em night-ridings is
fur. It seems this here tobaccer trust is jest as mean and low-down and
unprincipled as all the rest of them trusts. The farmers around there
raised considerable tobaccer--more'n they did of anything else. The
trust had shoved the price so low they couldn't hardly make a living.
So they organized and said they would all hold their tobaccer fur a fair
price. But some of the farmers wouldn't organize--said they had a right
to do what they pleased with their own tobaccer. So the night-riders was
formed to burn their barns and ruin their crops and whip 'em and shoot
'em and make 'em jine. And also to burn a few trust warehouses now and
then, and show 'em this free American people, composed mainly out of the
Angle-Saxton races, wasn't going to take no sass from anybody.

An old feller by the name of Rufe Daniels who wouldn't jine the
night-riders had been shot to death on his own door step, jest about a
mile away, only a week or so before. The night-riders mostly used these
here automatic shot-guns, but they didn't bother with birdshot. They
mostly loaded their shells with buckshot. A few bicycle ball bearings
dropped out of old Rufe when they gathered him up and got him into shape
to plant. They is always some low-down cuss in every crowd that carries
things to the point where they get brutal, Bud says; and he feels like
them bicycle bearings was going a little too fur, though he wouldn't let
on to his dad that he felt that-a-way.

So fur as I could see they hadn't hurt the trust none to speak of, them
night-riders. But they had done considerable damage to their own county,
fur folks was moving away, and the price of land had fell. Still, I
guess they must of got considerable satisfaction out of raising the
deuce nights that-away; and sometimes that is worth a hull lot to a
feller. As fur as I could make out both the trust and the night-riders
was in the wrong. But, you take 'em one at a time, personal-like, and
not into a gang, and most of them night-riders is good-dispositioned
folks. I never knowed any trusts personal, but mebby if you could ketch
'em the same way they would be similar.

I asts George one day what he thought about it. George, he got mighty
serious right off, like he felt his answer was going to be used to
decide the hull thing by. He was carrying a lot of scraps on a plate to
a hound dog that had a kennel out near George's cabin, and he walled his
eyes right thoughtful, and scratche