The Ravelin' Wolf

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Title:     The Ravelin' Wolf
Author: Irvin S. Cobb [More Titles by Cobb]

When the draft came to our town as it came to all towns it enmeshed Jeff Poindexter, who to look at him might be any age between twenty-one and forty-one. Jeff had a complexion admirably adapted for hiding the wear and tear of carking years and as for those telltale wrinkles which betray care he had none, seeing that care rarely abode with him for longer than twenty-four hours on a stretch. Did worry knock at the front door Jeff had a way of excusing himself out of the back window. But this dread thing they called a draft was a worry which just opened the door and walked right in--and outside the window stood a jealous Government, all organized to start a rookus if anybody so much as stepped sideways.

Jeff had no ambition to engage in the jar and crash of actual combat; neither did the idea of serving in a labor battalion overseas appeal to one of his habits. The uniform had its lure, to be sure, but the responsibilities presaged by the putting on of the uniform beguiled him not a whipstitch. Anyhow, his ways were the ways of peace. As a diplomat he had indubitable gifts; as a warrior he felt that he would be out of his proper element. So when answering a summons which was not to be disregarded Jeff appeared before the draft board he was not noticeably happy.

"Unmarried, eh?" inquired his chief inquisitor.

"Yas, suh--I means, naw, suh," stated Jeff. "I ain't never been much of a hand fur marryin' round."

He forced an ingratiating smile. The smile fell as seed on barren soil--fell and died there.

"Mother and father? Either one or both of them living?"

Never had Jeff looked more the orphan than as he stood there confessing himself one. He fumbled his hat in his hands.

"No dependents at all then, I take it?"

"Yas, suh, dey shorely is," answered Jeff smartly, hope rekindling within him.

"Well, who is it that you help support--if it's anybody?"

"Hit's Jedge Priest--tha's who. Jedge, he jes' natchelly couldn't git 'long noways 'thout me lookin' after him, suh. The older he git the more it seem lak he leans heavy on me."

"Well, Judge Priest may have to lean on himself for a while. Uncle Sam needs every able-bodied man he can get these times and you look to be as strong as a mule. Here, take this card and go on through that door yonder to the second room down the hall and let Doctor Dismukes look you over."

Jeff cheered up slightly. He knew Doctor Dismukes--knew him mighty well. In Doctor Dismukes' hands he would be in the hands of a friend. Beyond question the doctor would understand the situation as this strange and most unsympathetic white man undoubtedly did not.

But Doctor Dismukes, all snap and smartness, went over him as though he had never seen him before in all his life. If Jeff had been a horse for sale and the doctor a professional horse coper, scarcely could the examination have been carried forward with a more businesslike dispatch.

"Jeff," said the doctor when he had finished and the other was rearranging his wardrobe, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself for being so healthy. Take your teeth now--your teeth are splendid. I only wish I had a set like 'em."

"Is dey?" said Jeff despondently, for the first time in his life regretting his unblemished ivory.

"They certainly are. You wouldn't need a gun, not with those teeth you wouldn't--you could just naturally bite a German in two."

Jeff shivered. The very suggestion was abhorrent to his nature.

"Please suh, don't--don't talk lak that," he entreated. "I ain't cravin' to bite nobody a-tall, 'specially 'tis Germans. Live an' let live--tha's my sayin'."

"Yep," went on the doctor, prolonging the agony for the victim, "your teeth are perfect and your lungs are sound, your heart action is splendid and I know something about your appetite myself, having seen you eat. Black boy, listen to me! In every respect you are absolutely qualified physically to make a regular man-eating bearcat of a soldier"--he paused--"in every respect excepting one--no, two."

If a drowning man clutching for a straw might be imagined as coincidentally asking a question, it is highly probable he would ask it in the tone now used by Jeff.

"Meanin'--meanin' w'ich, suh?"

"I mean your feet. You've got flat feet, Jeff--you've got the flattest feet I ever saw. I don't understand it either. So far as I've been able to observe you've spent the greater part of your life sitting down. Somebody must have hit you on the head with an ax when you were standing on a plowshare and broke your arches down."

It was an old joke, but it fitted the present case, and Jeff, not to be outdone in politeness, laughed louder at it than its maker did. Indeed Jeff felt he had reason to laugh; a great load was lifting from his soul.

"Jeff," went on the doctor, "deeply though it may grieve both of us, it nevertheless is my painful duty to inform you that you have two perfectly good exemptions from military service--a right one and a left one. Now grab your hat and get out of here."

"Boss," cried Jeff, "Ise gone. Exemptions, tek me away frum yere!"

So while many others went away to fight or to learn how to fight, as the case might be, Jeff stayed behind and did his bit by remaining steadfastly cheerful. Never before, sartorially speaking, had he cut so splendid a figure as now when such numbers of young white gentlemen of his acquaintance were putting aside civilian garb to put on khaki. Jeff had one of those adaptable figures. The garments to which he fell heir might never have fitted their original owner, but always they would fit Jeff. Gorgeous in slightly worn but carefully refurbished raiment, he figured in the wartime activities of the colored population and in ostensibly helpful capacities figured in some of the activities of the white folks too.

