The Black Lizard Big Book of Black Mask Stories

Richard (Edward) Connell (1893–1949) was born in Dutchess County, New York, and went to Harvard, where he edited the Daily Crimson and the Harvard Lampoon. He took a job as a reporter for the New York American, then became an advertising copywriter. After serving in World War I, he became a full-time freelance writer, moving to Hollywood in 1925 to work in the film industry, writing stories for several films as well as a large number of short stories for the pulps and the top American slick magazines.

His most famous story, and one of the most anthologized stories ever written, was “The Most Dangerous Game,” the now-familiar tale of a man, Sanger Rainsford, who falls off a ship traveling up the Amazon River and saves himself by swimming to an island, where he is greeted by General Zaroff. Ensconced in a luxurious mansion, Zaroff is a dedicated hunter whose passion for the sport has driven him to pursue the ultimate game — man — and Rainsford is the prey. The story has been filmed numerous times, sometimes credited, as with The Most Dangerous Game (1932, RKO, starring Joel McCrea and Fay Wray), A Game of Death (1945, RKO, with John Loder), and Run for the Sun (1956, United Artists, with Richard Widmark and Jane Greer). Films based on other Connell stories include F-Man (1936, Paramount, with Jack Haley) and Brother Orchid (1940, Warner Brothers, with Edward G. Robinson, Ann Sothern, and Humphrey Bogart).

“The Color of Honor” was published in the June 1923 issue.

This Southern Klan story — by one of America’s best-known writers — needs no comment from us, except this: a number of people have told us Courtnay would not have acted as he did in this story. What are your ideas about it?

I

When Cater Courtnay was eleven years old his father whipped him with a blacksnake whip until he could hardly stand because the boy, in some juvenile game with some lads from a nearby plantation, had cheated. Afterward the father talked to his son in the paneled library of the old house.

“You see your great-uncle, Carroll Courtnay, up there?” said the father, pointing to a picture, done in oil, of a darkly handsome man in a grey uniform.

The boy nodded; he was very white but not once through it all had he sobbed.

“General Lee trusted him,” went on the father.

“He trusted him, son, because he knew the stuff the Courtnays are made of. At Shiloh your great-uncle could have saved himself from death by one little act of dishonor — most men wouldn’t have thought it dishonorable at all — but, of course, he didn’t. He remembered that he was a Courtnay, and Courtnays do not cheat, or lie, or do any dishonorable action. They stand by their word, and by their kind. You are a Courtnay, son — the last of the name, when I am gone — and while the breath of life is in you you must not forget the proud name you bear.”

The boy nodded again.

“Now, shake hands with me, Cater,” said the father. “I hope I didn’t hurt you much.”

The boy held out his hand to his father. His father never again had any occasion to whip him for cheating.

When Cater Courtnay was nearing thirty, and was still unmarried, his father died and from him Cater inherited many broad acres of rich cotton land, and the great pillared house in its grove of live oaks. He was a serious young man, tall, sun-bronzed, almost saturnine of aspect, and he took seriously his duties as overlord of the estate, with almost feudal powers over the men and women who lived on it and worked for him.

One night in the early autumn he sat in the library talking with a guest, a man from the North, whom he had known in college.

“But I tell you, Godwin, you can never understand,” said Cater Courtnay, his voice low, intense.

Godwin puffed at his pipe before he answered.

“Men are men,” he said finally.

Courtnay shook his head impatiently.

“There are white men,” he said, “and there are black men.”

“But,” returned Godwin, “they are both men. Color doesn’t count. Underneath there’s no difference.”

“You’re wrong, Godwin. A Northerner just can’t understand; but there are differences, real differences—”

“For example?”

“Did you ever see a nigger who was a gentleman?”

Godwin laughed.

“There are precious few white gentlemen,” he said.

“Granted. But there are some—”

“Yes, of course—”

“Well, what are the marks of a gentleman?”

“Honor, first, I suppose—” said Godwin.

“Precisely. Honor. But a nigger with honor? That’s ridiculous, Godwin.”

“Is it?”

