A Philanthropist from the Hill Country... bill shipley Uncle Nias always met the trains. He was a Congo king, with the rickety old station-wagon for his throne and the broad platform of the Willow Springs railway station for his domain. One could not say that he was not a liberal monarch. He never contested intrusions, even from the transient guests of the railroad guests of Pullman and of freight car who happened to enter his kingdom. He was simply content to sit on the station-wagon in the hot dusty summer, or just inside the depot door in winter, with a kind word for all, and a chat for nobody. He was amiable enough, and never sullen, but certainly not talkative. Many of the wags of the Springs had tried in vain to find out where he had come from and why he had come at all to live in a one-room shack in a town buried in the bowels of the Missouri hill country. But Uncle Nias held his tongue. And since silence is the first ingredient of mystery, the local minds began to mull him over and make up their own stories of his origin and early existence. Some said that he had killed a white man in Georgia and had come west to escape lynching. Some said that he was crazy and afraid to talk too much for fear of showing it. Of course, the Willow Springs folks never would have concerned themselves so much with an ordinary nigger. Uncle Nias was no ordinary nigger. He had a strange and obvious habit which made him different from all the other niggers in the whole world. When the passenger trains pulled up for their ten-minute water stop, Uncle Nias would creep rheumatically off the Station-wagon and hobble jerkily up to the engine cab. He would stand for a long moment looking down the dwindling line of coaches as if measuring the perspective of life along their diminishing lengths. Then he would throw his old shoulders back and start to hum softly in his deep negro bass. Snatching his greasy old cap off his white head, he would march haltingly down the platform, humming as he went, until he had passed the baggage car. Then, like a living spirit of the grand old South, he would start to sing. The dusty travelers, weary with their long journey, would raise their windows, uplifted by the cool, throaty negro crooning, surprised and delighted by the novelty of the thing. And they tossed their small coins eagerly into Uncle Nias' waiting cap. He would change his tune often now there would be a spiritual, low and mournful, now a sprightly folksong. And the railway passengers who went through Willow Springs enriched their souls, and Uncle Nias increased his material gain by something like two dollars a train. The question most often discussed in the vicinity concerning Uncle Nias was about his money. What did he do with it? More than twenty years had passed since Uncle Nias had first stepped on the railway platform with his songs, and no one had known him to buy more than the barest necessities of life, and never had he written a letter. Therefore, people decided, he had all his hoard somewhere, in the manner of misers, white or black. People also decided that the same hoard was the reason for his taciturnity. But curious as they were, the townsfolk respected his secret and amiably tolerated him. It was the first morning of the New Year, and Uncle Nias was hobbling home from the station. New Year's day was a day of rejoicing for the indigent poor of Jeff Davis county. For many years, Jed Hawkings, the town's leading citizen, had sponsored a free feast on the first day of each year. While it was not the gala social event of the year at the Springs, it was the event that meant most to the greatest number of people. Uncle Nias and Jed had been friends for many a long year like master and devoted slave. In fact, a lot of people thought that Jed knew more about Uncle Nias than any other person much more. And though Uncle Nias had to eat in the little room at the back of the town hall where the feast was held, he was always sure of one good feed a year whether he spent his money or not. So he puttered about his shack, donning the few pieces of cheap finery which he had salvaged from divers garbage heaps and ashcans. Aside from his everyday clothes, his wardrobe consisted of a frayed old frock coat, a brown derby, and a yellow celluloid collar with a blue string tie. All these treasures stayed under his cot in a corrugated box for three hundred and sixty-four days out of each year. Uncle Nias1 social ambitions were strictly limited. He liked to eat his New Year's dinner alone. Of course, no one would view his finery, but company meant conversation, and talking was not his strong point. The town hall bell began to clamour at one o'cloock the signal that everything was ready for the banquet to begin. Singly, in pairs, in families, the people came, eagerly expectant and set for an afternoon's entertainment. But Uncle Nias, hobbling through the back door, didn't go for any apparent reason. Maybe it was because of his friendship with Jed. At any rate, he ate very little, and spent most of his time peeping through a crack in the wall at the party in the big room. Occasionally he would smile a little and nod his head slowly, as if he were well pleased or as if he were sleepy. The afternoon drifted into evening, and the yellow gleam of the coal oil lamps began to stab the purple gloom here and there as folks left the town hall for their homes. Uncle Nias trudged wearily but happily home from his solitary feast, and turned in the path leading to his shack just as a full, bloody moon struggled over the eastern horizon. The moon was paling when it threw the shadows of a ghostly group of figures into the ruts of the road past the shack. They might have been a gathering of spirits come to earth out of limbo, had it not been for their round shoulders and lazy, shuffling gait. They were loggers from the hills. They stopped at the path and huddled together in eager, whispering conversation. Then, with quick strides, they swept hurriedly up to the leather-hinged door of the shack. FOUR One of the men knocked, pulled the latch string, and stepped boldly in. The others followed, pressing each other forward. When Uncle Nias first came home, he undressed and lay down upon his ragged cot, but he did not go to sleep. He lay with his withered, veined, black old hands behind his head, meditating, and chuckling occasionally. He had just turned on his side with a contented sigh, when he heard nervous footsteps hurrying up the gravel of the path. With a groan of rheumatic pain, he tumbled off his cot and turned toward the door just in time to see it burst open. He could see the round moon, now white, over the shoulders of the men as they crowded into the tiny, low-ceilinged room. The leader strode over to where Uncle Nias was nervously lighting the lamp and, taking his arm, he twisted him about to where the golden light fell on his black face and woolly white hair. "We come to find out whar yore money's hid," said the leader, surrounding himself with his lieutenants. "Ah ain't got no money hid, suh. Ah jus' ain't got no money." Uncle Nias' deep bass was proudly deferential. "Come on, now, Nias. We don't aim to hurt you, but we gonna have thet money. The way we figgered today, you must have fifteen-twenty thousand dollars buried by now. You ain't got no business with thet money, an' you ain't spendin' it anyhow. The govement says they ain't nobody got any business hoardin' money an' we says least a' all a black ol' nigger whose money ain't even helpin' him." "But theah jus' ain't no money, suh, an' tha's that," replied Uncle Nias gently. "How d'ya mean, no money. You know damn well there is, you filthy black devil." The leader flew into sudden anger. His huge hand swung out powerfully and sent the emaciated frame of the bent old negro crashing against the wall. Uncle Nias lay where he had fallen. He was dead. And the trains stopped for water and rushed on, with their passengers bored and profane. Some of the old travelers missed a prairie miracle on the water stop, but they soon forgot to miss it. The other travelers never had a chance to remember it. And Jed Hawking would sit and smoke his pipe in the dusk. He would chuckle and say to himself, "I reckon I kep' his secret pretty durn well. I jus', wonder what the folks'll do for New Year's dinner, now that Uncle Nias is dead." The blue smoke from his pipe would rise in the air and still the trains rushed on. FIVE