Going among his own set his frequent companion was that straw-colored light of his social hours, Ophelia Stubblefield. It helped to reconcile Jeff to the rigors of the period of enforced rationing as he reflected that the same issues and causes which made lump sugar a rarity and fat meat a scarcity had rid him of his more dangerous competition in the quarter where his affections centered. Particularly on one account did he feel reconciled. A spirit of the most soothful resignation filled him when he gave thought to the moral certainty that the most formidable and fearsome of his rivals, that bloody-minded bravo, Smooth Crumbaugh, would daunt him never again with threats of articular dismemberment with a new-honed razor. For Smooth Crumbaugh was gone and gone for good. First the draft had carried him away and then the pneumonia had carried him off. War had its compensations after all.

Wearing Ophelia upon one arm and wearing in the crook of the other a high hat which once had been the property of a young man now bossing an infantry battalion in the muddiest part of France, Jeff appeared prominently in the Armistice celebration at the First Ward Colored Baptist Church. Still so accoutered--Ophelia on his one hand and the high hat held in proper salute against his breast--he served upon the official reception committee headed by the Rev. Potiphar Grasty and by Prof. Rutherford B. H. Champers, principal of the Colored High School, which greeted the first returning squad of service men of color.

Home-comers who had been clear across the ocean brought back with them almost unbelievable but none the less fascinating accounts of life and customs in foreign parts. The tales these traveled ones had to tell were eagerly listened to and as eagerly passed along, dowered at each time of retelling with prodigal enlargements and amplifications the most generous.

A ferment of discontent began to stir under the surface of things; a sort of inarticulate rebellion against existing conditions, which presently manifested itself in small irritations at various points of contact with the white race. It was nothing tangible as yet, nothing upon which one might put a hand or cap with a word of comprehensive description. Indeed it had been working for weeks like a yeast in the minds of sundry black folk before their Caucasian neighbors began to sense it at all, and for this there was a reason easily understandable by anyone born and reared in any sizable town in any one of the older states lying below Mason and Dixon's Line. For in each such community there are two separate and distinct worlds--a black one and a white one--interrelated by necessities of civic coordination and in an economic sense measurably dependent one upon the other, and yet in many other aspects as far apart as the North Pole is from the South.

Regarding what the white world is feeling and thinking and saying, the lesser black world that is set down within it is nearly always better informed than is the other and larger group touching on new movements and growing sentiments amongst the darker-skinned factors. Into the white man's house, serving in this or that domestic capacity, goes the negro as an observant witness to the moods and emotions of his or her employer and bringing away an understanding of the family complexities and the current trend of opinion as it shapes itself beneath that roof.

But the white man, generally speaking, views the negro's private life only from the outside, and if he be a Southern-born white man, wise in his generation, seeks to look no further, for surface garrulity and surface exuberance do not deceive him, but serve only to make him realize all the more clearly that he is dealing with members of what at heart is one of the most secretive and sensitive of all the breeds of men. But since this started out to be the chronicle of an episode largely relating to Jeff Poindexter and one other and not a psychological study of actions and reactions as between the two most numerous races in this republic, it is perhaps as well that we should get on with our narrative.

If the leaven of unrest, vague and formless as it was at the outset, properly might be said to date from the time of the return of divers black veterans, it took on shape and substance after the advent of one Dr. J. Talbott Duvall, an individual engaging in manner, and in language, dress and deportment fascinating beyond degree; likewise an organizer by profession and a charmer of the opposite sex by reason of qualifications both natural and acquired.

A doctor he was, as witness the handle to his name, and yet a doctor of any known variety he was not. Confessedly he was no doctor of medicine, though his speech dripped gorgeous ear-filling Latin words which sounded as though they might be the names of difficult and sinister diseases; nor was he doctor of divinity, though speedily he proved himself to be at home in pulpits. He was not a horse doctor or a corn doctor or a conjure doctor or a root-and-herb doctor or a healer by faith or the laying on of hands. His title, it seemed, was his by virtue of a degree conferred upon him by a college--a white man's college--somewhere in the North. His accent was that of a traveled cosmopolite superimposed upon the speech of a place away off somewhere called the West Indies. He had money and he spent it; he had a wardrobe of distinction and he wore it; he had a gift for argumentation and he exercised it; he had a way with the ladies and he used it. His coming had created a social furor; his subsequent ministrations amounted to what for lack of a better word is commonly called a sensation.

If there were those who from motives, let us say, of envy looked with the jaundiced eye of disfavor upon his mounting popularity and his constantly widening scope of influence they mainly kept their own counsel or at least refrained from voicing their private prejudices in public places. One gets fewer bumps traveling with the crowd than against it.

Even so bold a spirit and customarily so outspoken a speaker as Aunt Dilsey Turner, Judge Priest's black cook of many years' incumbency, saw fit somewhat to dissemble on the occasion of a call paid by Sister Eldora Menifee, who came dressed to kill and inspired by the zeal of the new convert to win yet other converts. Entering by way of the alley gate one fine forenoon, Sister Eldora found Aunt Dilsey sitting in the kitchen doorway hulling out a mess of late green peas newly picked from the house garden.

