Dinner Gaze bore the air of a man who was perfectly satisfied with his personal appearance and sure of making a good impression upon all who beheld him.

He leaned back in his seat in the negro coach of the New Orleans accommodation, using the seat in front of him as a footstool. His legs were crossed with a display of glorious silk hosiery, his thumbs were anchored in the armholes of his gold and purple vest, his bright green cravat contained a bright yellow diamond, and his cigarette-stained fingers beat a happy tattoo upon the bosom of his shirt.

The face of Dinner Gaze was black, and as expressionless as the ugly mug of a dough man. There was a long mark upon his cheek where a bullet had missed the center of his face about two inches. There was a long knife-scar on the back and side of his neck. A bit of the upper part of his left ear was missing, sliced off smoothly with a sharp knife or razor. The end of one of his front teeth was broken off. His eyes were as steady and unwinking and shiny as two glass beads, his voice was low and soft and confidential in tone, and his heavy lips carried an habitual sneer.

Hitch Diamond, who sat beside him, was similarly satisfied.

Hitch’s appearance cried aloud his profession of pugilist. His face was a scarred ruin, battered and bruised in many a fistic battle until it resembled the face of the Sphinx since it has been pecked at and damaged by the souvenir hunters and sandstorms of the centuries. His ponderous hands looked like the gnarled and twisted roots of a scrub-oak tree, while his legs were like the Corinthian columns supporting the portico of a temple.

Hitch had made a trip to New Orleans for pugilistic purposes. At the end of the second round, Hitch had looked down at his opponent, then waved his gloved fist at the whooping crowd and remarked: “I know whut I done to dat coon! He’s gwine sleep a long time!” After which Hitch had collected a hatful of money and remained in New Orleans long enough to get it all nicely spent except a puny wad in one pocket of his shiny new pantaloons.

Every rag of clothes on Hitch’s giant body was entirely new. He was swathed in a Prince Albert coat, choked and tortured by a high collar and a stiff-bosomed shirt; a glorious silk hat, all white silk lining on the inside, and smooth, shiny, imitation beaver on the outside, rode on his head; while on his feet were a pair of patent-leather shoes which had caused him a world of trouble in the city.

He had walked for miles, in and out of the stores, seeking a pair of shiny shoes which would fit his immense feet. Shoe clerks had taken one look at those pedal extremities and had thrown up their hands in despair. But Hitch had persisted in his search, and now it was plainly apparent to all that Solomon in all his glory was not shod like such as he.

Dinner Gaze was listening with great interest to Hitch’s talk.

“I ain’t went to N’Awleens befo’ fer mighty nigh five year,” said Hitch as he extracted a long Perique stogie from the side-pocket of his gorgeous yellow waistcoat.

Dinner Gaze reached out, took the stogie from Hitch’s giant hand, and tossed it out of the window. He handed the pugilist a big, fat cigar with a broad gold band, and grinned in a friendly way. Then he said in his low, gentle voice:

“Ef you wants me to set by you, don’t smoke no roll of rags an’ garbage. Take a real seegar!”

“Thank ’e, suh,” Hitch murmured gratefully, removing the gold band and fitting it carefully upon his little finger where he admired it as a maiden admires her engagement ring. “I’s powerful sorry dar ain’t no lady folks in dis car to see me smoke dis. I ain’t never feel like I had enough money to ack liberal an’ buy real smokes.”

“Ain’t you spek dat you got a wad to tote home from de city wid you?” Gaze inquired carelessly, as he tore a page from a newspaper and began idly to roll it tightly.

“Shore!” Hitch chuckled. “I totes it in my behime hip-pocket next to my heart, whar unpious niggers totes dey gun. But most of dat is jes’ show money—’tain’t much, an’ I got it wropped up in a roll to make it look like a plenty. Fawty dollars is all whut is lef’ of my trip to de city—excusin’ de mem’ry of a dam’ good time, an’ dese clothes!”

“Whar you gwine now?” Dinner asked as he fumbled with his paper.

“I’s gittin’ off at Sawtown,” Hitch replied. “I been livin’ aroun’ in dis part of de worl’ all my life, an’ I ain’t never seed dat big saw-mill town yit. ’Tain’t been but ’bout fo’ year ago dat Sawtown started off—when dey sot dat big mill dar in de woods.”

“I’s proud I met up wid you, Revun,” Dinner Gaze said. “I lives in Sawtown, an’ I’ll show you all de good p’ints in de place.”

Hitch opened his mouth to deny that he was a preacher, but the negro’s natural love of the game of make-believe prevented him. His slow mind evolved the humor of the situation, and he bestowed a pious smile upon the man beside him.

“Thank ’e, suh. I ain’t gwine let nothin’ git past me. I’s gwine to all de shows, an’ drink all de ice-water I kin git, an’ chaw peanuts, an’ git right in de middle of de cullud high life.”

“Dat picayune way of seein’ Sawtown won’t git you nothin’,” Dinner Gaze grunted disgustedly. “Bust her wide open, Revun!”

“How is dat did?” Hitch wanted to know.

“I’ll show you!” Gaze told him.

“Whut job does you wuck at in Sawtown?” Hitch asked.

“I’m gittin’ ready to sot up a little nigger gamblin’-house in Sawtown now,” Dinner replied cautiously, after a moment’s hesitation. “Befo’ dat, I managed a string of nigger prize-fighters in N’Awleens.”

Hitch raised his battered head like an old, scarred war-horse when he hears the bugle-call for charge. Then he remembered that Gaze thought he was talking to a clergyman.

“Dat shore sounds familious to me,” Hitch laughed. “I used to be a prize-fighter my own se’f!”

“Hear dat, now!” Dinner Gaze exclaimed. “I knowed you an’ me wus kinnery when I fust cotch you wid my eye. How come you left de great perfesh?”

“A nigger put a chunk of lead in his glove an’ battered me clean acrost a wharf-boat,” Hitch narrated, drawing upon his imagination, and recalling an incident in the career of his friend, the Reverend Vinegar Atts. “Atter dat I felt a call to preach.”

“Mebbe you could come back,” Gaze suggested.

“Naw, suh,” Hitch grinned, quoting a remark he had heard Vinegar make. “Preachin’ is a plum’ sight safer. I kin git up befo’ a lot of Christyums an’ knock noses an’ pull hair an’ skin shins all I’m got a mind to, an’ all dey kin do is to turn aroun’ de yuther cheek. Ef dey hits back, dey ain’t pious!”

The odor of wet, sawed, sun-scorched lumber entered the car window. The suction of the moving train threw sawdust upon the seat where the feet of the two men rested. They were drawing near to the station at Sawtown.

“Revun,” Dinner asked, as he rose, “is you ever read up on dat Bible text whut says ‘I wus a stranger an’ I got took in’?”

“Suttinly,” Hitch prevaricated.

“My last advices to you is to keep a eye on de people in dis here Sawtown. Dey takes a stranger in good an’ plenty!”

