, and
was now just of fighting age. He went all through this campaign, and
when the war was over, the two struck away into the mountains. They came
back after a while, neither one having taken the oath of allegiance, and
if there were any rebels Cahoots was as great a one to the day of his
death as his master. That tomb-stone, you see it looks old, was placed
there at the old master's request when his dead son came home from
Malvern Hill, for he said when Cahoots went to the other side they must
not be separated; that accounts for its look of age, but it was not
until last year that we laid Cahoots--Cahoots still though an old
man--beside his master. And many a man that had owned his people, and
many another that had fought to continue that ownership, dropped a tear
on his grave."

_Nine_

THE PROMOTER

Even as early as September, in the year of 1870, the newly emancipated
had awakened to the perception of the commercial advantages of freedom,
and had begun to lay snares to catch the fleet and elusive dollar. Those
controversialists who say that the Negro's only idea of freedom was to
live without work are either wrong, malicious, or they did not know
Little Africa when the boom was on; when every little African, fresh
from the fields and cabins, dreamed only of untold wealth and of
mansions in which he would have been thoroughly uncomfortable. These
were the devil's sunny days, and early and late his mowers were in the
field. These were the days of benefit societies that only benefited the
shrewdest man; of mutual insurance associations, of wild building
companies, and of gilt-edged land schemes wherein the unwary became
bogged. This also was the day of Mr. Jason Buford, who, having been free
before the war, knew a thing or two, and now had set himself up as a
promoter. Truly he had profited by the example of the white men for whom
he had so long acted as messenger and factotum.

As he frequently remarked when for purposes of business he wished to air
his Biblical knowledge, "I jest takes the Scripter fur my motter an'
foller that ol' passage where it says, 'Make hay while the sun shines,
fur the night cometh when no man kin work.'"

It is related that one of Mr. Buford's customers was an old plantation
exhorter. At the first suggestion of a Biblical quotation the old
gentleman closed his eyes and got ready with his best amen. But as the
import of the words dawned on him he opened his eyes in surprise, an