"Sist' Turner," began the visitor, "I hopes I ain't disturbin' you by runnin' in on you this mawnin'."

"Honey," said Aunt Dilsey, "you're jes' ez welcome ez day is frum night. Lemme fetch you a cheer out yere on the gallery." And she made as if to heave her vast comfortable bulk upright.

"No'm, set right where you is," begged Sister Menifee. "I ain't got only jes' a few minutes to stay. Things is mighty pressin' with me. I got quite a number of my lady frien's to see to-day an' you happens to be the fust one on de list."

"Is tha' so?" inquired Aunt Dilsey. Her tone was cordiality itself, but one less carried away by the enthusiasm of the mission which had brought her than Sister Eldora Menifee was might have caught a latent gleam of hostility in the elder woman's eye. "Well, go on, Ise lis'enin'."

"Well, Sist' Turner, ef you's heared 'bout de work I been doin' lately I reckin mebbe you kin guess whut brung me to yore do'. I is solicitin' you fur yore fellership ez a reg'lar member of de ladies' auxiliary of de new s'ciety w'ich Doct' J. Talbott Duvall is got up."

"Meanin' perzactly w'ich s'ciety? Dis yere Doct' Duvall 'pears to be so busy gittin' up fust one thing an' then 'nother seems lak I ain't been able to keep track of his doin's, 'count of my bein' so slow gittin' round on my feet by reason of de rheumatism."

"Meanin' de Shinin' Star Cullid Uplift and Progress League--dat's de principalest activity in w'ich he's now engaged. De dues is one dollar down on 'nitiation an' twenty cents a week an'--"

"Wait jes' one minute, Sist' Menifee, ef you please. 'Fore we gits any furder 'long answer me dis one question Ise fixin' to ast you--do dis yere new lodge perpose to fune'lize de daid?"

"We ain't tuck up dat point yit; doubtless we'll come to de plans fur dat part later. Fur de time bein' de work is jes' to form de ladies' auxiliary an' git de main objec's set fo'th."

"Lis'en, chile. Me, I don't aim never so long as I lives an' keeps my reason to jine no lodge w'ich don't start out fust thing by fune'lizin' de daid. Ise thinkin' now of de case of dat pore shif'less Sist' Clarabelle Hardin dat used to live out yere on Plunkett's Hill. She up an' jined one of dese newfandangle' lodges w'ich didn't have nothin' to it but a fancy name an' a fancy strange nigger man runnin' it, an' right on top of dat she up an' died 'thout a cent to her back. An' you know whut happen den? Well, I'm gwine tell you. Dat pore chile laid round de house daid fur gwine on three days an' den she jes' natchelly had to git out to de cemetery de bes' way she could. Not fur me, honey, not fur me. Dey got to have de money in de bank waitin' an' ready to bury de fus' member dat passes frum dis life before dey gits a cent of mine."

"But dis yere lodge is gwine have a more 'portant puppose 'en jes' to fune'lize de daid," protested Sister Eldora. "We aims to do somethin' fur de livin' whilst yet dey's still alive. Curious you ain't tuck notice of de signs of de times ez dey's been expounded 'mongst de people by Doct' Duvall. He sho' kin 'splain things in a way to mek you a true believer." The advocate of the new order of things sank her voice to a discreet half whisper. "Sist' Turner, we aims at gittin' mo' of de rights dat's due us. We aims to see dat de pore an' de lowly an' de downtrodden-on is purtected in dey rights. We aims--"

"Num'mine whut you aims at--de question is, is you gwine be able hit whar you aims? An' lemme tell you somethin' more, Sist' Eldora Menifee. I ain't needin' no ladies' auxiliary to tell me whut my rights is. Neither I ain't needin' to pay out no twenty cents a week to find out neither. W'en it comes to dat, all de ladies' auxiliary w'ich I needs is jes' me, myse'f. I knows good an' well whut my rights is already an' Ise gwine have 'em, too, or somebody'll sho' git busted plum wide open. Mind you, I ain't sayin' nothin' 'ginst dis new man nur 'ginst dem w'ich chooses to follow 'long after his teachin's. Ise jes' sayin' dat so fur ez my jinin' in wid dis yere lodge is concern' you's wastin' yore breath. Better pass along, honey, to de nex' one on dat list of your'n, 'thout you's a mind to stay yere an' watch me dish up Jedge Priest's vittles fur 'im."

"Mebbe if Doct' Duvall wuz to come hisse'f an' mek manifest to you de high pupposes--" began Sister Eldora. But Aunt Dilsey cut her off short.

"Wouldn't mek no diffe'nce ef he come eighty times a day an' twice ez offen on Sunday. Anyway, I reckins my day fur jinin' things is done over."

There was a dead weight of finality in her words. She rose heavily. As Sister Menifee departed Aunt Dilsey became aware of the presence of Jeff Poindexter. He was emerging from behind the door.