Dinner dusted off his patent-leather shoes, adjusted his immaculate cuffs, felt of his green tie and his yellow diamond, lifted his Panama hat out of the rack, and brushed the cigar ashes off his gold and purple vest.

“Drap in de Hot-dog Club an’ gimme a look-on, Revun!” Gaze invited as he stepped into the aisle. “I handles a pretty peart gamblin’ game ef I do say it myse’f!”

The train stopped.

Dinner Gaze waited in the aisle, courteously permitting Hitch Diamond to precede him.

As Hitch passed out, Dinner Gaze cautiously elevated the tail of the pugilist’s Prince Albert coat, carefully thrust two scissors-like fingers into Hitch’s hip-pocket and drew out a small roll of money. In its place he thrust a wad of newspaper of about the same size. When the train had gone on, Hitch looked for his friend and could not find him.

“Dar now!” he exclaimed. “Dat wus a fine nigger man an’ I done loss him complete, an’ I even fergot to ax him whut wus his name!”

II
“TOOK IN.”

“De fust thing I needs is a sack of peanuts an’ a awange to cut de dust outen my throat,” Hitch said to himself, as he walked slowly down the village street.

He entered a small grocery, made his purchases, and thrust his fingers into his hip-pocket to bring forth his money.

Instead he extracted a wad of newspapers.

Hitch stupidly unfolded the paper, gazed at it with hypnotic fascination, searched all his pockets for his lost money, then searched them again, hunting for loose change.

The disgusted clerk tossed the bag of peanuts back into the roaster, laid the orange back on the shelf, walked over to a chair and sat down, his mind spluttering like wet fireworks with his unspoken comments on the colored race in general and Hitch in particular.

Hitch stumbled stupidly out of the store, broke and broken-hearted.

He looked around him uncertainly, then dragged his ponderous feet back toward the depot, hoping to find his lost money. After half an hour’s search he gave it up and started aimlessly toward the river.

Half-way down the block he met a tall negro whose face was slightly disfigured by a broken nose. The man wore a checkerboard suit of clothes, a cowboy hat, and a sport shirt. Hitch’s eyes fell first upon the emblem of a negro lodge which the man wore on the lapel of his coat.

Hitch eagerly laid hold upon his lodge brother, “I’s in powerful bad trouble, brudder,” he moaned. “I ain’t know nobody in dis town an’ I done loss all my money on my way to dis place. Whut kin be did?”

“De next best thing is to go down to de big mill an’ set on de buzz-saw,” the brother advised.

“Whut good will dat do me?” Hitch inquired.

“It’ll fix you so trouble won’t trouble you no more,” Checkerboard grinned, patting Hitch on his powerful back. “Atter you takes yo’ seat you won’t need no money—de Nights of Darkness lodge will bury yo’ remainders free fer nothin’ an’ sot you up a real nice tombstone.”

“I got plenty white folks in my own home town,” Hitch continued, paying no attention to his companion’s foolishness. “I mought could git some he’p mebbe ef I had somewhar to wait at ontil dey sont me de money.”

The checkerboard negro looked Hitch over; then his eyes narrowed and he smiled.

“As a lodge brudder in good standin’, I could lead you to my own house an’ keep you a little while,” Checkerboard remarked. “Whar is yo’ lodge pin?”

Hitch glanced down at the lapel of his coat.

“My gosh!” he mourned. “I done loss my money an’ my lodge breastpin too. Dat breastpin wus jes’ perzackly like de one you is got on an’ wus gib me by Skeeter Butts.”

“Suttinly,” Checkerboard laughed. “Dey is all made alike an’ look jes’ de same. Mebbe de feller whut touched yo’ wad frisked yo’ pin, too.”

“Dat’s whut happened,” Hitch sighed. “But it don’t he’p me none to know dat news.”

“You’se too blame young to be trabbelin’ alone,” Checkerboard snickered. “You needs a fust-rate gardeen. Foller atter me!”

He conducted Hitch to the rear of the big sawmill, led him through a maze of immense lumber piles, and brought him around the big mill-pond to a cluster of houses built by the owners of the mill for the occupancy of their negro employees.

There was one two-story house which looked like a barracks, and was intended for use by men who had no families. Into this Checkerboard led his companion.

“Set down, Revun,” he smiled. “Dis here is my boardin’-house. I keeps it fer de ’commodation of de nigger workers in de mill whut ain’t got no wifes an’ no home. Dey eats in dat eatin’-house down dar by de mill-pond an’ sleeps here.”

“It’s powerful hot in dis place,” Hitch complained as he seated himself.

“We keeps de winders down in de daytime because eve’ybody whut stays here is busy in de mill,” Checkerboard explained, as he pulled off his coat and hung it across his arm. “Pull off dat coat of yourn, an’ I’ll take yo’ stove-pipe hat an’ coat an’ hang ’em up wid mine.”

Hitch gratefully removed his hat and coat and sat down. He took a stogie from his vest-pocket and felt for a match.

“Don’t you wanter take off dat vest, too?” Checkerboard inquired. “You might git seegar ash all over it.”

“Dat’s right,” Hitch said, as he handed his friend the vest.

“Make yo’se’f at home, Revun,” Checkerboard said graciously. “Smoke all you please to—spit on de flo’—ack like you wus at yo’ own house! I got to hump aroun’ a leetle on bizzness befo’ de mill blows de whistle fer closin’ time. But I tells you in eggsvance, dat as fur’s I’m concerned, you kin stay in dis house fer a mont’.”

“You is a true lodge brudder,” Hitch rumbled in real gratitude. “I won’t never fergit you!”

Checkerboard left the room, walked through the hallway, passed out of the rear door, clambered down into a gulley, and carried Hitch’s clothes through a labyrinth of lumber piles to a place far, far away!

Hitch waited for nearly an hour for Checkerboard to return. Feeling the lack of companionship, he walked down to the mill-pond and accosted the slouchy negro woman in the kitchen of the eating-house.

To his surprise he learned that she had never seen nor heard of the man in the checkerboard suit.

“It ’pears to me like dese here folks ain’t plum’ honest,” Hitch mourned as he walked disconsolately around the mill-pond trying to find his way back to the village.

He spent a long time looking for the man who had his clothes, mumbling complainingly to himself the while. At last he wandered to the wharf on the Mississippi River and sat down with his back resting against a post.

His feet were unaccustomed to the wear of patent-leather shoes, and they felt swollen and tired. He took off his shoes, set them side by side in front of him, waved his feet in the cool river breeze, and gazed upon his footwear lovingly.

“I kin git me anodder hat an’ coat,” he muttered. “But dem shoes would be a powerful loss. Dar ain’t no more shoes in N’Awleens dat’ll fit my foots!”

Half a block away two little white boys were cutting monkey-shines on the sidewalk. In the dusty gutter one boy picked up a long, black stocking.

The two considered this find for a moment, then they gathered small sticks and thrust them into the stocking. One youth produced a ball of kite twine and tied an end of the twine around the open end of the stocking. After that, they dropped the stocking upon the pavement and pulled it along by the string, observing the effect.