“It is. I know. I’ve handled niggers for years, thousands of them; I’ve over two hundred on my place right now. I know them as you could never know them, Godwin, and I tell you it’s not only their skins that are black — they’re black all through—”

“But they’ve had no chance,” Godwin replied, “down here. That’s why I suggested to John Greel that he start a school here.”

Courtnay’s tanned face showed that the subject of Greel had been discussed and that it was an unpleasant one.

“Godwin,” said Courtnay, “you’re an old friend of mine, and I’m going to take the liberty of speaking very frankly to you. Down here we feel capable of managing our own affairs. We don’t want Greel and we don’t want his school.”

Godwin shrugged his shoulders.

“It’s too late to prevent Greel coming,” he said, “even if I agreed with you that the negro is invincibly ignorant and that schooling will do him no good. Greel’s mind is made up and you know what a determined fellow he is.”

“How should I?”

“He was in college in your time.”

“What of it? I don’t make a point of associating with niggers, Godwin.”

“Well, you’ve seen the plucky way he played football,” said Godwin, with a laugh.

“Let him stay up North. There’s work enough for him up there.” Courtnay’s voice had a menace in it. “I tell you, Godwin, Greel’s not wanted here and you would be doing him a service to tell him so. The men around here haven’t much patience with these fancy, educated Northern niggers.”

Godwin made no reply; for a time he smoked.

“You won’t help the school then, Courtnay?”

“I will not.”

Godwin stood up.

“It’s getting near my train time,” he said. “I’d better be starting.”

“Sorry you have to go, Godwin. I don’t get much civilized society these days. Lots of old families down here, but pretty well gone to seed. Mammy Stella, my housekeeper, would call them ‘reeefine but oneducate.’ ”

“Really?”

“Yes; you’ve no idea how they resist any new methods in farming; and of course the niggers are impossible; they will do things the way their grandfathers did them—”

“You’ve tried to teach the negroes then?”

“Have I tried? Till my head nearly burst.”

“They seem to work hard — I noticed that in the fields today—”

“Oh, I get a lot of work out of them. They’re a little afraid of me. They know I’ll stand no nonsense from them. Also, they know I’ll treat them squarely. You’ve no idea, Godwin, what children they are: I have to feed them, clothe them, nurse them and bury them. But it isn’t gratitude that makes them work — it’s fear.”

“Fear?”

“Yes; even their motives are dark.”

“They need education; now, Greel’s school—”

Courtnay held up his hand; his face tightened into stern lines.

“Please! Let’s not discuss that anymore. I won’t stand for Greel and his school; that’s final. There’s the car outside. I’ll ride down to the station with you.”

II

Ten white men sat around the long mahogany table in the library of Cater Courtnay’s house, and from their faces and their manner it was clear that business of a most serious nature had brought them together. They were men whose faces had long known the sun, prosperous-appearing men, who among them owned most of the good farming land in the county.

Sam Hull, big-faced, untidy, in a wrinkled suit, was speaking.

“Yes, sirs,” he was saying, an overtone of hate in his voice, “right now is the time to call a halt. Learn ’em a lesson they won’t forget in a hurry; they got one coming to them. I reckon you all have noticed how they been getting out of hand of late.”

The men about the table nodded and growled. Cater Courtnay at the head of the table said: “Yes, yes, I guess we all have. Go on, Sam.”

“But this last thing — that’s the limit with me.”

“You mean that voting business, Sam?” asked one of the men.

The big-faced planter nodded.

“What were the facts, Sam? I was down to Mobile when it happened.”

“Well,” said Hull, “last week on registration day over at Live Oak Corners, little Ned Harris, the election clerk, was dozing in the polling place, when in come two niggers, that big boy Ike, that works for Cassius Pryor, and Courtnay’s boy Matt. Ned Harris sings out, ‘What in hell do you want here?’ and do you know what Matt says?”

The narrator paused before he answered his own question.

“Matt says, ‘Mr. Harris, please, sir, we all would like to vote, if you please.’ At first Ned Harris thought they was fooling, and he says, ‘You want to what?’ ‘We want to vote,’ says Ike and Matt, together, like they had rehearsed. Well, you know what a hair-trigger temper Ned Harris has. ‘You get out of here and get damn quick,’ he says. And do you know what Ike says?”