"Been hidin' inside dat kitchen lis'enin', I s'pose?" demanded Aunt Dilsey.

"Couldn't help frum hearin'," admitted Jeff. It was evident that he was not deeply grieved over the failure of Sister Menifee to make headway against Aunt Dilsey's opposition. "At the last you suttinly give dat woman her marchin' orders, didn't you, Aunt Dilsey?"

"An' sech wuz my intention frum de start off," she confided. "Minute she come th'ough dat back gate yonder I knowed whut she wuz comin' fur an' I wuz set an' ready wid de words waitin' on de tip of my tongue."

"Me, I don't fancy dat Duvall neither," stated Jeff. "I ain't been sayin' much 'bout him one way or 'nother but I been doin' a heap o' steddyin'."

"Yas, I knows all 'bout dat too," snapped Aunt Dilsey. "I got eyes in my haid. You los' yore taste fur dis yere big-talkin', fine-lookin' man jes ez soon ez he started sparkin' round dat tore-down limb of a 'Phelia Stubblefield. Whut ails you is you is jealous; hadn't been fur dat I lay you'd be runnin' round wid yore tongue hangin' out suckin' in ever'thing he sez ez de gospil truth same ez a lot of dese other weak-minded ones is doin'. Oh, I know you, boy, frum ze ground up! An' furthermo' I knows dis Doct' Duvall likewise also, even ef I ain't never seen him but oncet or twicet sence fust he come yere to dis town all dress' up lak a persidin' elder. I don't lak his looks an' I don't lak his ways, jedgin' by whut I hears of 'em frum dis one an' dat one, an' most in special I don't lak his color. He ain't clear brown lak whut I is, an' he ain't muddy black lak whut you is, neither he ain't high yaller lak some is. To me he looks most of all lak de ground side of a nickel wahtermelon. An' in all de goin' on sixty-two yeahs of my life I ain't never seen no pusson callin' theyselves Affikins dat had dat kind of a sickly greenish-yaller-whitish complexion but whut trouble come pourin' frum 'em sooner or later, an' most gin'rally sooner, lak manna pourin' from de gourd of de Prophet Jonah. Dat man is a ravelin' wolf, ef ever I seen one."

"Whut kind of a wolf did you say, Aunt Dilsey?" asked Jeff.

"Consult de Scriptures an' you won't be so ignunt," she answered crushingly. "Consult de Scriptures an' you'll read whar de ravelin' wolf come down on de fold, an' whut he done to de fold after he'd done come down on it wuz more'n aplenty. An' now, boy, you git on out of my kitchen an' go on 'bout yore business--ef you's got any business, w'ich I doubts. I ain't got no mo' time to waste on you den whut I is on dat flighty-haided Eldora Menifee, a-traipsin' round frum one back do' to 'nother with her talk 'bout ladies' auxiliaries an' gittin' yo rights fur a dollah down an' twenty cents a week."

Jeff faded away. It was comforting in a way to find Aunt Dilsey on his side, even though her manner rather indicated she resented the fact that he was on hers. A few evenings later he found out something else. He was made to know that in another and entirely unsuspected quarter the endeavors of the diligently crusading and organizing Duvall person had roused more than a passing curiosity.

One evening, supper being over, Judge Priest lingered on in his low-ceiled dining room smoking his corncob pipe while Jeff cleared away the supper dishes. It was the same high-voiced deliberately ungrammatical Judge Priest that the kindly reader may recall--somewhat older than at last accounts, somewhat slower in his step--but then he never had been given to fast movements--and perhaps just a trifle balder.

"Wuz dey anythin' else you wanted, jedge, 'fore I locks up the back of the house an' lights out?" Jeff inquired when the table had been reset for breakfast.

"Yes, I think mebbe there wuz," drawled the old man. He hesitated a moment almost as though at a loss for a proper phrasing of the thing he meant to say next. Then: "Jeff, what's come over your race in this town here lately?"

"Meanin' w'ich, suh?" countered Jeff. "Me, I ain't notice nothin' out of the way--nothin' particular."

"Haven't you? Well, I think I have. Jeff, I don't want to be put in the position of pryin' into the private and the personal affairs of other folks, reguardless of color. I have to do enough of that sort of thing in my official capacity when I'm settin' in judgment up at the big cote house. But unless I can get some confidential information frum you I don't know where else I'm likely to git it, and at the same time I sort of feel as ef I should try to get hold of it somewheres or other ef it's humanly possible."

"Yas, suh."

"Now heretofore in this community the two races--white and black--have got along purty tolerably well together. We managed to put up with your shortcomings and you managed to put up with ours, which at times may have been considerable of a strain on both sides. Still we've done it. But it seems to me here of late there's been a kind of an undercurrent of discontent stirrin' amongst your people--and no logical reason fur it either, so fur as I kin see. Yet there it is.

