Part 59 (2/2)
The old Commoner furrowed his brow.
”Have you been instructed to act under my orders?”
”I have, sir,” said the officer, saluting.
”Then do as I tell you,” snapped Stoneman.
Ben Cameron had kept indoors all day, and dined with fifty of the Western troopers whom he had identified as leading in the friendly demonstration to his men. Margaret, who had been busy with Mrs. Cameron entertaining these soldiers, was seated in the dining-room alone, eating her dinner, while Phil waited impatiently in the parlour.
The guests had all gone when two big negro troopers, fighting drunk, walked into the hotel. They went to the water-cooler and drank ostentatiously, thrusting their thick lips coated with filth far into the cocoanut dipper, while a dirty hand grasped its surface.
They pushed the dining-room door open and suddenly flopped down beside Margaret.
She attempted to rise, and cried in rage:
”How dare you, black brutes?”
One of them threw his arm around her chair, thrust his face into hers, and said with a laugh:
”Don't hurry, my beauty; stay and take dinner wid us!”
Margaret again attempted to rise, and screamed, as Phil rushed into the room with drawn revolver. One of the negroes fired at him, missed, and the next moment dropped dead with a bullet through his heart.
The other leaped across the table and through the open window.
Margaret turned, confronting both Phil and Ben with revolvers in their hands, and fainted.
Ben hurried Phil out the back door and persuaded him to fly.
”Man, you must go! We must not have a riot here to-day. There's no telling what will happen. A disturbance now, and my men will swarm into town to-night. For G.o.d's sake go, until things are quiet!”
”But I tell you I'll face it. I'm not afraid,” said Phil quietly.
”No, but I am,” urged Ben. ”These two hundred negroes are armed and drunk.
Their officers may not be able to control them, and they may lay their hands on you--go--go!--go!--you must go! The train is due in fifteen minutes.”
He half lifted him on a horse tied behind the hotel, leaped on another, galloped to the flag-station two miles out of town, and put him on the north-bound train.
”Stay in Charlotte until I wire for you,” was Ben's parting injunction.
He turned his horse's head for McAllister's, sent the two boys with all speed to the Cyclops of each of the ten towns.h.i.+p Dens with positive orders to disregard all wild rumours from Piedmont and keep every man out of town for two days.
As he rode back he met a squad of mounted white regulars, who arrested him. The trooper's companion had sworn positively that he was the man who killed the negro.
Within thirty minutes he was tried by drum-head court-martial and sentenced to be shot.
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