pick the cotton--then, the end. He was fighting the battle of his color and caste.

The children sang merrily in the brown-white field. The wide baskets, poised aloft, foamed on the erect and swaying bodies of the dark carriers. The crop throughout the land was short that year, for prices had ruled low last season in accordance with the policy of the Combine.

This year they started high again. Would they fall? Many thought so and hastened to sell.

Zora and Alwyn gathered their tenants' crops, ginned them at the Cresswells' gin, and carried their cotton to town, where it was deposited in the warehouse of the Farmers' League.

"Now," said Alwyn, "we would best sell while prices are high."