"There wuz that rumpus two-three weeks ago down in Market Square. A little more and that affair could have growed into a first-class race riot. And here last Saturday night followed that mix-up out by the Union Depot when Policeman Gip Futtrell got all carved up and two darkies got purty extensively shot. And night before last the trouble that occurred on that Belt Line car out in Hollandville; that looked mighty threatenin', too, fur a while. And in between all these more serious things a lot of little unpleasantnesses keep croppin' up--always takin' the form of friction between whites and blacks.

"One of these here occurrences might be what you'd call an accident and two of them in rapid succession a coincidence, but it looks to me like now it's gittin' to be a habit. It's leadin' to bad blood and what's worse it's leadin' to a lot of spilt blood and our city gittin' a bad name and all that.

"And I know the respectable black folks in this town don't want that to happen any more than the respectable white people do.

"Now then, Jeff, whut's at the bottom of all this--I mean on your side of the color line? Who's stirrin' up old grudges and kindlin' new ones? I've sort of got my own private suspicions, but I'd like to see ef your ideas run along with mine. Got any suggestions as to the underlying causes of this ill feelin' that's sprung up so lately and without any good reason for it either so fur ez I kin see?"

Now ordinarily Jeff would have held firmly to the doctrine that white folks should tend to their business and let black folks tend to theirs. For all his loyalty to his master, a certain race consciousness in him would have bade him keep hands off and tongue locked. But here a strong personal prejudice operated to steer Jeff away from what otherwise would have been his customary course.

"Jedge," he said, drawing a pace or two nearer his employer, "did you ever hear tell of a pale-yaller party w'ich calls hisse'f Doct' J. Talbott Duvall dat come yere a few weeks ago?"

"Ah, hah!" said the judge as though satisfied of the correctness of a prior conclusion. "I thought possibly my mind might be on the right track. Yes, I've heard of him and I've seen him. Whut of him?"

"Jedge, I trusts you won't tell nobody else whut I'm tellin' you, but dat's sho' de one dat's at the bottom of the whole mess. He's the one dat's plantin' the pizen. Me, I ain't had no truck wid him myse'f, but dat ain't sayin' I don't know whut he's doin', case I do. He calls hisse'f a organizer."

"Ah, hah! And whut is he organizin'?"

"Trouble, jedge. Dat's whut--trouble fur a lot of folks. Jedge, fo' we goes any further lemme ast you a coupler questions, please, suh. Is it true dat over dere in some of dem Youropean countries black folks is jes' the same ez white folks, ef not more so?"

Choosing his words, the old man elucidated his understanding of the social order as it prevailed in certain geographical divisions and subdivisions of the continent of Europe.

"Yas, suh, thanky, suh," said Jeff when the judge had finished. "I reckin mebbe one main trouble over dere is, jedge, dat dem folks ain't been raised de way you an' me is."

"Jeff," said the judge, "I'm inclined to think probably you're right."

"Yas, suh. Now den, jedge, here's one mo' thing. Is it true dat in all dem furrin countries--Russia an' Germany an' Bombay an' all--dat the po' people, w'ite or black or whutever dey color is, is fixin' to rise up in they might an' tek the money an' de gover'mint an' de fine houses an' the cream of ever'thing away frum dem dat's had it all 'long?"

Again the judge expounded at length, touching both upon upheavals abroad and on discords nearer home. Next it was Jeff's turn to make disclosures having a purely local application and he made them. Listening intently, Judge Priest puckered his bald brow into furrows of perplexity.

"Jeff," he said finally, "I'm much obliged to you fur tellin' me all this. It backs up what I'd sort of figgered out all by myself. The whole world appears to be engaged in standin' on its esteemed head at this writin'. I reckin when old Mister Kaiser turned loose the war he didn't stop to think that mebbe the war was only one of a whole crop of evils he wuz lettin' out of his box of tricks. Or mebbe he didn't care--bein' the kind of a person he wuz. And I'm prone to believe also that when the Germans stopped fightin' us with guns they begun fightin' us with other weapons almost as dangersome to our peace of mind and future well-bein'. Different parts of this country are in quite a swivet--agitators preachin' bad doctrine--some of 'em drawin' pay from secret enemies across the sea fur preachin' it, too, I figger--and a lot of highly disagreeable disturbances croppin' up here and there. But I was hopin' that mebbe our little corner of the world wouldn't be pestered. But now it looks ez ef we weren't goin' to escape our share of the trouble."

"Jedge," asked Jeff, "ain't they some way dis Duvall pusson could be fetched up in cote? I suttinly would admire to see dat yaller man wearin' a striped suit of clothes."

"Well, Jeff," said the judge, "I doubt either the legality or the propriety of such a step, ef you get what I mean. From whut you tell me I don't see where he's really broken any laws. He's got a right to come here and organize his societies and lodges and things so long as he don't actually come out in the open and preach violence. He's got a perfect right under the law to organize this here new drill company you speak about. I sometimes think that ef all the young men in this country had been required to do a little more drillin' in years gone by we'd be feelin' somewhat safer to-day. Anyway, it's a mighty great mistake sometimes to make a martyr out of a rascal. Puttin' him in jail, unless you're absolutely certain that a jail is where he properly belongs, gives him a chance to raise the cry of persecution and gives his followers an excuse to cut loose and smash up things. You git my drift, don't you?"

