Without a word they advanced together. One of the dogs whined. The others joined him. Benjamin and Rooster hurried, and presently they found Arnold Kendrick, who had evidently slipped or tripped and set his gun off. He was dead, his head blown nearly off his neck, his blood soaking into the carpet of leaves he had collapsed upon.

19

Arnold Kendrick, who had been the shiest and mildest of men, was the subject of extravagant, almost gross mourning, his death a veritable gleaning of grief, satisfying some winter need of the Negroes at Beulah Land. It was as if they both looked back over the years he had held them in servitude and celebrated his destruction and saw into the future and knew that his going meant harder times for them. He had been a kind and considerate master as masters go. His gentle virtues in life were magnified in death to heroic proportions, to satisfy the need for legend and pride in the people he had owned.

His true kin were less hardly struck except for Selma, who had lost something that had not proceeded to its full realization, and now never would. Deborah and Leon and Felix, after initial surprise at the tragedy, thought more of how it might affect the future than of what was lost. The first look between Deborah and Felix was one of shock, but when that subsided, and the news was nibbled to absorption between them (Nell having taken to her bed), they looked at each other again and without putting it into words, understood the new cotton gin would be built in Highboro and that Kendrick money would control it.

Arnold had been brought home over his horse by the practical if not sensitive Benjamin and Rooster. They carried his body into the hall and put it down on a long table where newspapers and hats were usually dropped.

Simple, stark words had passed swiftly from cabin to cabin, and the people had come outdoors from their bedrooms and kitchens, half dressed, hastily drawing their clothes about them, whispering wide-eyed in their shock, gathering gradually into a crowd at the back of the kitchen wing. They wept and exclaimed prayers and blessings, parting to clear a way for Lovey and Ezra when they hurried to the big house, followed closely by Floyd and Pauline.