“It wiggles all right,” they chuckled.

They looked around for a victim and spotted Hitch Diamond.

One of the boys held the stocking and concealed himself behind a pile of lumber on the wharf. The other boy, playing out the ball of twine, walked along the wharf, his bare feet making no sound. He passed close behind Hitch Diamond and stopped and concealed himself on the other side of some shipping about one hundred feet beyond the point where Hitch Diamond sat.

Then the boy with the ball began to wind the twine in. The long black stocking crawled up closer and closer to the inert form of Hitch Diamond.

Finally, when the stocking had wriggled grotesquely to within ten feet of Hitch Diamond, there was a loud whoop—a white boy ran from behind some lumber and shrieked:

“Look at that sna-a-a-ke, nigger! Jump!”

Hitch jumped.

He sprinted down the wharf a hundred yards, pattering along in his sock feet, leaving his precious shoes behind him.

The little white boy shrieked with laughter, picked up the wriggling stocking, and jumped next for Hitch’s shoes.

For a moment he paused, filled with awe when he beheld their monstrous and incredible size; then, doubtless reflecting upon their resemblance to a big mudscow, he put each shoe where a mudscow properly belongs—in the river!

“Hey, you nigger!” a wharf watchman called sharply, as Hitch, looking behind him, ran full tilt into the watchman’s portly form.

“’Scuse me, boss!” Hitch grunted.

The watchman hung three strong fingers in the collar of Hitch’s white shirt. Hitch didn’t like that. He pulled away. The watchman pulled too. The inevitable happened.

Hitch’s shirt tore half in two and hung limply in the watchman’s hands as Hitch raced down the wharf clad in socks, pants, and a red undershirt!

The watchman disgustedly tossed his spoils on top of a lumber pile and gave himself up to the placid contemplation of the flight of some gulls on the river.

“Lawd,” Hitch sighed, when he had dodged around the distant end of the wharf and had time to look down at his deficient apparel. “Dis here town shore is hard on clothes!”

III
FOURTEEN SWALLOWS.

Keeping the river levee between himself and the town so that no one could see him in his half-dressed condition, Hitch departed from the vicinity of Sawtown with expedition. When he reached the edge of the woods about a mile from the mill, he sat down to think a way out of his difficulties.

“My head is jes’ like a mule’s head,” he announced to himself. “I cain’t hold but only one notion at a time. I been thinkin’ so heavy all de time about my lost money dat I done loss all my good clothes, too. I oughter knowed better. Now I’s gwine git active an’ sot myse’f up in bizzness agin.”

He sat for a long time in deep, silent meditation, trying to extract an idea from his slow brain. Then he concluded:

“I drunk too much dram in N’Awleens. My head ain’t right. Ef I could git me a good dram now, mebbe I could think up a notion whut to do.”

In his impoverished condition he saw no way of buying a drink. He cast about to see what he possessed which he might exchange for one, and pulled out of his hip-pocket his silk socks, the joy and pride of his life in their glorious coloring—purple, striped with yellow!

“Dey costed me two dollars,” Hitch sighed as he gazed upon them fondly. “I could swap ’em off in Sawtown, but I ain’t gwine back dar no more. Ef I does, some nigger will steal my pants an’ my socks, too. Plenty of country niggers is got dram.”

He walked barefooted through the woods and came out at a level plantation some distance back from the river. In the middle of a cow-pasture, a tall, brown, bright-eyed negro watched Hitch approach with impassive curiosity.

“Howdy, my brudder!” Hitch boomed. “How am yo’ soul an’ spirit dis day?”

“De spirit is pretty low, elder,” the farmer replied. “De ole woman am got de dram all locked up tight.”

“How come you choose de lily-pad route an’ live on water?” Hitch asked in a disappointed tone.

“I got married,” the young negro responded with a grin.

Suddenly a big Jersey bull broke through the underbrush and came toward the two men, snorting, bellowing, pawing the ground, tossing the dirt upon his shoulders, and shaking his powerful head.

“Dat’s mine, stranger,” the young man remarked proudly, removing the top from a bucket on his arm and tossing a handful of salt at the animal’s feet. “He don’t like dat red undershirt of your’n. Ain’t him a dandy?”

“Shore is,” Hitch said meditatively. After a moment, he added: “Ef dat ole bull wus to hook one of us, I ’speck yo’ bride would affode us a little dram to stimulate us up.”

“I resigns in yo’ favor, elder,” the owner grinned. “Ef dis here beast wus to butt me, he’d jolt all my kinnery plum’ back to Afriky.”

There was a period of silent and fruitless meditation. Then, sorrowfully, Hitch Diamond reached to his hip-pocket and brought forth his purple socks with the yellow stripes—all, except his trousers, that remained of his former glory.

“Whut’s yo’ name?” Hitch asked.

“Dey calls me Dude Blackum because I got a gold tooth,” the other informed him.

“Whut is yo’ wife called?” Hitch asked next.

“Dainty.”

“I wants to make a little trade, Dude,” Hitch remarked, after he had told his own name. “Dese here socks costed me two dollars. My head ain’t thinkin’ right to-day. You is a heavy thinker. Ef you kin think up a sketch of how I kin git a dram right now, I’ll bestow dese here socks on you.”

“De trade is did!” Dude grinned, showing his gold tooth. “Lemme think!”

“Bawl out, nigger!” Hitch grumbled after a little wait. “Don’t keep me waitin’ here in expense no longer.”

“I wus studyin’ ’bout dis,” Dude said. “I’s got a little touch of lumbago in my legs. An’ mebbe, ef dat bull would jes’ butt me real easy like, an’ I’d kinder drap off in dat bayou an’ git wet, an’ den walk back home in drippy clothes wid dis mis’ry gnawin’ at my legs——”

Hitch’s face was so expressive of contempt that Dude stopped speaking.

“Is dat whut you call heavy thinkin’?” Hitch inquired in sarcastic tones. “Dat high-brow plan might steal you a nubbin of corn from a blind pig’s slop-trough. But Dainty ain’t no blind pig—dese here brides gits awful wise on deir husbunts atter dey marries ’em.”

“Wait till I finish, Hitch,” Dude begged. “Now, my view is dis: you go up to de house an’ cornverse Dainty till I comes in all wet an’ mournin’ ’bout how hurt I is. Atter I come in, you say to Dainty dat she better gimme a dram because I’s so crippled up. Of co’se, she will hab to be manners an’ gib you some, too.”

“Dar, now!” Hitch boomed. “You shore is a smart boy, Dude. Dat plan is accawdin’ to de Bible, wise as suppents an’ harmless as ducks. But”——

Here Hitch broke off and looked down at his clothes.

“It ’pears to me it ain’t proper to call on a lady when I is barefooted an’ ain’t got nothin’ on but a pair of pants an’ a red undershirt,” he mourned.

