During the day he had been kept so busy that he had not had time to go out of the coloured section except once, and that when in the late afternoon he drove through Lee Street to see how Mary Ewing was faring. He had been so busy with his own thoughts that he had paid little attention to the whites who were standing around on the streets. He did not see the threatening and hostile looks they gave nor did he notice the excited whispering and muttering when he came into their sight.
Ed Stewart had partly told the truth at the meeting of the Klan when he said that Dr. Williams had informed him of the organization Kenneth and the others were forming. Kenneth had seen little of the pompous and intensely jealous physician since the time when he had forced Dr. Williams to assist him in the appendicitis operation on Mrs. Emma Bradley. Kenneth had felt nothing but an amused contempt for his fellow-practitioner, for he knew that Dr. Williams covered his deficiencies in medical knowledge and skill with the bombastic and self-important air he affected.
Dr. Williams, on the other hand, had never forgiven Kenneth for the incident in which Kenneth had shown him up in a manner that injured the former’s pride far more than Kenneth had suspected. Dr. Williams felt that the younger man had deliberately and with malice aforethought offered a gratuitous insult to him as dean of the coloured medical profession of Central City, though that profession numbered but two members. Kenneth’s success as a physician in Central City, having taken as he had some of the best of Dr. Williams’ own patients whom he had considered peculiarly his own, the insult plus Kenneth’s success had rankled in his breast until, being of a petty and mean disposition, he hated the younger man with a deep and vindictive hatred.
He had not, however, intended that his conversation with Ed Stewart should assume the proportions that it eventually did. On the day before the meeting of the Klan at which Kenneth had been named as the one responsible for the organization of the Negroes, Dr. Williams had met Ed Stewart driving out along a country road near Ashland. Williams was returning from making a professional call in that neighbourhood. Stewart, a big, rawboned, and lanky “Cracker” or “Peck,” as they are called by Negroes in the South, was going to inspect the cotton crops of his tenant-farmers, that he might estimate how big the crops would be and might know accordingly how large the tenants’ bills should be for supplies furnished.
They had stopped to pass the time of day and for Stewart to find which of the Negroes on his place was sick. He wanted to know if that sick one was too sick to work the crop, as the loss of even one worker during cotton-picking time was serious, what with the number of Negroes who had gone North. Having gained the information, he started to question Dr. Williams in a way that he thought was exceedingly adroit and clever, but through which ruse the coloured doctor saw instantly and clearly.
“Say, Doc, you know anything ’bout these niggers ’round here holdin’ these meetin’s nearly ev’ry night? Seems t’ me it’s mighty late for them to be holdin’ revival services and indo’ camp-meetin’s?” he queried in as casual a tone as he could manage.
An idea sprang full-grown to Williams’ mind. Kenneth Harper was getting far too popular through the organization of his cooperative societies. Williams was shrewd enough to see that if they were as successful as they gave promise of being, Kenneth would be the leading Negro of the town, if not of that entire section of Georgia. And correspondingly he, Williams, would become less and less the prominent figure he had been before Kenneth had come back from France to Central City. That was it! Stewart was one of the biggest planters in Smith County. It was also rumoured he was prominent in the Ku Klux Klan. Stewart’s fortunes would be the hardest hit in the county if Kenneth’s societies achieved their purpose, for he, Stewart, had as many sharecroppers and tenant-farmers as any other man in the county if not more. Stewart also had the reputation, a long-standing one, of being the hardest taskmaster on his Negro tenants in the county—the one who profited most through juggled accounts and fraudulent dealings. He could have cut, had he chosen, five notches in the handle of his gun, each one signifying a Negro who had dared to dispute the justness of settlements for crops raised.
All these thoughts raced through Williams’ brain while Stewart waited for a reply to his questions. Williams had no intention of the exaggeration of his statements which Stewart later made. He merely intended that by telling Stewart of the societies, Kenneth’s rapidly increasing prominence in the community should receive a check through obstacles which Stewart and his fellow-landlords might put—in fact, were sure to put—in the way of success of the farmers’ organizations.
“No, sir, they ain’t holdin’ revivals, Mr. Stewart. I reckon if you white folks knew what was goin’ on, you wouldn’t feel so comfortable.”
Williams was playing with Stewart as is done so often by Negroes in the South with the whites, though the latter, in their supreme confidence that they belong to an eternally ordained “superior race,” seldom realize how often and how easily they are taken in by Negroes. Williams enjoyed the look of concern that had come to Stewart’s face at his words.
“What’s goin’ on, Doc?” he asked in an eager tone, from which he tried with but little success to keep
