Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/207

 No, the trouble, they all agreed, was that Ernest wanted to run the country and wanted to be the "big stick." But they consoled themselves for awhile with the fact that Amro had the county seat and was growing. The settlers were trading in Amro, for Amro had what they needed. An indignation meeting was held, where with much feeling they denounced the actions of Ernest Nicholson in buying land north of the town and announcing that he would build a town such as the Little Crow had never dreamed of, and that Amro should at once begin to move over to the new townsite and save money; but they were hot. Old Dad Durpee, in his shirt sleeves, corduroy and boots, his shaggy beard flowing, declared that the low-down, stinking, lying cuss would not dare to ask him to move to the town he had as yet not even named; but Ernest, at the wheel of a big new sixty-horse power Packard, continued to buy land along the railroad survey all the way to the west line of the county. In fact he bought every piece of land that was purchasable.

I watched this fight from the beginning, with interest, for I had become well enough acquainted with Ernest to feel that he knew what he was about. When the surveyors had arrived in Calias, Ernest had gone to Chicago. In declaring the road could not miss Amro the people were much like inhabitants of Megory had been a few years before. While they prattled and allowed their ego to rule, they should have been busy, and when it was seen that the town might not get the railroad, they should have gone to Chicago and seen Marvin Hewitt, putting the proposition squarely before him, and