“Dat won’t make no diffunce,” Dude assured him. “All de niggers wucks in de big mill dresses jes’ like you is now. Dainty will figger dat you is a sawmill hand. Talk right up to her, Revun”——

“I ain’t no preacher!” Hitch interrupted, growling like an angry bear. “I’s a prize-fighter.”

“Dat won’t do,” Dude chuckled, as he looked at the giant’s mighty arms and shoulders. “Dainty is powerful sot on preachers. I ’speck you better be one as long as you is hangin’ aroun’ her.”

“All right,” Hitch said reluctantly, as he started away. “I ain’t none too good or too proud to piddle wid dat job—ef I got to.”

“Hol’ on, Hitch!” Dude exclaimed. “You ain’t gimme dem silk socks yit!”

Hitch’s experience in Sawtown had made him cautious. After a man has parted with a certain amount of his wearing apparel, he becomes reluctant to separate himself from the rest in a civilized community unless he contemplates becoming a he-mermaid and living in the river.

Hitch held out one sock.

“I’ll gib you one sock now, Dude,” he said cunningly. “Dat’ll keep yo’ mind int’rusted. Atter I git de dram, I’ll leave de yuther sock on de flo’ or de mantlepiece, kinder keerless like.”

Dude accepted the partial payment and stuck the gaudy sock into his derby hat and placed the hat on his head.

On his way to the cabin, which lay across the pasture, Hitch Diamond also did some heavy thinking.

“I wonder how much dram dat nigger woman is got,” he muttered to himself. “I bet dar ain’t enough for two. Ef she ain’t nothin’ but one of dese here soft, giggly, gal-wifes, mebbe I kin bamboozle her outen a dram befo’ Dude comes in.”

Dainty met Hitch at the door.

“My name am Hitch Diamond, Dainty,” he rumbled. “I met Dude out in de cow pasture an’ he tole me he done cormitted mattermony. I felt powerful bad because he didn’t send fer his ole preacher frien’ to come ’n’ marrify him. He sont me up here to take a look at you.”

“Come in, elder,” Dainty giggled. “How is you feelin’ to-day?”

“Lawd, honey, I feels a whole passel better since I sot my eyes on you. You’s prettier’n a little pig. But I been feelin’ powerful sick.”

“Whut ails you?” the girl asked with instant sympathy.

“I’s got a wo-begone spasm in my stomick an’ a empty feelin’ in my head.”

“Dat’s too bad,” Dainty said. “Would a little drap——”

“Yes’m,” Hitch responded promptly. “Dat’s jes’ de med’cine I needs. De dorctor obscribes brandy fer all my ailments.”

Dainty extracted a key from the pocket of her dress and opened the door of a little storeroom which contained a little trunk. Drawing forth another key, she opened the trunk and brought out a jug.

“I’s glad Dude didn’t come to de house wid you,” Dainty remarked. “I don’t let him hab no more booze. He come home ’bout two weeks ago an’ couldn’t git past dat oak tree out dar in dat yard. He seed two trees whar dar wusn’t but jes’ only one, an’ he mighty nigh butted his fool head off tryin’ to walk between dem trees.”

She set the jug and the drinking glass beside Hitch Diamond and took her seat in a rickety hide-bottomed chair.

Hitch looked at the glass, picked it up and fumbled it, and set it down apologetically.

“Sister Dainty,” he murmured, “ef you ain’t got no objections, I’ll drink outen dis jug de way I wus raised.”

Catching the handle with his left hand, he gave the jug a quick turn, rested it upon the crook of his uplifted elbow, and applied his lips to the spout. Dainty watched him with fascinated eyes.

When at last he set the jug upon the table and seated himself beside it, she said with a chuckle:

“Elder, when I wus a little gal I wus always countin’—I used to count de cobs in de feed-trough, an’ de beans in a hull, an’ de number of swallers a cow tuck when she drunk water.”

“Jes’ so,” Hitch responded, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his red undershirt.

“Seben swallers is a big drink fer a cow, elder,” Dainty continued.

“Dat’s right,” Hitch agreed.

“Elder,” Dainty chuckled, “when you wus drinkin’ outen my jug, you swallered fo’teen times!”

“Yes’m,” Hitch replied solemnly. “I tole you I wus feelin’ powerful sick!”

Suddenly he remembered that he was playing the part of a preacher. He decided he ought to say something religious. So he began:

“Sister Dainty, dis am de Bible law about de imbibin’ of awjus liquors: de amount of booze a man oughter drink depen’s on how much he kin hold inside hisse’f an’ at de same time resist de effecks; but, neverdeless an’ howsumever, eve’y man oughter take a little dram fer his stomick’s ache in case of powerful sickness.”

“Yes, suh,” Dainty agreed.

“Now you notify de case of yo’ husbunt tryin’ to make a goat of hisse’f an’ butt down all de timber in de yard. I feels like I oughter tell you dat dat nigger is plum’ full of guile. Right dis minute, he’s figgerin’ to fall in de bayou an’ come to de house all wet, an’ say de bull done butted him, an’ ax fer a leetle drap.”

“Am—dat—so?” Dainty inquired with popping eyes.

“Yes’m,” Hitch assured her. “Of co’se, a man in my perfesh don’t harmonize wis no sech plans like dat. Hit’s a sin ag’in’ de conscience.”

Dainty stood up and laid her hand upon the handle of the jug.

“I’s gwine put dis jug back in de storeroom. Dude don’t git none. He is a fraudful nigger!” She set the jug on the top of the trunk, locked the storeroom, and went to the kitchen.

Hitch heard her chopping kindling wood and rattling the stove-lids. He heard the roar of the fire as the flame from the rich pine-knots soared up the chimney.

Ten minutes later Dainty entered and sat down with Hitch again, her eyes gleaming with wifely resolution.

“Dar he comes now!” Hitch snickered, pointing through the window. “Look at him—wet as a b’iled owl an’ walkin’ lame in bofe behime legs like a stringhalt mule. Lawd, Lawd!”

IV
A PIPE OF ’BACKY.

The gate opened and Dude Blackum stumbled in, walking to the door with every manifestation of suffering his imagination could devise.

Hitch, standing behind Dainty so she could not see, encouraged Dude’s painful progress by waving the other silk purple-and-yellow sock at him.

“My Lawd, Dainty,” Dude wailed, “whut you reckin dat ole bull went an’ done to me?”

“Butted you in de bayou!” Dainty answered promptly.

“Yes’m, dat’s it! I’s cripple in bofe behime legs fer life!” Dude told her as he clasped his back with both hands and groaned. “I couldn’t swim a lick because I couldn’t kick. Ef I hadn’t paddled out wid my hands I’d ’a’ been drownded.”

He looked appealingly toward Hitch Diamond, waiting for the bogus elder to suggest the booze. But Hitch merely wiped his hand across his mouth and grinned.