The listeners did not know but expressed a keen interest in knowing.

“Ike says, ‘Mr. Harris, sir, in the Constitution of the United States it says we all can vote and — and — we want our constitutional rights.’ Well, with that Ned Harris jumps up to knock him down; but Ned ain’t very strong and the blow only staggers Ike, and then do you know what Ike does?”

The speaker looked round the ring of attentive eyes before continuing: “He pushes Ned Harris back into his seat, and says, ‘Mr. Harris, sir, you don’t respect the Constitution,’ and then he and Matt walks out.”

“Where are those two niggers now?” demanded one of the men, sharply.

“Matt’s lit out,” Cater Courtnay informed him.

“What about the other one — Ike?”

“Oh, after what Cassius Pryor did to him I guess he won’t be overanxious about his constitutional rights again.”

They all laughed. The man who had been in Mobile threw out a question.

“How come these niggers are so glib about their constitutional rights? Those boys can’t read, can they?”

Courtnay stood up.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “Telfair, here, has put his finger on the sore spot of the whole business. Who put these niggers up to acting this way? Ike and Matt and the rest of them haven’t the brains or the nerve; someone is behind them, telling them what to say. I reckon all of us know who I mean.”

There were growls of, “Greel. That skunk Greel.”

“I always figure, gentlemen,” went on Courtnay, “that the way to stop a thing is to stop it at its source—”

“In other words,” interjected Sam Hull, “get Greel.”

“Precisely.”

They looked at each other; there was no dissension.

“I had Greel come to see me last week,” said Courtnay. “He’s a smart, educated nigger, not at all like the hands down here. He’s full of a lot of wind about racial equality—”

He saw that his words were goading them; he went on:

“No. I didn’t hit him. That’s not the way to handle his kind. I just gave him a strong hint that if he valued his skin he’d better take his school up North, where it would be appreciated.”

“Getting mighty polite, ain’t you, Courtnay?” one of the men suggested.

“Oh, I didn’t mince words. I told him point blank that if he didn’t shut up his damn school and get out of the county, some night something highly unpleasant would happen to him. That was a week ago—”

“He’s still here—” said one planter.

“And the school’s still running,” said another.

“And the niggers are having their heads pumped full of nonsense—” put in a third.

“Dangerous nonsense for us,” said a fourth.

“That’s why we’re meeting here tonight, gentlemen,” said Cater Courtnay. “We’re the responsible white men of the community. What are we going to do? Greel has had his warning; he has ignored it; he told me a week ago he was going to stick — his duty to his people or some such rot — and he has stuck.”

“We must teach him a lesson,” Sam Hull declared, his voice rasping. “We must teach them all a lesson—”

“You don’t mean—” The man who interrupted did not finish his sentence; he was a small bird-faced man who appeared, habitually, never to finish anything — his tie was not tied, his buttons not buttoned...

“You know what we mean, Wood,” said Courtnay. “Are you with us?”

“Yes, yes, of course. But, good God, Courtnay, is there no other way? You know how such things set the papers up North snarling at us. We can’t afford—” His voice trailed off, leaving the end of the sentence ragged, for Courtnay’s austere eye was on him, and there was contempt in it.

“Duty is duty,” said Courtnay, “no matter how unpleasant it is. None of us likes to do what we’re going to have to do. But if the whites are going to keep their place, the blacks have to be kept in theirs.”

“I know, I know,” the little unfinished man twisted out the words, “but this isn’t right, it’s— “It’s—”

Courtnay cut in.

“We can’t be soft, Wood. We’ll try not to hurt the man.”

“That is,” put in Sam Hull, “if he listens to reason.”

“But,” Wood said, “you know Greel’s not like the others — he’s got guts — he’ll fight back — he may—”

“Suppose he does fight back—” said Courtnay. “We can fight a bit ourselves, eh, gentlemen?”

Their laughter was hard.