"Yas, suh, think I do. Well den, suh, ef I wuz runnin' dis town seems to me I'd git a crowd of strong-minded gen'elmen together some evenin' in the dark of the moon an' let 'em call on dis yere slick-haided half-strainer an' invite him to tek his foot in his hand an' marvil further. Ef one of 'em wuz totin' a rope in his hand sorter keerless lak it might help. Ropes is powerful influential. An' the sight of tar an' feathers meks a mighty strong argument, too, Ise heared tell."

"Jeff," said the judge, "I'm astonished that you'd even suggest sech a thing! Mob law is worse even than no law at all. Besides," he added--and now there was a small twinkle in his eye to offset to a degree the severity in his tones--"besides, the feller that was bein' called on by the committee might decline to take the hint and then purty soon you might have another self-made martyr on your hands. But ef he ran away on his own hook now--ef something came up that made him go of his own accord and go fast and cut a sort of a cheap figure in the eyes of his deluded followers whilst he was goin'--that'd be a different thing altogether. Start a crowd of folks, white or black or brown, to laughin' at a feller and they'll quit believin' in him. Worshipin' a false god and laughin' at him at the same time never has been successfully done yit."

He sucked his pipe. "Jeff," he resumed, "what do you know, ef anything, about the past career and movements of this here J. Talbott Et Cetery?"

Jeff knew a good deal--at second hand. Didn't the object of his deepest aversions persist in almost nightly calls upon the object of his deepest affections? Paying such calls, didn't the enemy spend hours--hours upon hours doubtless--pouring into Ophelia's ear accounts of his recent triumphs as an uplifter in other towns and other states? Didn't the fascinated and flattered Ophelia in turn recount these tales to one whose opportunities for traveling and seeing the great world had been more circumscribed? Had not Jeff writhed in jealous misery the while he heard the annals of a rival's successes? So Jeff made prompt answer.

"Yas, suh, I suttinly does. Ise heared a right smart 'bout dis yere Duvall's past life frum--frum somebody. 'Cordin' to the way he norrates it, he wuz in Nashville, Tennessee 'fore he come yere; an' 'fore dat in Mobile, Alabama; an' 'fore dat in Little Rock, Arkansaw. Seem lak w'en he ain't organizin' or speechifyin' he ain't got nothin' better to do den run round amongst young cullid gals braggin' 'bout the places he's been an' the things he done whilst in 'em."

Jeff spoke with an enhanced bitterness.

"I see. Then I take it ef he spends so much time in seekin' out female society that he's not a married man?"

"So he say--so he say! But, Jedge Priest, ef ever I looked on the spittin'-image of a natchel-born marryin' nigger, dat ver' same Duvall is de one."

Judge Priest seemed not to have heard this last. He sat for a bit apparently studying the tips of his square-toed, low-quarter shoes.

"Jeff," he said when he had given his feet a long half minute of seeming consideration, "I would like to know some facts about the previous life and general history of the individual we've been discussin'--I really would. In fact my curiosity is sech that I might even be willin' to spend a little money out of my own pocket, ef needs be, in order to find out. So I was jest wonderin' whether you wouldn't like to take a little trip, with all expenses paid, and tour round through some of our sister states and make a few private inquiries. It occurs to me that everything considered you might make a better job of it as an amateur investigator than a regular professional detective of a different color might. Do you know where by any chance you could git hold of a good photograph of this here individual--I mean without lettin' him know anything about it?"

"Yas, suh, dat I does," stated Jeff briskly.

The conference between master and man lasted perhaps fifteen minutes longer before Jeff was dismissed for the night. Mainly it dealt with ways, means and purposes. Upon the heels of it, within forty-eight hours two events--seemingly nowise related or bearing one upon the other--occurred. An ornately framed photograph lately bestowed as a gift and treasured as a trophy of sentimental value mysteriously vanished from the mantelpiece of the front room of Ophelia Stubblefield's pa's house; and Jefferson Poindexter, carrying a new and very shiny suitcase, unostentatiously left town late at night on a southbound train.

Darktown in Nashville knew him for a brief space as a visiting nobleman with money in all his pockets and apparently nothing of importance to do except to spend it in divertisements suitable to the social instincts of a capitalist of leisure. In Mobile at the Elite Colored Beauty Parlors for the first time in his life he tendered his finger nails for ministrations at the hands of a dashing chocolate-ice-cream-colored manicurist and spent the remainder of that same afternoon in a sunny spot, glistening pleasantly.

If in both these cities and likewise in Little Rock, which next he favored with his presence, he made himself known to brothers of his particular lodge--the Afro-American Order of Supreme Kings of the Universe has a large and a widely distributed membership--and if under the sacred pledge of secrecy which only may be broken on pain of mutilation and death by torture he--with the aid of these fraternal allies of his--conducted certain discreet inquiries, why, that was his own private business. Assuredly, so far as surface indications counted, he appeared to have no business other than pleasurable pursuits. From Little Rock he turned his face southeastward, landing at Macon, Georgia, where he lingered on for upward of a week, breaking his visit only by a day's side trip to a smaller town south of Macon. Altogether Jeff was an absentee from his favorite haunts back home for the greater part of a month.