“Dainty, honey,” Dude said pleadingly, “I’s powerful hurted, an’ I feel like I’s gwine hab a rigger. Ain’t you got a leetle——”

“I shore has,” Dainty replied eagerly, without waiting for the question. “Git in de yuther room an’ take off dem wet clothes, an’ by dat time I’ll hab you a good dram ready.”

With a beatific grin at Hitch Diamond, to which Hitch responded, Dude retired to change his clothes. A moment later he came out and said to Hitch:

“Gimme dat yuther silk sock!”

“A trade am a trade,” Hitch grinned as he handed it over. “Ain’t one sock wet?”

“Naw!” Dude whispered. “I laid it on de groun’ till I jumped in de bayou, an’ I fotch it home under my hat.”

When Dude reappeared he was clothed in his best suit and wore the gaudiest socks he had ever owned.

“Set down by dis table, Dude,” Dainty said.

She went to the kitchen, and returned carrying a bowl, the rank odor of its contents permeating the room.

“My gawsh, Dainty!” Dude howled as she set the bowl of steaming liquid before him. “Whut is dis mess—a b’iled rat?”

“Naw,” Dainty said in her sweetest tones. “It’s a bowl of hot sass’fras tea!”

Dude howled his disgust.

“It’s mighty good fer a nigger whut’s had a accidunt, Dude,” Dainty told him with suspicious gentleness.

Dude glanced at Hitch Diamond. That gentleman’s face was set in a monstrous, mouth-stretching grin, and his eyes danced with unholy glee.

“Huh!” Dude grunted. He sheepishly bent his head over the bowl of sassafras tea and sipped its last drop without saying a word.

“Dat fake preacher prize-fighter is done scratched me out,” he reasoned. “I’ll git even, or die!”

Finishing his tea, Dude rose to his feet. “I’s gwine out to feed de pigs fer de night, Dainty,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Dude sat down in the door of the corncrib and meditated deeply upon a proper method of retaliation.

“Dat Hitch Diamond thinks he’s purty blame peart in his head,” he announced to himself. “He thinks dat he’s got so much sense dat his eyes looks red.”

He ran his hands deep into his pockets and meditated some more. Then he shook his head hopelessly.

“I ain’t got nothin’ in my head but squash-seed. When I tries to ponder, it gibs me blind-staggers in my brains. I hope, some day, dat nigger will hab to swaller a whole sassafras-tree!”

He stood up and started slowly back toward the house. He looked tired and worn. He had most certainly never heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but he would have agreed with that philosopher in the statement that “thinking is the hardest work in the world.”

“I reckin I’ll hab to take dese new socks fer my pay an’ call it even,” he sighed. “Dar ain’t no revengeunce comin’ to me. Dainty an’ Hitch is too much team to pull ag’in.”

He walked into the room where the two sat, nursing a grouch and by no means disposed to be courteous to his guest. He took a corn-cob pipe from his pocket, scratched in the bottom of another pocket for some crumbs of smoking tobacco, and lighted up.

“Dude is got anodder pipe, elder. Would you wish to smoke?” Dainty inquired.

“Yes’m,” Hitch responded. “It’ll kinder sottle my stomick fer my supper vittles.”

Dude arose grumpily, walked to the mantle shelf, and picked up a pipe. Out of one pocket he brought a few crumbs of smoking tobacco, then scraped the bottom of another pocket for a few more crumbs. He emptied some papers and matches and pieces of string out of a mug on the mantle, and poured out a few more crumbs. Then, behind a picture, his eyes caught the gleam of metal, and he brought out something which looked like a flask. He poured a few crumbs out of this into his hand, finished filling the pipe as he turned his back, and reached for a match. Passing them to Hitch, Dude took his chair on the far side of the room near the open door.

Hitch struck the match and sucked the flame into the bowl of his pipe.

Pow!

The pipe burst into fragments, the room filled with smoke, Dainty screamed, and Hitch Diamond performed a number of interesting circus stunts and tumbled over in a squalling, bellowing heap upon the floor.

“Git de booze, Dainty!” Dude screamed. “Fotch out de jug! De elder is done cormitted death!”

Dainty sprang to the storeroom door, opened it, and handed Dude the jug.

“Oo-oo-ee!” Hitch whooped. “I’s dyin’ dead!”

“Go in de kitchen an’ fotch a drinkin’ cup!” Dude howled to his wife.

Dainty bounced into the kitchen, slamming the door behind her. Dude quickly latched the door so that Dainty could not enter the room again without going entirely around the house.

“Oo-oo-ee!” Hitch Diamond howled. “He’p!”

“Shut up, you ole fool!” Dude commanded as he walked over and bestowed upon the giant prize-fighter a most earnest and soul-satisfying kick. “Me an’ dis jug ain’t gwine ’socheate wid you no more. You ain’t fitten comp’ny!”

“Don’t leave me, Dude!” Hitch begged. “I’s all collapsed down!”

Dude picked up his derby hat, stopped at the door, and looked back:

“Sass’fras tea is mighty good fer a nigger whut’s had a accidunt, Hitch. Dainty makes it fine! Atter she fixes you a bowl I advises you to fill anodder pipe wid gunpowder outen dat flask behime dat picture an’ take anodder smoke. Good-bye!”

Dainty came running around the house and entered the door. She was mad.

“Whut made you lock me out, elder?” she demanded.

“Dude done it,” Hitch mourned, sitting upon the floor and feeling much better after learning what had caused his pipe to explode. “Dude is went!”

“Oh, Lawdy!” Dainty exclaimed. “Go an’ fotch him back, elder! He’ll be so drunk in no time dat he won’t know whut end of hisse’f is straight up! Go!”

Hitch went. His intentions were good. He really desired to find Dude, because Dude had the jug. He purposed to hunt for him. But a man who has had fourteen swallows out of a jug of free whisky twenty minutes before cannot be expected to maintain a given purpose very long.

By the time Hitch had crossed the pasture, he needed all the woods along the river for walking room. The entire width of the levee was not too much to accommodate his devious journey back toward Sawtown.

On the edge of the town, near the commissary store of the big sawmill, he found a most interesting ditch. It was about ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep, and was hard and dry at the bottom.

He leaned over to examine that ditch with great care. He seemed to want to remember it, to impress it on his mind. It may fairly be presumed that he did impress it on his mind. He fell into it on his head.

At midnight he was sleeping in it undisturbed. A little after midnight something happened. A man walking down the deep gulley stepped on Hitch Diamond and woke him up.

V
AMONG THIEVES.

Hitch did not know how long he lay in the ditch after he had been awakened. He tried to remember where he was and how he got there, but he was half asleep and wholly confused, and the task was too great for him.

What woke him up completely was a long, shrill whistle, followed by four pistol-shots in rapid succession.

Hitch sprang to his feet and started running down the gulley, but he stumbled in the dark and fell headlong.

Three more pistol-shots cracked in the still night air, a man screamed, and Hitch sprang up and started again. He stumbled and fell a second time.

