Raymond S. Spears

“ Many a young fool thought five hundred dollars, or even one hundred dollars, enough money to be married on. Suppose Andrest had that notion, and Clinchell's wilful daughter was so foolish as to yield to him?
His spies had told the planter that Sue Belle and Andrest often met out on the traces and down by the river. Andrest never came nearer to the mansion than the edge of the plantation. The daughter of a proud old planter trysting with a river-rat, with a shanty-boater! No wonder the old man had lost his temper and fired his bolts without taking good aim! ”

“ Clinchell allowed himself to chuckle. He was a shrewd old man, with a thousand wiles and ways, and he took an ignorant man's delight in smartness and trickery. First he must make sure that there was no loophole through which the young shanty-boater could escape his wiles.
"He's got two-three thousand dollars, and he could buy as good a lawyer as is to be had around for that," he told himself frankly. "I don't want any good lawyers mussing up my ideas—no, sir!" ”

“ The tradition in the Dark Bend swamps that no one ever crossed old Durm Clinchell with lasting advantage was perfectly true. Abandoned claims, families broken up, fugitives none knew where, and oven graves proved that tradition. Old Durm's mental force and cunning had carried him up until he had the power that goes with owning vast areas of timber-land, with picking a thousand acres of cotton, with renting a score of outlying farms, with a checking account in banks amounting to thousands of dollars, and with the say to elect or defeat almost any office-seeker in Cypress County. ”