All over the land the cotton had foamed in great white flakes under the winter sun. The Silver Fleece lay like a mighty mantle across the earth. Black men and mules had staggered beneath its burden, while deep songs welled in the hearts of men; for the Fleece was goodly and gleaming and soft, and men dreamed of the gold it would buy. All the roads in the country had been lined with wagons—a million wagons speeding to and fro with straining mules and laughing black men, bearing bubbling masses of piled white Fleece. The gins were still roaring and spitting flames and smoke—fifty thousand of them in town and vale. Then hoarse iron throats were filled with fifteen billion pounds of white-fleeced, black-specked cotton, for the whirling saws to tear out the seed and fling five thousand million pounds of the silken fibre to the press.
And there again the black men sang, like dark earth-spirits flitting in twilight; the presses creaked and groaned; closer and closer they pressed the silken fleece. It quivered, trembled, and then lay cramped, dead, and still, in massive, hard, square bundles, tied with iron strings. Out fell the heavy bales, thousand upon thousand, million upon million, until they settled over the South like some vast dull-white swarm of birds. Colonel Cresswell and his son, in these days, had a long and earnest conversation perforated here and there by explosions of the Colonel's wrath. The Colonel could not understand some things.
"They want us to revive the Farmers' League?" he fiercely demanded. "Yes," Harry calmly replied.
"And throw the rest of our capital after the fifty thousand dollars we've already lost?"
"Yes."
"And you were fool enough to consent—"
"Wait, Father—and don't get excited. Listen. Cotton is going up—"
"Of course it's going up! Short crop and big demand—"
"Cotton is going up, and then it's going to fall."
"I don't believe it."
"I know it; the trust has got money and credit enough to force it down."
"Well, what then?" The Colonel glared.
"Then somebody will corner it."
"The Farmers' League won't stand—"
"Precisely. The Farmers' League can do the cornering and hold it for higher prices."
"Lord, son! if we only could!" groaned the Colonel.
"We can; we'll have unlimited credit."
"But—but—" stuttered the bewildered Colonel, "I don't understand. Why should the trust—"
"Nonsense, Father—what's the use of understanding. Our advantage is plain, and John Taylor guarantees the thing."
"Who's John Taylor?" snorted the Colonel. "Why should we trust him?"
"Well," said Harry slowly, "he wants to marry Helen—"
His father grew apopletic.
"I'm not saying he will, Father; I'm only saying that he wants to," Harry made haste to placate the rising tide of wrath.
"No Southern gentleman—" began the Colonel. But Harry shrugged his shoulders. "Which is better, to be crushed by the trust or to escape at their expense, even if that escape involves unwarranted assumptions on the part of one of them? I tell you, Father, the code of the Southern gentleman won't work in Wall Street."
"And I'll tell you why—there are no Southern gentlemen," growled his father.
The Silver Fleece was golden, for its prices were flying aloft. Mr. Caldwell told Colonel Cresswell that he confidently expected twelve-cent cotton.
"The crop is excellent and small, scarcely ten million bales," he declared. "The price is bound to go up."
Colonel Cresswell was hesitant, even doubtful; the demand for cotton at high prices usually fell off rapidly and he had heard rumors of curtailed mill production. While, then, he hoped for high prices he advised the Farmers' League to be on guard.
Mr. Caldwell seemed to be right, for cotton rose to ten cents a pound—ten and a half— eleven—and then the South began to see visions and to dream dreams.
"Yes, my dear," said Mr. Maxwell, whose lands lay next to the Cresswells' on the northwest, "yes, if cotton goes to twelve or thirteen cents as seems probable, I think wecan begin the New House"—for Mrs. Maxwell's cherished dream was a pillared mansion like the Cresswells'.
Mr. Tolliver looked at his house and barns. "Well, daughter, if this crop sells at twelve cents, I'll be on my feet again, and I won't have to sell that land to the nigger school after all. Once out of the clutch of the Cresswells—well, I think we can have a coat of paint." And he laughed as he had not laughed in ten years.
Down in the bottoms west of the swamp a man and woman were figuring painfully on an old slate. He was light brown and she was yellow.
"Honey," he said tremblingly, "I b'lieve we can do it—if cotton goes to twelve cents, we can pay the mortgage."
Two miles north of the school an old black woman was shouting and waving her arms. "If cotton goes to twelve cents we can pay out and be free!" and she threw her apron over her head and wept, gathering her children in her arms.
But even as she cried a flash and tremor shook the South. Far away to the north a great spider sat weaving his web. The office looked down from the clouds on lower Broadway, and was soft with velvet and leather. Swift, silent messengers hurried in and out, and Mr. Easterly, deciding the time was ripe, called his henchman to him.
"Taylor, we're ready—go South."
And John Taylor rose, shook hands silently, and went.
As he entered Cresswell's plantation store three days later, a colored woman with a little boy turned sadly away from the counter.
"No, aunty," the clerk was telling her, "calico is too high; can't let you have any till we see how your cotton comes out."
"I just wanted a bit; I promised the boy—"
"Go on, go on—Why, Mr. Taylor!" And the little boy burst into tears while he was hurried out.
"Tightening up on the tenants?" asked Taylor.
"Yes; these niggers are mighty extravagant. Besides, cotton fell a little today—eleven to ten and three-fourths; just a flurry, I reckon. Had you heard?"
Mr. Taylor said he had heard, and he hurried on. Next morning the long shining wires of that great Broadway web trembled and flashed again and cotton went to ten cents."No house this year, I fear," quoth Mr. Maxwell, bitterly.
The next day nine and a half was the quotation, and men began to look at each other and asked questions.
"Paper says the crop is larger than the government estimate," said Tolliver, and added, "There'll be no painting this year." He looked toward the Smith School and thought of the five thousand dollars waiting; but he hesitated. John Taylor had carefully mentioned seven thousand dollars as a price he was willing to pay and "perhaps more." Was Cresswell back of Taylor? Tolliver was suspicious and moved to delay matters.
"It's manipulation and <