Over in the far end of the big lumber yard a second whistle shrilled, the call of a night watchman, followed by the crack! crack! crack! of an automatic pistol. Then the big mill whistle roared its warning through the town and reverberated down the river and echoed from the woods, and deafened and terrified Hitch Diamond by its sinister call to the people of Sawtown to rouse themselves.

From the great number of little houses where the employees of the mill lived men issued forth, brandishing firearms and calling to each other as they ran. The electric lights in the mill flashed up, and in a brief time an immense crowd had congregated.

Hitch could hear their excited questions and answers.

“What’s the matter?”

“Commissary store has been robbed and night watchman killed!”

“Who did it?”

“A nigger!”

“No! Two niggers!”

There was a moment of silence while the crowd considered this. Then a roar:

“Find them niggers and mob ’em! Come on!”

“Spread out, men! Cover the yard! Look everywhere!”

Hitch Diamond turned his back on that crowd and started in the opposite direction at full speed, running in the dark, with no notion where he was going. He got an idea when he plunged into the mill-pond up to his neck.

“Dis here is sloppy wuck!” he grunted as he climbed out of there.

He began to skirt the edge of the pond, and found to his alarm that he was following the curve which led him back to the lighted mill. He heard the sound of running feet; a flash-light shot its rays across the mill-pond, and Hitch departed from the water’s edge with all possible speed.

He found one of the long alleys between the lumber piles in the yard and sprinted down the sawdust trail at a lively gait.

Glancing back over his shoulder, he found the entrance of the alley filled with men who were coming toward him with incredible swiftness. The employees of the mill were familiar with all the main thoroughfares and by-paths of the yard, while Hitch had to feel his way to some extent, and his progress was necessarily slow.

A revolver spat fire and lead at him, a fusillade followed, a big lumber-stack rose like a mountain before the frightened negro, and he fell against it with both hands outspread.

He found something that he had never noticed in a lumber yard before—that strips of wood were thrust between the layers of lumber to give a circulation of air and prevent the lumber from rotting.

These little gaps made it possible for him to climb, and he scrambled up the pile like a big baboon and lay on the top, panting like the exhaust of an engine.

His pursuers passed the pile on the path below, and Hitch began to breathe easier.

In a moment a light flashed from a big lumber-pile fifty feet away and several feet higher than the pile he was on. A watchman was whipping about him with a dark lantern, searching the top of the lumber.

Hitch Diamond dropped over the side and hit the sawdust trail again. He ran down a little by-path, skinning his elbows upon the projecting planks and stubbing his bare toes against all kinds of obstacles, until he fell over something and tumbled onto something with a clatter like the roll of a snare-drum.

A man loomed up before him not twenty feet away and said “Ho!” in a frightened voice.

Hitch got up and went away from that place with astonishing speed.

Then the watchman on the lumber-pile threw the rays of his dark lantern down into the runway just as Hitch passed, and the terrified negro ran full into the glare.

Three pistol-shots splintered the wood around him as he ran on; the watchman’s sharp voice called to the man-hunters, and in a second, hundreds of men had turned and were converging toward the spot where Hitch Diamond was running around a lumber-pile like a trapped rabbit.

“Guard the runways, men!” the watchman’s voice ordered sharply. “I’ll flash the light into the alleys for you!”

The watchman began to leap from pile to pile, throwing the rays of his dark lantern down into each corridor, and coming constantly closer to where Hitch Diamond was hiding.

“My Gawd!” Hitch chattered as he looked up at the fantastic, mountainous pile beside which he was crouched.

Salvation came with the thought that the pile he stood beside was higher than the one on which the watchman stood. He began to climb, hand over hand, praying that the light would not reach him before he could attain the summit.

By the mercy of Heaven he rolled onto the top of the lumber just as the watchman, on a pile twenty feet below him, flashed the glare into the corridor where Hitch had stood a moment before.

Hitch was blowing like a bellows, streams of perspiration poured down his body, and his giant frame shook like the body of a man with an ague.

Days of dissipation in New Orleans, a drunken spree just a few hours before, nothing to eat since breakfast, half an hour of violent exercise running and climbing lumber, and a fright which clutched at his heart, weakening and almost suffocating him—all of these things were handicaps for Hitch Diamond in the effort he was making to escape.

He knew that capture meant certain death. Capture was not even necessary—a flash of light, a well-directed pistol-shot, and his career was ended.

Suddenly his soul was filled with terror.

Twenty men had mounted the lumber-piles and were moving across the tops, lashing the lumber with their lights, driving everything before them as a woman shoos a lot of chickens. Below him, on the ground, men were standing at the end of each main thoroughfare, and were lashing them with light, while one man was walking down each by-path!

The searching party had organized, and was moving with perfect precision to cover the entire yard.

“Good-by, fair worl’!” Hitch Diamond mourned as he crawled to the edge of the lumber and looked down. “’Tain’t no hope fer pore old Hitchie onless I kin hop offen dis lumber atter dat man is done passed down in de alley.”

But the men on the ground had foreseen that possibility, and were measuring their progress down the by-paths by the progress of the men on the lumber-piles.

Seeing this, Hitch Diamond’s heart turned to lead, his blood to water, and his giant frame seemed to crumble like chalk. Already he felt himself mortally stricken and dying.

He caught himself trying to speak, to utter words of encouragement to himself, but his teeth clicked together like castanets, and his whispered words fell upon terror-deafened ears.

He sprang to his feet and stood glaring at the approaching lights like some great beast trapped in a jungle. Unconsciously he shut his fingers tight, his hands forming two immense iron fists.

That unconscious action made a man of him again! Those iron fists were the fists of a prize-fighter—Hitch Diamond, the Tickfall Tiger! Courage flowed through his veins like some magic liquor.

“Hitch never th’ows up de sponge!” he growled. “I fights to de eend!”

Hitch sat down upon the lumber-pile and slipped quietly over the edge, preparing to descend.

He hung the seat of his trousers upon a splinter and lunged forward in a sudden panic, tearing the garment almost off his body.

As he climbed quietly down the side of the pile, he hung the leg of his trousers upon a projecting stick and ripped the leg almost up to the waistband. Dropping down upon the sawdust path, he took a step or two and found that his torn pantaloons hindered his progress, and might afford his pursuers a hand-hold for his capture.

Sorrowfully he took the garment off and stood in his giant strength, panoplied in his red underclothes!

“There he goes!” a voice called in the dark.

Clenching his iron fists, Hitch started at full speed. Ten men blocked the entrance before him. He went through them like an express-train, rolling some of them heels over head.

A man ran out of a by-path, and his head collided with Hitch’s fist like a punching-bag. As the negro ran another, another, and another came out of the little pathways, and each one went down like a bag of salt. Thus Hitch arrived at the main passageway.

Then he found every by-path pouring forth its quota of men, every thoroughfare contributed its number, and every man upon the lumber-piles ran toward one spot to illumine the passage with their dark lanterns.

“Lawdymussy!” Hitch sighed. “Ef I don’t mix wid ’em, dey’ll shoot me!”

