ounter blow or go out of business. It was so with the horse
trade; in the end it became mighty unhandy to move the stock we'd
collected. We've reached the same point now with the trade in niggers.
Between here and the gulf--" he made a wide sweeping gesture with his
arm. "I am spotting the country with my men; there are two thousand
active workers on the rolls of the Clan, and as many more like you,
Tom--and Fentress--on whose friendship I can rely." He leaned toward
Ware. "You'd be slow to tell me I couldn't count on you, Tom, and you'd
be slow to think I couldn't manage this thing when the time's ripe for
it!"

But no trace of this all-sufficient sense of confidence, of which he
seemed so certain, showed on Ware's hardened visage. He spat away the
stump of his cigar.

"Sure as God, John Murrell, you are overreaching yourself! Your white
men are all right, they've got to stick by you; if they don't they know
it's only a question of time until they get a knife driven into their
ribs--but niggers--there isn't any real fight in a nigger, if there was
they wouldn't be here."

"Yet you couldn't have made the whites in Hayti believe that," said
Murrell, with a sinister smile.

"Because they were no-account trash themselves!" returned Ware, shaking
his head. "We'll all go down in this muss you're fixing for!" he added.

"No, you won't, Tom. I'll look out for my friends. You'll be warned in
time."

"A hell of a lot of good a warning will do!" growled Ware.

"The business will be engineered so that you, and those like you, will
not be disturbed. Maybe the niggers will have control of the country
for a day or two in the thickly settled parts near the towns; longer,
of course, where the towns and plantations are scattering. The end will
come in the swamps and cane-brakes, and the members of the Clan who
don't get rich while the trouble is at its worst, will have to stay
poor. As for the niggers, I expect nothing else than that they will
be pretty well exterminated. But look what that will do for men like
yourself, Tom, who will have been able to hold on to their slaves!"

"I'd like to have some guarantee that I'd be able to; do that! No, sir,
the devils will all go whooping off to raise hell." Ware shivered at
the picture his mind had conjured up. "Well, thank God, they're not my
niggers!" he added.

"You'd better come with me, Tom," said Murrell.

"With you?"

"Yes, I'm going to keep New Orleans for myself; that's