The Battle Ground — Edition Insights

s of her white pique bonnet lined with pink were daintily tied under her oval chin; there was no dust on her bare legs or short white socks.

As she spoke there came the sound of voices singing, and a moment later the wagon jogged heavily round a tuft of stunted cedars which jutted into the long curve of the highway. The wheels crunched a loose stone in the road, and the driver drawled a patient “gee-up” to the horses, as he flicked at a horse-fly with the end of his long rawhide whip. There was about him an almost cosmic good nature; he regarded the landscape, the horses and the rocks in the road with imperturbable ease.

Behind him, in the body of the wagon, the negro women stood chanting the slave's farewell; and as they neared the children, he looked back and spoke persuasively. “I'd set down if I was you all,” he said. “You'd feel better. Thar, now, set down and jolt softly.”

But without turning the women kept up their tremulous chant, bending their turbaned heads to the imaginary faces upon the roadside. They had left their audience behind them on the great plantation, but they still sang to the empty road and courtesied to the cedars upon the way. Excitement gripped them like a frenzy--and a childish joy in a coming change blended with a mother's yearning over broken ties.

A bright mulatto led, standing at full height, and her rich notes rolled like an organ beneath the shrill plaint of her companions. She was large, deep-bosomed, and comely after her kind, and in her careless gestures there was something of the fine fervour of the artist. She sang boldly, her full body rocking from side to side, her bared arms outstretched, her long throat swelling like a bird's above the gaudy handkerchief upon her breast.

The others followed her, half artlessly, half in imitation, mingling with their words grunts of self-approval. A grin ran from face to face as if thrown by the grotesque flash of a lantern. Only a little black woman crouching in one corner bowed herself and wept.

The children had fallen back against the stone wall, where they hung staring.

“Good-by, Dolly!” they called cheerfully, and the woman answered with a long-drawn, hopeless whine:--

“Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we Meet agin.”

Zeke broke from the group and ran a few steps beside the wagon, shaking the outstretched hands.

The driver nodded peaceably to him, and cut with a single stroke of his whip an intricate figure in the sand of the road. “Git up an' come along with us, sonny,” he said cordially; but Zeke only grinned in reply, and the children laughed and waved their handkerchiefs from the wall. “Good-by, Dolly, and Mirandy, and Sukey Sue!” they shouted, while the women, bowing over the rolling wheels, tossed back a fragment of the song:--

“We hope ter meet you in heaven, whar we'll Part no mo', Whar we'll part no mo'; Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we Me--et a--gin.”

“Twel we meet agin,” chirped the little girls, tripping into the chorus.

Then, with a last rumble, the wagon went by, and Zeke came trotting back and straddled the stone wall, where he sat looking down upon the loose poppies that fringed the yellowed edge of the wheat.

“Dey's gwine way-way f'om hyer, Marse Champe,” he said dreamily. “Dey's gwine right spang over dar whar de sun done come f'om.”

“Colonel Minor bought 'em,” Champe explained, sliding from the wall, “and he bought Dolly dirt cheap--I heard Uncle say so--” With a grin he looked up at the small black figure perched upon the crumbling stones. “You'd better look out how you steal any more of my fishing lines, or I'll sell you,” he threatened.

“Gawd er live! I ain' stole one on 'em sence las' mont',” protested Zeke, as he turned a somersault into the road, “en dat warn' stealin' 'case hit warn' wu'th it,” he added, rising to his feet and staring wistfully after the wagon as it vanished in a sunny cloud of dust.

Over the broad meadows, filled with scattered wild flowers, the sound of the chant still floated, with a shrill and troubled sweetness, upon the wind. As he listened the little negro broke into a jubilant refrain, beating his naked feet in the dust:--

“Gawd A'moughty bless you twel we Me--et a--gin.”

Then he looked slyly up at his young master.

“I 'low dar's one thing you cyarn do, Marse Champe.”

“I bet there isn't,” retorted Champe.

“You kin sell me ter Marse Minor--but Lawd, Lawd, you cyarn mek mammy leave off whuppin' me. You cyarn do dat widout you 'uz a real ole marster hese'f.”