To the end of their lives, those powerful, husky sawmill men told with awe-stricken voices of the fight of that giant black in the lumber yard. Hitch mixed with them. No man dared to use his pistol for fear of killing a friend. It was a hand-to-hand battle, one negro against forty mill-hands.

With a wild, insane bellow Hitch hurled himself upon that mob of cursing, shrieking, clambering, clutching men, and they set upon him like ravening wolves.

The confusion was terrible, the noise was deafening, the shout and the tumult of the battle echoing back from the mountains of lumber. Hitch alone seemed to have a clear idea of his battle—he knew that every man was against him. The others hindered each other, but Hitch knew that he was free to knock any nose and pound any head and butt any stomach.

The proximity of the lumber on each side of the thoroughfare was an aid to Hitch. When he hurled his mighty body into a crowd of his opponents, and they reeled back from the impact and struck the backs of their heads against the wood, it took them a few minutes to recover from the shock, while Hitch gave his attention to others.

His giant fists pounded heads as though they were egg-shells; his ponderous bare feet landed with mighty kicks in the stomachs and the backs of men; his long, iron arms whirled like the wings of a windmill, mowing them down, every man who was touched falling unconscious or helpless.

Four men clung to him like cockleburs to a sheep’s wool, trying to drag him down by their weight. Hitch scooped them up in his mighty arms and fell with their combined weight against a pile of lumber, crushing them and breaking their holds.

An excited watchman on a lumber-pile above him sought to contribute a share to the battle by dropping upon Hitch’s head a girder or joist such as is used in constructing the framework of houses. The piece of timber fell ten feet from Hitch’s struggling body, and he set his hand upon it with a bellow of joy.

In that moment Hitch became another Goliath, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam, and whose spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron.

When Hitch began to lay about him with that joist the battle was won. The foolish watchman who had contributed such a mighty weapon to the enemy was so astonished that he fell, clattering, off the lumber-pile and broke his arm.

The men charged him once more, but Hitch waved his big piece of timber from side to side, mowing them down. A pistol-shot from the top of the lumber warned Hitch that it was time to leave.

A loud, disappointed wail sounded from the top of the lumber, where the men were operating the dark lanterns, and instantly began the crack, crack, crack of the pistols, shooting at Hitch as he ran down the corridor.

Men still arriving, coming in from other by-paths and avenues between the lumber, scrambled out of Hitch’s way, fearful of being shot from above.

Hitch found a clear path and took it. In a little while he was out of range of the bullets and out of the glare of the lights. He scrambled over a low fence, and found himself in a side street outside of the lumber yard.

“Hey, men!” a triumphant voice shrieked. “Here he is! We’ve got him! Come on! We’ve caught him!”

Shriek after shriek arose from the middle of the lumber yard, accompanied by the triumphant voices repeating:

“We’ve got him!”

“Dey ain’t got me!” Hitch grinned as he looked over his shoulder at the flashing lights which were converging at another point on top of the lumber. “I’s gwine drap down an’ rest a minute; den I’s gwine take dis red suit of underclothes to Tickfall, an’ git some pants an’ a coat to put on over it.”

He dropped down in a thicket of plum-trees, completely exhausted. While he rested he listened.

“Kill him!”

“Befo’ Gawd, white folks, I ain’t done nothin’, nothin’!”

“Knock him over the head with that jug and make him shut up!”

A loud scream and silence!

“I wonder whut road goes back to Tickfall?” Hitch whispered with fear-stiffened lips. “One dead nigger is more’n a plenty!”

Skirting the edge of the town to be out of the electric lights, Hitch Diamond sought the way to the river. With him every place was either up or down that great stream, and he remembered that Tickfall was up the river.

When he found the levee and stood looking out upon the dark water so great was his confusion that he was unable to tell which way the stream was flowing.

He heard behind him the shouts of the approaching mob, punctuated now and then by the terrible screams of a man being led out of the woods to suffer death. He shuddered and wondered that any man could make as much noise with his throat as did this terrified negro in the hands of the mob.

A moment later there was no question in Hitch’s mind which way the Mississippi River was flowing, for Hitch was swimming noiselessly across the current toward the opposite shore. But the Father of Waters is no quiet mill-pond. The pressure of its mighty current is the push of every drop of water falling between the Rockies and the Alleghanies and the inflow of the rivers between. That current carried Hitch down the stream, in spite of his most powerful efforts to resist it.

Several men ran out on the levee and threw their lantern rays across the water.

Hitch promptly turned on his back and floated, riding the current as motionless as a log. When the light left the water, Hitch struggled on, fighting the dark, muddy stream.

Suddenly the water swept him against one of the immense cypress braces of the revetment levee. He seized it, almost dead with weariness. He realized that he was not twenty feet from the shore he had left, and but a short distance from the mob. But this revetment offered a hiding place, and he grasped it eagerly.

The voices of the mob came to him distinctly across the water.

“Befo’ Gawd, white folks, you-alls ain’t got me right!” the hopeless captive wailed. “I ain’t done nothin’ a-tall! All you white mens knows Dude Blackum—dat’s me! I lives in de cabin jest up ferninst de mill-pond, an’ wucks on a farm fer my livin’!”

“Shut up!”

The crowd which had fought and been defeated by Hitch Diamond was in no mood to listen to the explanations of another negro. A long, wailing cry was Dude Blackum’s answer, and the mob moved on.

Suddenly there was a whoop, a clatter of pistol shots, a howling mob swarming over the levee, a splash of water, and a number of voices:

“Catch him! Head him off there! Kill him!”

A number of flash-lights whipped the water, and one big lantern shot a broad, blinding, dangerous streak. That flare of light caught the round, black head, swimming, struggling in the current, and held it.

“Now, men!” a voice called. “There’s your mark—shoot straight!”

There was a fusillade—Hitch Diamond noted with elation that the black, woolly head bobbed on.

“Fer Gawd’s sake!” Hitch murmured. “Why don’t dat coon dive an’ float?”

Suddenly an authoritative voice cried:

“Stop shooting, men! Get in your skiffs and row out there and catch that negro! It’ll take him half an hour to swim the river!”

“My Lawd!” Hitch Diamond moaned. “Little Hitchie is shore up ag’in it now!”

“Hurry, men!” the same authoritative voice called.

There was the sound of running feet along the levee, then a moment of breathless silence while the flash-lights lashed the water.

Then far out into the stream there was a loud scream, a loud splash, and silence!

“Dar now!” Hitch mourned. “De water cramps got him! He’s dead!”

The lights of the lanterns searched everywhere. No black object floated, nothing at all was seen.

The same clear, authoritative voice spoke again, and a tone of sadness softened it:

“I guess that’s all, men! We may as well go home now!”

“I’s gwine home, too!” Hitch Diamond whimpered piteously.

VII
GOING HOME.

He climbed down the levee, after battling his way across the river, found a public highway on the other side, and stepped into the middle of the road. Looking about him cautiously, he inflated his lungs with air. After that he dropped his hands to his sides and began a steady and persistent trot, his feet striking the sand with the monotonous regularity of a ticking clock, each stride carrying him away from the scene of his adventure.