“Well, when shall it be?” asked Sam Hull.

“Why not tonight?” Cater Courtnay said this.

“Tonight?”

“Yes; let’s get it over with. It’s got to be done.”

“Good. Tonight.”

“Yes, tonight.”

“But I didn’t come — prepared,” said Sam Hull.

“Nor I.”

“Mine’s home, too.”

“Gentlemen,” said Courtnay, “it’s only nine. You’ll have time to go to your homes and get what you require. Remember, we want to do this thing in an orderly, business-like manner.”

“Shall we wear hoods?” asked one.

Courtnay considered.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s a good idea. The niggers still have a superstitious dread of the old Klan; pillow cases with holes will do—”

“When we get Greel,” suggested Sam Hull, “we can stage a little parade through the cabins. Might as well put the fear of God into them right, while we’re about it.”

“He’ll fight, I warn you,” the unfinished man, Wood, quavered. “He’ll shoot—”

They did not wait for him to finish.

“Then there’ll be one less fancy nigger in the world,” said Sam Hull.

“We’ll meet at eleven sharp,” Courtnay said; he spoke as an accepted leader. “Under the oak at the cross-roads. Each man will bring a gun, a hood and a whip. No one is to speak a word till we order Greel to come out. He sleeps in that little shack about a half mile from the cross-roads near the old Claymore creek bridge. Let’s set our watches now. Eleven sharp, remember. Any man who isn’t there will be left behind.”

“He’ll put up a fight, I tell you.”

Wood’s voice shaded off into a near-whimper.

“Take no chances with him,” directed Courtnay. “If he doesn’t give up at once, well—” He finished with a gesture of his tan hand.

They understood; into the darkness moved the men; their tread was determined.

III

When they had gone, Cater Courtnay poured himself a leisurely drink from the carafe on the venerable sideboard. There was no hurry; his house was not far from the cross-roads where they were to meet. He sat down in an easy chair and examined his pistol minutely; it was loaded, oiled, ready. Idly his glance roved along the row of paintings on the walls, men in uniform, mostly, with the lean, serious faces of the Courtnay breed. A thought struck him. He rang a bell, and presently an ancient negress, her eyebrows like tufts of cotton, her manner the respectfully familiar manner of the old and trusted retainer, came into the room.

“Mammy Stella?”

“Yes, Mr. Cater—”

“Isn’t there up in the attic somewhere an old trunk that belonged to my grandfather, Colonel Courtnay?”

He did not notice that her hands took a sudden grip on the edges of her apron.

“I disremember,” she said.

“Oh, come now, Mammy Stella. You were up there only the other day. Wasn’t there an old trunk of my grandfather’s?”

“Mebbe so.”

“You packed it, didn’t you?”

“I reckon so.”

“Do you remember what you put in it?”

“Not ’zactly. It was more than forty years ago.”

“Well, what did you put in it?”

“Nothing but a lot of old clothes, Mr. Cater.”

“Ah, that’s what I’m after. Do you remember putting in a sort of white garment, like a big night-shirt, with a hood on it?”

He saw from her eyes and the look that came to her face that she remembered.

“Will you get it for me, Mammy Stella?”

The old woman had begun to tremble.

“Mr. Cater,” she said, “ask me to do anything, but don’t ask me to do that — I’m scared — it’s up there in the dark.”

“Scared? Nonsense.”

“Before the Lord, I am, Mr. Cater. I know that robe, Mr. Cater. It’s the old Klan robe. I... I’m scared of it.”

“Just an old piece of cloth! Nonsense, Mammy Stella. Why should it scare you?”

“They come one night — to our cabin — I was a little girl then — and they took my brother — I’ll never forget—”

“Oh, well, I suppose I can get it myself.”

He rose.

“Mr. Cater—”

“What?”

“You ain’t plannin’ — to use it?”

“Never mind what I’m planning, Mammy Stella. Run along now.”

“For God’s sake, Mr. Cater, don’t... don’t—”

“Don’t what?”

He regarded the old woman tolerantly; she had been his nurse.

“Don’t be cruel — because he’s a black man.”