He reached town on a Monday. Betimes Tuesday morning, inspired outwardly by the zeal of one just won over from skepticism to the immediate advisability of following a sapient course, he sought opportunity to become a member in good standing of the Shining Star Colored Uplift and Progress League, a simple ceremony and a brief, since it involved merely the signing of one's name on Dotted Line A of a printed form card and the paying of a dollar into the hand of Dr. J. Talbott Duvall. On Tuesday evening the league met in stated session at Hillman's Hall on Yazoo Street and Jeff was early on hand, visibly enthusiastic and professedly ready to do all within his power to further the aims and intents of the organization. As a brand snatched from the burning he was elevated before the eyes of the assemblage so that all might see him and mark his mien of newborn fervor, for Doctor Duvall, following his custom, called to places upon the platform the proselytes enrolled since the previous meeting, to the end that older members might observe the physical proof of a steady and a healthful growth.

So there sat Jefferson in the very front row of wooden chairs, where all might behold him and he might behold all and sundry. About him were his recent fellow converts. Almost directly behind him was a door giving upon a side entrance; there was another door serving similar purposes upon the opposite side of the stage. Beyond him to the left in the center of the stage were grouped the honorary officers of the league, flanking and supporting their chief.

Being an honorary officer carried with it, as the title might imply, honor and prominence second only to that enjoyed by the president-organizer, but it entailed no great weight of responsibility, since practically all the actual work of the league had from the very outset been generously assumed by Doctor Duvall. It was he who cared for the funds, he who handled disbursements, he who conducted the proceedings, he who made the principal addresses on meeting nights, he who between meetings labored without cessation to spread educational propaganda. That he found time for all these purposeful endeavors and yet crowded in such frequent opportunity for mingling socially among the lambs of his flock--notably the ewe lambs--was but evidence, accumulating daily, of his genius for leadership and direction.

This night the session opened with a prayer--by Doctor Duvall; an eloquent and a moving prayer indeed, its sonorous periods set off and adorned with noble big words and quotations in foreign tongues. The prayer would be followed, it had been announced, by the reading of the minutes of the previous session, after which Doctor Duvall would speak at length with particular reference to things lately accomplished and the even more important things in contemplation for the near future.

Standing for the prayer, Jeff could look out over what a master of words before now has fitly described as a sea of upturned faces--faces black, brown and yellow. Had he been minded to give thought to details he might have noted how at every polysyllabic outburst from the inspired invocationist old Uncle Ike Fauntleroy, himself accounted a powerful hand at wrestling with sinners in prayer, was visibly jolted by admiration; might, if he had had a head for figures, have kept count of the hearty amens with which Sister Eldora Menifee punctuated each pause when Doctor Duvall was taking a fresh breath; might have cast a side glance upon Ophelia Stubblefield in a new and most becoming hat with ostrich plumage grandly surmounting it. But under the hand which he held reverently cupped over his brow Jeff's eyes were fixed upon a certain focal point,--to wit, the door of the main entrance at the length of the hall from him. It was as though Jeff waited for something or somebody he was expecting.

Nor did he have so very long to wait. The prayer was done and well done. In its wake, so to speak, there spouted up from every side veritable geysers of hallelujahs and amens. The honorary secretary, Brother Lemuel Diuguid, smelling grandly of expensive hair ointments--Brother Diuguid being by calling a head barber--stood up to read the minutes of the preceding regular session, and having read them sat down again. A friendly and flattering bustle of anticipation filled the body of the hall as Doctor Duvall rose and moved one pace forward and--raising a hand for silence--began to speak. But he had no more than begun, had progressed no farther than part way of his first smoothly launched sentence, when he was made to break off by an unseemly interruption at the rear. The honorary grand inner guard on duty at the far street door, after a brief and unsuccessful struggle with unseen forces, was observed to be shoved violently aside from his post. Bursting in together there entered two strangers--a tall yellow woman and a short black man, and both of them of a most grim and determined aspect. He moved fast, this man, but even so his companion moved faster still. She was three paces ahead of him when, bulging impetuously past those who sprang into the center aisle as though to halt her onward rush--all others present being likewise up on their feet--she came to a halt near the middle of the hall and, glaring about her defiantly, just double-dog-dared any present to lay so much as the weight of one detaining finger upon her. There was something about her calculated to daunt the most willing of volunteer opponents, and so while those at a safe distance demanded the ejection of the intruders, those nearer her hesitated.

"Th'ow me out?" she whooped, echoing the words of outraged and startled members of the Shining Star. "I'd lak to see de one dat's gwine try it! An' 'fo' anybody talk 'bout th'owin' out lettum heah me whilst I sez my say!"

Towering until she seemed to increase in stature by inches, she aimed a long and bony finger dead ahead.

