“Quit the country!  Why, Captain, who’s talking of quitting the country?”

“You speak as though you were fool enough to think the niggers would accomplish something!” said Murrell coolly.  “There will be confusion at first, but there are enough white men in the southwest to handle a heap better organized insurrection than we’ll be able to set going.  Our fellows will have to use their heads as well as their hands or they are likely to help the nigger swallow his medicine.  I look for nothing else than considerable of a shake-up along the Mississippi . . . what with lynchers and regulators a man will have to show a clean bill of health to be allowed to live, no matter what his color—­just being white won’t help him any!”

“No, you’re right, it won’t!” and again Hues gave way to easy laughter.

“When you’ve done your work you strike south as I tell you and join me.  I’m going to keep New Orleans for myself—­it’s my ambition to destroy the city Old Hickory saved!”

“And then it’s change your name and strike out for Texas with what you’ve picked up!”

“No, it isn’t!  I’ll have my choice of men—­a river full of ships.  Look here, there’s South America, or some of those islands in the gulf with a black-and-tan population and a few white mongrels holding on to civilization by their eye-teeth; what’s to hinder our setting up shop for ourselves?  Two or three hundred Americans could walk off with an island like Hayti, for instance—­and it’s black with niggers.  What we’d done here would be just so much capital down there.  We’d make it a stamping-ground for the Clan!  In the next two years we could bring in a couple of thousand Americans and then we’d be ready to take over their government, whether they liked it or not, and run it at a profit.  We’d put the niggers back in slavery where they belong, and set them at work raising sugar and tobacco for their new bosses.  Man, it’s the richest land in the world, I tell you —­and the mountains are full of gold!”

Hues had kindled with a ready enthusiasm while Murrell was speaking.

“That sounds right, Captain—­we’d have a country and a flag of our own—­and I look at those free niggers as just so much boot!”

“I shall take only picked men with me—­I can’t give ship room to any other—­but I want you.  You’ll join me in New Orleans?” said Murrell.

“When do you start south?” asked Hues quickly.

“Inside of two days.  I’ve got some private business to settle before I leave.  I’ll hang round here until that’s attended to.”

CHAPTER XXV

THE JUDGE EXTENDS HIS CREDIT