“I’ve no intention of being cruel,” he said stiffly.

“But—” she ventured. “Greel — he’s a good man—”

“He’s poisoning the niggers’ minds; we can’t permit that.”

Courtnay spoke partly to her, but mostly to himself.

“But must you go, Mr. Cater? Can’t you leave it to the others—”

His voice was not unkind as he said:

“Mammy Stella, you know better than that, after sixty-five years in the Courtnay family. You know when Courtnays have a duty to perform they don’t leave it to other folks. Now run along to bed. I’m going up in the attic.”

He stepped toward the door, but the old woman held him back, her wrinkled hands on his arm.

“Don’t go, Mr. Cater,” she begged. “It’s haunted — up there — I tell you—”

“Haunted? The old trunk?”

“It’s locked,” she cried. “You can’t open it.”

“I’ll break it open.”

“You mustn’t — oh, Mr. Cater, you mustn’t.”

“I mustn’t? Why not?”

“It’s haunted, I tell you.” She was clinging to his arm.

He tried, quite gently, to free himself.

“White folks don’t believe in haunts, Mammy Stella,” he said, with a short laugh. “Let go my arm; let go, do you hear?”

“Oh, don’t go up there — your father never let you—” Her voice was desperate.

“I’m a man now,” he said, smilingly. “I’m not afraid of the dark—”

“He’ll get you, if you go up. He’ll get you if you go up.”

“Who’ll get me?”

“The devil in the trunk,” she cried.

“I eat devils,” laughed Courtnay.

He took her by the wrists and made her loosen her grip. Then he bounded up the stairs, still laughing.

It was dark in the beamed, stoop-shouldered attic, and in the corners under the eaves was the dust of years. With lighted candle, Cater Courtnay peered about. He had not been up there since he was a boy; then he had gone up once, and had been strictly forbidden by his father to go again.

In the circle of light he saw piles of old trunks and boxes, discarded pieces of furniture, garments, wrapped in muslin, hanging from hooks like so many dead murderers, the odds and ends of a hundred years. Impatiently he pushed the boxes right and left, his eyes searching. He bent over a leathern chest — no, that was not the one. A sound made him start; it was only the creaking of a blind.

“Nerves a bit jumpy,” he muttered. “The old fool and her talk of haunts! Funny it should affect me.”

He started again, at another sound, but checked himself, with an oath; it was the sputtering of his candle. He continued a brisk search. Then, as he bent to examine a corner, he wheeled about, his hand plucking at his hip-pocket — he had sensed something moving in the attic. He laughed aloud. It was his own shadow, grotesque, misshapen in the candle’s wavering flame. His laugh echoed; to his own ears it sounded unreal, smothered.

“A ghost’s laugh,” he said to himself, and he didn’t like the way his voice cracked.

He pushed aside a pile of boxes; then he found what he was seeking — a very old, flat, brass-bound chest, marred by time, its lock rusty, and his grandfather’s initials on it, in faded paint.

He could not understand why his heart was beating with fast, irregular beats; why his brow felt damp; why the words of a superstitious old black woman should just then be dancing in his brain. He bent over the chest with a determined frown, and with a snatched-up poker pried at the rusty lock. A violent twist, and the lock shot open like a hound showing its fangs. He jumped back from it, cursed his nerves, bent over the chest again.

In the old chest there was nothing to alarm him; there was nothing in it but a pile of old clothes, the folded grey uniform of a colonel, the crushed wide felt hat, the black boots. He took them out, one by one, with careful pride. Then came his grandfather’s frock coat with silk facings, his grey pantaloons with straps under the insteps, his white, frilled shirts.

At last, at the very bottom, Courtnay found it — a robe of some coarse cotton stuff, white once, but yellowed by time; to it was attached a hood, with eye holes, and on the breast was a cross, rusty red, like an old bloodstain.

His fingers, unbidden, recoiled from it. He forced them to pick it up, and his hands, usually so steady, were trembling, and he shuddered as he laid it aside.