"Ax dat slinky yaller man up yonder on dat flatfo'm ef he gwine give de order to th'ow me out!" she clarioned in a voice which rose to a compelling shriek. "But fust off ax him whut he meant--marryin' me in Mobile, Alabama, an' den runnin' 'way frum his lawful wedded wife under cover of de night! Ax him--dat's all, ax him!"

"An' ax him one thing mo'!" It was the voice of her short companion rising above the tumult. "Ax him whut he done wid de funds of de s'ciety he 'stablished at Little Rock, Arkansaw, all of w'ich he absconded wid dis last spring!"

As though the same set of muscles controlled every neck the heads of all swung about, their eyes following where the accusers pointed, their ears twitching for the expected blast of denial and denunciation which would wither these mad and scandalous detractors in their tracks.

Alas and alackaday! With his splendid figure suddenly all diminished and shrunken, with distress writ large and plain upon his features, the popular idol was step by step flinching backward from the edge of the platform--was step by step inching, edging toward the side door in the right-hand wall.

And in this same instant the stunned assemblage realized that Jeff Poindexter, by nimble maneuvering, had thrust himself between the retreating figure and the exit, and Jeff was crying out: "Not dis way out, Doct' Duvall. Not dis way! The one you married down below Macon is waitin' fur you behin' dis do'!"

The doctor stopped in midflight and swung about and his eye fell upon the right-hand door and he moved a yard or two in that direction; but no more than a yard or two, for again Jeff spoke in warning, halting him short:

"Not dat way neither! The one frum dat other town whar you uster live is waitin' outside dat do'--wid a pistil! Seems lak you's entirely s'rounded by wives dis evenin'!"

To the verge of the footlights the beset man darted, and like a desperate swimmer plunging from a foundering bark into a stormy sea he leaped far out and projected himself, a living catapult, along the middle aisle. He struck the tall yellow woman as the irresistible force strikes the supposedly immovable object of the scientists' age-old riddle, but on his side was impetus and on hers surprise. She was bowled over flat and her hands, clutching as she went down, closed, but on empty and unresisting air. Literally he hurdled over the stocky form of the little black man behind her, but as the other flitted by him the fists of the stranger knotted firmly into the skirts of its wearer's long black frock coat and held on. There was a rending, tearing sound and as the back breadth of the garment ripped bodily away from the waistband there flew forth from the capsized tail pockets a veritable cloudburst of currency--floating, fluttering green and yellow bills and with them pattering showers of dollars and halves and dimes and quarters and nickels.

That canny instinct which had led the fugitive apostle of the uplift to hide the collected funds of the league upon his person rather than trust to banks and strong boxes was to prove his ruination financially but his salvation physically. While those who had believed in him, now forgetting all else, scrambled for the scattered money--their money--he fled out of the unguarded door and was instantly gone into the shielding night--a sorry shape in a bob-tailed garment.

At a somewhat later hour Judge Priest in his living room was receiving from Jefferson Poindexter a much lengthier and more elaborated account of the main occurrences of the evening at Hillman's Hall than has here been presented. Speaking as he did in the dual role of spectator and of an actuating force in the events of that crowded and exciting night, Jeff spared no details. He had come to the big scene of his narrative when his master interrupted him:

"Hold on a minute, Jeff! I don't know ez I get the straight of it all yit. I rather gathered frum whut you told me yesterday when you landed back home and made your report that you'd only been able to dig up one certain-sure wife of this feller's--the one that came along with you and that little Arkansaw darky. You didn't say anything then about bein' able to prove he wuz a bigamist."

"Huh, jedge, I didn't have to prove it! Dat man wuz more'n jes' a plain bigamist. He sho' wuz a trigamist, an' ef the full truth wuz knowed I 'spects he wuz a quadrupler at the very least. He proved it hisself--way he act' w'en the big 'splosion come."

"But the two women you told him were waitin' behind those side doors for him--how about them?"

"Law, jedge, dey wuzn't dere--neither one of 'em wuzn't. Jes' lak I told you yistiddy, I couldn't find only jest one woman dat nigger'd married an' run off frum, an' her I fetched 'long wid me. But lak I also told you, I got kind of traces of one dat uster live below Macon but w'ich is now vanished, an' ever'whar else I went whar he'd lived befo' he come yere de signs wuz manifold dat he wuz a natchel-born marryin' fool, jes' lak I 'spicioned fust time ever I see him. So w'en he started fur dat fust do' I taken a chancet on him an' w'en I seen how he cringed an' ducked back I taken another chancet on him, an' the subsequent evidences offers testimony dat both times I reckined right. Jedge, the late Doct' Duvall muster married some powerful rough-actin' gals in his time ef he thought the Mobile one wuz the gentlest out of three. Well, anyway, suh, the ravelin' wolf is gone frum us, an' fur one I ain't 'spectin' him back never no mo'. An' I reckin dat's the main pint wid you an' me both."

"The ravelin' whut?"

"Dat's whut Aunt Dilsey called him oncet, speechifyin' to me 'bout him--the ravelin' wolf. Only he suttinly did look he wuz comin' unraveled mighty fast the last I seen of him."

[The end]
Irvin S. Cobb's short story: Ravelin' Wolf

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