Adventure Magazine, December 10, 1924 — page 82: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

60 work out like that. Let Mr. John give me an order at ten and by ten-thirty, just when the work was well started, the major would ride up and cancel it and have the whole business put through some other way. It made trouble and confusion, to say nothing of the extra work, and the pity of it was that most of Mr. John’s ideas was strictly first-class. He’d gone through two years of agriculture at the State college, and he had the gift of makin’ real use of what he’d learned. But the major couldn’t see it. He was Stark of Auburn, and what was good enough for him and the Starks before him was good enough for any one. When Mr. John understood this and got rid of his fancy notions, he’d be fit to run the place. The book stuff was all nonsense. Any planter who knew enough about his business to print it would be lucky if he found time to write his letters. So there it was and, naturally enough, I had to pick my side. It was one of those propositions where you couldn’t stay on the fence. At first I was for the major. He meant my duty and my job. But it didn’t take me long to find out he was just as bull headed as he was wrong. After that I was ready to quit. Then I had a talk with Mr. John. It was in the field one mornin’, after the major had ruined one of his best and newest schemes. Mr. John had his pride, but he’d got to the point where he had to speak out or blow up. “Nick,” says he, “this thing is getting the best of me. It hasn’t always been this way. Up to the time that I got back from Baten Rouge my father and I were like brothers. And now look at us. “‘T can’t do what the old gentleman wants me to. It’s against everything I’ve learned. If I was to plant like my grandfather, why was I sent away? “And the hard part of it is that my father doesn’t know that he’s unfair. He’s Stark of Auburn, which means that you can’t fell him anything. Once you show him that he’s wrong, he’ll admit it and come round. He’s just as square as he’s hard headed.” “Do you think so?” I asks. “T know it,” he answers. ‘“I’ma Stark of Auburn too, as far as. that goes. I under- stand the breed. But it takes a long time Adventure to show things on a plantation. I’m only hoping that I’ll get a chance somehow to make him see.” Followin’ this I decided to stick and do what I could for Mr. John. If the major was square, he was doubly so, and I put everything I had into making the old man see the light. But things went right on gettin’ worse instead of better. Now that I’d settled down to my job, it seemed as if my chief duty was to upset the field. And as the major had shut down his old-fashioned mill and was sellin’ his crop to the refineries, the field was the whole plantation. Mr. John was game. Each time the major sent him down he come back smilin’. And then the old man would get sore and _ go to his bottle and hit him a harder crack. Before very long they was both on the rag- ged edge. It just needed some little thing to bring on the end. Then, right in the middle of grindin’, when we was at our busiest, it come. eq IT WAS one Saturday when I was ee comin’ from town with the pay roll. ke = <@ Mr. John and I took turns with it, and on this particular mornin’ I was late in gettin’ away. So, follcwin’ a habit in such cases, I left the parish road on my way home for a short cut that would bring me in at the back of the plantation. Havin’ made the rear of the place, I turned off on a bridle path that led up to the quarters. It was just a trail through the bushes, and I’d rounded a bend where a field path cut in from the left when some one called to me. “Hi! Wait, Mr. Nick,” he yells. I pulled up, lookin’ round, and just then a shotgun barrel poked out of the bushes on my right and covered me. Followin’ it come a nigger named “Bad-Eye,” one of the town trash that we’d taken on for the rush of grindin’. I knew enough not to reach for my gun. But I did what I could. “Bad-Eye,” says I, “‘pull out, and I'll give you a start. You know you can’t get away with this.” Just to show me he could, Bad-Eye stepped forward and shoved his gun barrel against my side. “Hand me that money, III Mr. Nick,” CoOMmicbhoolk Wh) (C© 5}