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(©, 1922, Western Newspaper Union.)“Joe may be black,” said Colonel Lamont, “but he’s a gentleman through and through. The only decent, hard* working man around here.”“If all the colored people were like Joe and Aunt Mary, there’d be no racial problem in this part of the country,” said the colonel’s lady.Joe Lamont—his father had taken his master’s name after emancipation —had purchased his ten acres, which had once formed part of the estate. Aunt Mary worked as cook for the Lamonts. Steal? Of course; only she didn’t think of it in that way, and there were hungry mouths to be fed in Joe’s cabin.Everybody liked Joe, except young Rountree. Rountree’s father had been a wholesale grocer in the town and made a pile of money—“heaven knows how,” said the colonel. “I didn’t know there was any money in these parts since the war.” (By that he meant the Civil war.) And young Rountree had bought the old Cleaver estate, and had broken a local pool about cotton and squeezed the district dry.Joe hated him for that, and because Joe sniggered when young Rountree tried to make his horsb cut capers before Cicely, the colonel’s daughter, and tumbled off, Rountree, white with passion, flicked Joe over the shoulder with his whip.That showed bad blood and made bad blood. Nobody strikes a colored man; nobody had ever struck Joe before. Joe just stood still. Rountree apologizecl afterward. But Cicely couldn’t bear it.That was months before. Colonel Lamont had been one of the pool. Rountree admitted that he had broken it, but pleaded—Oh, something or other. Anyway, it looked as if the La-rnont place was going the way of the Cleaver place.Young Rountree came riding oftener than before. Generally when he left Cicely was in tears. There were anxious consultations in the Lamont cabin.“Dat white trash is a-holding a pistol to the master’s head,” said Joe. “Ef he don’t marry Miss Cicely, he’s u-goin’ to sell him up.”“Shore, you off your head, nigger,” exclaimed Aunt Mary. “De Laments has set dere sence God made Carolina, ,and I guess dey’il set dere till jedgment day.”Up in the big house young Rountree faced Colonel Lamont.“Your inference is unwarranted, sir,” he sneered. “I am exercising my right if I call in your mortgage. I am not threatening you, as you suggest. I merely stated that, were I your son-in-law, I should, of course, view the matter from another angle.”“I’d rather be bundled into the poor-house, and so would my wife, than sell our child!” thundered the colonel.Young Rountree rode away in hot rage. But Cicely, walking under the maples with Harry Beeolicroft, her chum since schooldays, did not even glance up at him as he galloped by. A black shadow seemed to have passed out of her life.The Lamont place was for sale.iThe family had a month’s grace, but that did not prevent the old house and estate from passing xmder the hammer. The bidder was Jim Bryce, a local real estate man. He winked portentously when he was asked whom he was acting for.“A southern gentleman,” was all he would vouchsafe. “I guess we’ll still have the right sort of people in theplace.”“How can cley be right sort of people ef dey ain’t Laments?” asked Aunt Mary indignantly. “What you laflln’ at, nigger?”The purchaser had approached the colonel through Jim Bryce, asking if he would stay on three months. The colonel declined. He wouldn’t be beholden to any one. “Unless it was black Joe,” he said, after a pause. And old Joe seemed nearer to the colonel in those days than anyone else.One day Joe stood before the colonel, hat in hand. “You see, it’s dis way, master,” he said. “I caln’t read dis piece of paper, but mebbe you’d tell me what it says, master.”“Why, you’ve been buying property, Joe. I didn’t know you had money i” exclaimed the colonel.“Well, you see, master, it’s dis way. We’ve saved mighty hard ail our lives, and so did my old father, and den when dis cotton pool corned along, I sez, ‘Ef dat crook of a Rountree’s plannin’ to swindle master, why, I’ll be on de right side, and if master wins, why my money don’t count, andso—”“Joel” The colonel clutched his shoulder, “You have bought the Lamont place?”“Well, master, it shore had to stay with de Lamonts, black or white, somehow, don’t it? An’ so I thought sence the old master made my old man free, mebbe you’d take it because my money’s yours, and thar’s Miss Cicely —or mebbe you’d let me take up that there mortgage—why, , master, that ain’t nothing to look so nnppr nhnnf
Newspaper Details
Linton Daily Citizen
Linton, Indiana, US
Mon, Nov 20, 1922
Page 7
Full Page
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Anonymous
USA 11 Jul 2020
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Linton Daily Citizen