Courtnay glanced into the chest to see if he had entirely emptied it. The candle, as if to aid him, sent up a spurt of flame, strange flame that seemed greenish in the silent gloom of the room, and Courtnay saw that in the bottom of the chest was a raised place, a swollen place, like the lump after a blow.

He examined it. He saw that the leather lining had been slit, and something flat thrust under it, and the lining stitched together again. His finger-nails tore at the stitching; he was breathing through his mouth, jerkily; he fumbled for the poker, grasped it.

The stout seams resisted at first, then gave up and the slit gaped open like a fresh wound. He pulled out what had been hidden there. It was an envelope, worn and smelling of the must of years. He ripped it open and, by the candle’s light, read the long communication in the handwriting of his grandfather.

Then he screamed, the cut-short scream of a man stabbed through the lungs. He staggered. The candle was overturned and utter blackness filled the attic.

“Lord God, have pity on me! Oh, Lord, oh, Lord—”

He was sobbing, moaning in a delirium of fear.

“Lord, have pity. Lord, have pity. Lord, have pity.”

He was on his knees and the words came from him in the terror-spurred, yet rhythmic, chant of the revival meeting. He struggled to his feet, wildly, as a fallen horse does, and plunged through the darkness for the door; his head struck a beam and the shock steadied him for an instant. He made the door and half leaped, half fell down the stairs.

Mammy Stella was still in the library when Cater Courtnay stumbled in, the paper from the envelope still grasped in his hand. She was kneeling there, praying aloud as she swayed her body back and forth— “Don’t let him find the devil! Don’t let him find the devil!”

He heard. He shook her, his fingers digging into her shoulders.

“It isn’t true,” he cried. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

The old woman moaned. A hot, blind wave of fury swept over him.

“You knew all the time. Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

She raised her eyes to his; she faltered at first; then she spoke clearly: “Because, Mr. Cater, I know what it is to be a nigger,” she said.

A spasm of pain twisted his face at the word. He sank into a chair; he sat staring dully at the paper in his hand, still held in a grip like the rigid grip of a corpse. He knew now why he had felt that nameless fear in the attic.

He did not see the old woman as, with a cat-like movement, she stole to his side; before he could stop her she had snatched the papers from his hand, and had cast them into the fire that blazed in the fireplace. He leaped up, bewildered. She thrust her body between him and the blazing papers.

“Now,” she said, and her lips parted in a toothless smile, “no one need ever know.”

He stared at her as if he did not understand. Then, thickly, he said: “No — one?”

“No one but me — and you.”

He leaned against the library table; he shook his head, then half muttered:

“But I know. But I know.”

The old negress was about to speak, but he stopped her.

“Please go, Mammy Stella. I want to be left — alone.”

She left him standing there, and he might have been dead so motionless was his body, so fixed his black eyes.

How long he stood there, his stunned brain trying to take hold of what had happened to him, Courtnay did not know. The knell-like stroke of a clock on the mantel broke in upon him, and galvanized him into action, at first dulled and aimless, then, as he got a better grip on himself, into action more coherently directed. For the stroke of the clock pricked him into the consciousness that it was ten-thirty — and at eleven he had a duty to perform. He was due at the cross-roads; if he did not arrive they would start without him; later they would say he had weakened, had shirked. Time pressed.

Mechanically his hand felt at his hip-pocket to reassure him that his pistol was there; the hand that touched the cold metal leaped back as if it were glowing hot. The pistol was there, and ready. Ready? For what? To shoot a nigger. He drove his teeth into his lips.

The ticking of the clock seemed inordinately loud and insistent. Twenty-five minutes to eleven. They would be beginning to gather under the live oak at the cross-roads, relentless men, silent in their white hoods.

Even as they gathered, half a mile from the place of their assembling, Greel would be asleep in the little shack where he tried to teach the alphabet to men of his own color. He would be tired after his day’s work, reflected Courtnay, worn out in mind and body, for it must be a heart-breaking job. The hooded men would steal upon the cabin, surround it, order him to come out, and then...

Courtnay remembered Greel and the interview they had had. There was a deep gentleness and patience about the schoolmaster, but when Courtnay had ordered him, peremptorily, to close the school and go, there had been a light in Greel’s eye and he had held his head high as he had refused. Greel would fight...

