El Paso daily herald. (El Paso, Tex.) 1881-1901, 1900-06-29
THE PROMOTION
AT ROCKY LEDGE.
By GILMORE E. PEAKE.


not spit tobacco juice on the platform.
the only station where a delicate, be-
witching scent lowered around the tel
egraph instrument; the only station
where all conductors always peeped in
just to see that everything was 80. X"
In fact, there was probably no sta
ton like it in all southwest Georgia.
The auditors office in Savannah never
found errors in the ticket reports sign
ed in a bold hand "A. Carroll" The
waybills and abstracts received from
A. Carroll always tailed. The travel
ing auditor checked up A. Carroll mere
ly as a matter of form unless indeed
the personal equation entered into the
transaction. And yet A. Carroll, so I'M
compromising on paper, so infallible,
so prompt, so austere in the perform
ance of duty, was only fluffy headed
girl, Yankee so called whose father
had gone south to die of consumption
and leave his mOtherleSs daughter a
stranger among strangers.
Rocky Ledge was no earthly para
disc. OF it's 400 Inhabitants three
fourths were black, and the remainder.
with the exception of the railroad
agent herself, We're the trashiest of
man. was at Colonel Singleton's plan
tation, three miles distant. But if Amy
Carroll ever got lonely or sick at heart
or ever pinned for the smiling fields Of
Wisconsin no one heard of it. She
might grow weary of the eternal pine
barrens that crowded up close to the
track and almost invaded her back
door; she might fear that the ague
would in time rob her of her robust
health and dye her blooming skin a
sickly yellow; she might tremble at
times for her refinement among the I'M
httered horde around her. But her
sunny face never clouded. The drip
ping brakemen who bedra ggled her
white, clean floor on tempeStuous
nights never missed her bonny words,
and Barney Mccall. the handsomest
conductor on the division, swore daily
that one of the little Yank's" smiles
was n better bracer for him than three
fingers of whisky.
When Fan-Tan, n notorious colOred
outlaw Of the neighborhood, was car
ried into her office one night with his
body nearly severed by the down
freight and his lifeblood fast oozing
away, she bravely sat by him and
sponged his brow until he had breathed
his last. The wild eyed black group
around her on that memorable night
afterward declared that Fan-Tan took
Miss Amy for an angel and fancied he
was in heaven some time before he
died. He might easily have done it,
for her sweet, plying face that night
was as white as any piece of sculp-
tured marble. On that same night
Colonel Singleton, in the comfortab BILE
sitting room of the big plantation
home, declared, with an expression not
found in dictionaries, that Amy Car
roll Yank or no Yank, was n girl after
his own heart.
''Not after your heart, papa" cor
rected his daughter Charlotte, with a
sly play upon his words, but after
your dutiful son Rods heart
Frederick could hardly marry a girl
in her station, Charlotte" said the
mother with languor that evinced no
apprehensions.
"Rod could marry a gypsy if she
were worthy of him." answered Char
lotte spiritedly, with a cote of sisterly
pride in her voice, and the colonel qui-
city chuckled to himself behind the
pages Of his paper.
About a month later, one night in
early June, No. 10, down freight for
Savannah, was wrecked at the sixty
sixth milepost, one mile below Rocky
Ledge. A brakeman lost his life. A
posse of indignant planters, assisted
by the train crew, secured the swamp
with dogs for the criminals, and before
sunrise a negro named Fillmore was
dangling from the arm of a telegraph
pole.
The subsequent excitement among
the blacks in Rocky Ledge was intense,
though manifested in a way character
iStic of the negro. Their dull, muddy
eyes and sullen movements were not
to be miSinterpreted. With hangdog
looks they shifted about the settlement
in dusky groups, mainly oscillating be-
tween the two saloons and giving vent
to their wrath in rolling eyes, pouting
lips and mumbled threats and curses
childish manifestations, but such as
with this race may portend the most
terrible outrages.
The first violence was the stoning
from ambush of the north bound pas
senger from Savannah. The news at
once spread over the division by tele-
graph. AT noon the conductor of the
down freight Cooked in" at the cozy
little office to see how things stood
with Miss Amy. She told him with a
smile that she guessed everything was
all right, but she did it only because
she fancied that that was what a man
would have done. At o'clock Barney
McCalrs handsome face, with its
rapierlike mustachios, was thrust in
no tinl- 70
"bracer,' but he imagined it was a lit
tie diluted.
You're lookin a little peaked, Miss
o1nI- ni,n't l,II rnrnn md