Courtnay wished the clock would not tick so loudly. Twenty minutes to eleven. He had barely time to reach the cross-roads. But he did not start; he stood there in the library and his eyes were fastened on the paintings that hung there... his father, his great-uncle Carroll, his grandfather... honorable men...

Tick, tick, tick. They would be starting on their grim errand soon. They looked to him — to a Courtnay — to lead them. And still he stood staring into the eyes of his great-uncle Carroll who had died at Shiloh. Tick, tick, tick. Cater Courtnay straightened; in the hearth’s dying light he seemed very tall and erect. Then, all action now, he went from the library and the house, and with long, swift strides hurried through the heavy blackness of the night.

IV

It was just eleven. In the village the drowsy church clock announced the hour. Breathless, Cater Courtnay darted up to the door of Greel’s cabin. There was no light; he rapped with tense fists.

“Who’s there?”

The voice of the colored schoolmaster was firm, alert.

“I... Cater Courtnay... a friend—”

The door opened an inch.

“What do you want?”

“Quick!” Courtnay whispered. “Let me in. They’re coming to get you.”

The door opened wide enough to admit a man. By the embers on the hearth Courtnay saw that Greel was fully dressed, and that he held a pistol in his hand.

“You knew they were coming then?”

“Every night,” said Greel, “I wait like this.”

Courtnay’s words were swift, incisive.

“We must act quickly. They’ll be here in five minutes. They’ll murder you like a dog.”

“I’ll fight—”

“No use. They’re nine to one.”

Greel shrugged his shoulders; he kept his pistol leveled at Courtnay’s heart.

“You can’t talk me into giving up, Mr. Courtnay,” he said. “Go back and tell them they’ll never take me alive.”

“Don’t be a fool, Greel. You’d be no good dead. You’ve work to do — I didn’t come to betray you — I came to help you escape—”

“Too late,” said Greel.

“No. You’ve got a chance. Go now. Run down the path by Claymore creek; cross the footbridge; you can catch the midnight train as it goes through Bayardville—”

“No use; I’m too tired to run fast; they’d find the cabin empty; they’d follow and catch me; I’ll stay.”

“They won’t follow you—”

“Why?”

“Because they won’t find the cabin empty.”

Greel looked at Courtnay sharply.

“You mean—”

“Yes.”

“But why?”

Courtnay drew himself up.

“My grandfather — damn him — had a mulatto slave — damn him — damn him to Hell — my father had her blood in him — we’re black — damn him to Hell. But you’ve got to hurry.”

Greel looked out of the cabin door; a faint moon, just come out, showed far down the ribbon of road something white moving toward them.

“Go, Greel,” Courtnay whispered fiercely.

“But why should you do this?”

“Because I choose to. Now run.”

Greel moved toward the door.

“I don’t understand—” he said. “But I’m going to go. But before I go, there’s one thing I want to do—”

“Quick. What?”

“Shake hands with you.”

In the almost dark room the hand of Cater Courtnay and the negro schoolmaster met for an instant; then Greel slipped out into the night and disappeared in the tangle of weeds and underbrush through which the creek path ran.

Greel was across the footbridge when he heard through the night’s silence a hard, high voice call out: “Greel! Greel!”

Then he heard another voice, but not his own, call back:

“Yes? What do you want?”

The hard, high voice answered:

“We want you. Come out, Greel.”

No reply. Greel sped on through the night.

“Come out, Greel, do you hear?”

No reply. Other voices took up the cry.

“Come out, Greel. Come out, you black skunk. Come out, or we’ll come and get you out.”

Then as he ran, Greel heard a terrible voice that seemed to fill the whole night, cry: “Come get me, if you can, you white devils. I’ll show you how a nigger can die!”

He heard the staccato bark of shots.

Greel had come to a bend in the path; he was panting, but he felt he was safe now; he could see the lights of Bayardville not far off; he stopped to catch his breath. He looked back toward where he had come from. Against the brooding sky he saw the bloody orange-red of flames.