Hour after hour, as persistent as a desert camel, Hitch moved ahead, his breath like a husky bellows, his body pain-shot from his many wounds.

By early dawn he was miles away, tortured by hunger and compelled to face the fact that he could not go to a house and beg for food, nor could he forage in the daylight for lack of clothes.

“Lawd,” Hitch mourned. “Ef I ever git back to Tickfall, I’s gwine git on de water-wagon, an’ cut out de booze. I’ll cut out prize-fightin’, cussin’, an’ trabelin’ aroun’. I’ll git me a good, easy job ’thout much work to do, an’ rest my bones till I die!”

As the first faint streaks which marked the rising of the sun shot across the sky, Hitch left the road and walked toward the river.

He entered some deep woods and crawled into a thicket of small trees which were heavily draped with muscadine vines. Dragging these vines down and packing them around him so that they made a complete covering, he lay flat on the ground and slept like a dead man until darkness came again.

When Hitch awoke he could see the dim outlines of the river levee, and he started toward it, every muscle stiff and aching and crying for more rest.

“I’s gwine git over on my own side of dis river befo’ I fergits whut side I b’longs on,” he soliloquized. “Bad luck is hittin’ me too fast fer me to take any chances!”

Weak from hunger and weariness, with his strength bound by his stiff and aching muscles, the current carried Hitch almost a mile down the stream before he could battle his way across.

When he landed he lay for an hour upon the shore, hardly able to move. At last he started, going away from the river until he found the public road, then turned to the right and started forward on a steady trot.

Daylight found him twenty-seven miles nearer Tickfall, and the third day had begun for him without food. Hunger gnawed at his stomach with the teeth of death.

As he approached the woods where he expected to hide for the day, he noticed a thin column of smoke rising above the branches of the trees.

“Ef I kin find dat fire in de woods, an’ some nigger is watchin’ it, I won’t hab no trouble,” Hitch muttered. “Dey’ll onderstan’ dat I’s done had troubles an’ dey’ll git me some pants an’ somepin to eat.”

He crept into the timber and began to walk slowly and cautiously toward the place where he thought he had located the smoke.

It was much farther than he had estimated, and he crawled and crept for a long time before he reached it.

Some one had cooked food there, for an old tin can was still redolent of boiled coffee; there were the feathers of a chicken, and the scales of a fish, and the crumbs of bread.

Moaning to himself like a wounded animal, Hitch dropped upon all fours and picked up every crumb of bread, and sucked the remaining sustenance from every chicken and fish bone which had been cast aside, and drained every drop of coffee from the empty can.

Then he heard a noise behind him and turned to gaze into the scarred, black, masklike face of Dinner Gaze.

Hitch was not at all surprised to see some negro from Sawtown hiding in the woods. In fact, he knew if the negro who built the fire was a traveler he had very likely come from that mill town.

The proverb that the wicked flee when no man pursueth does not apply to the negro in the South. However innocent he may be of crime, he desires to depart from a place where there has been trouble between the negroes and the whites. If he is a transient like Hitch Diamond, or his occupation is rather questionable, like the gambling-house of Dinner Gaze, he is sure to leave at the earliest opportunity and go where he has friends or where the white people who know him will defend him from harm.

“Hello, Dinner!” Hitch exclaimed.

Dinner’s black, beadlike eyes glowed unwinkingly.

“I thought they kilt you in de river, Revun,” he muttered in his soft, easy voice.

“Naw, suh, dey wusn’t atter me,” Hitch said with difficulty, feeling a great weakness and nausea come over him. “Dey kotch Dude Blackum an’ Dude escaped away. He sunk while he was swimmin’ in de river.”

“Did de mob tear all yo’ clothes off?” Dinner Gaze asked.

“Naw, suh; I had bad luck an’ loss all my clothes befo’ dat happened. Dat’s how come I got to trabbel at night.”

“Is you hongry?” Gaze asked.

“Ain’t had nothin’ fer two days, an’ dis is de beginnin’ of de nex’ day,” Hitch told him.

Dinner Gaze picked up a small handsatchel which he had set down at his feet and prepared to leave.

“I’s sorry you didn’t git here in time fer breakfast, Revun,” he said. “Ef you’ll stay right here I’ll go git you some ole clothes an’ a little vittles. I kin beg ’em from some white folks’s house.”

“I’s mighty nigh dead wid bein’ so hongry, Dinner,” Hitch pleaded. “Ef you’ll he’p me outen dis scrape I’ll shore love you ferever.”

“Don’t be oneasy,” Dinner grinned. “I’ll he’p you as much as I kin.”

Dinner may have intended to aid Hitch, but that portion of Tickfall Parish was scantily inhabited. He walked several miles before he came to a human habitation, and there he was refused both food and clothes.

Furthermore, Hitch had said enough to cause any man to suspect that he was implicated in the Sawtown murder, and negroes are afraid to render aid and comfort to criminals, even of their own race.

Hitch waited for several hours, and finally fell asleep, dreaming of all the things he had ever seen or heard of that were good to eat. He awoke at nightfall, famished. Dinner Gaze had not returned.

“Dat nigger lied to me!” Hitch exclaimed desperately. “Ef I had him here I’d kill him wid my bare hands. Ef I ever git de chance to even up, I’ll do it ef I die!”

Cursing his misfortunes, he arose and stumbled weakly forward.

Two days later Hitch Diamond stumbled up the steps of the little cabin at the Gaitskill hog-camp, seven miles from Tickfall. He fell unconscious at the feet of old Isaiah Gaitskill, the negro overseer.

“My Lawd!” Isaiah exclaimed, clawing at his white wool. “Wharever Hitch has been at, he comed away so fast dat he runned out of all his clothes!”

VIII
THE HOODOO GIRL.

It was Sunday morning in Tickfall. A crowd of men were standing in front of the Shoofly Church, idly waiting and chewing tobacco. A row of men sat like buzzards upon the top of the rickety fence, also chewing tobacco. Half a dozen saddle-horses stood hitched to the trees and two-score dilapidated buggies stood in a row with their horses hitched to the fence.

Now and then some young negro girl wandered aimlessly toward one of these buggies, then hastened her footsteps as if she had just remembered leaving something under the seat.

Some young negro man quickly ceased his low-toned conversation and watched her out of the corner of his eye. Presently the girl climbed into the buggy and sat down. Promptly the young man left his companions and went and sat beside her. That was the end of their interest in the services to be conducted in the church that morning.

The young man had found the saint of his deepest devotion.

The Rev. Vinegar Atts came stalking across the churchyard like a turkey walking through mud and dressed in all his Sunday finery. None of the men seemed to be aware of his presence. Vinegar reflected on the strangeness of this, and began to ponder uneasily on his chance of retaining his job as the preacher at the Shoofly Church.

He bowed and spoke to all the men, and hardly one of them gave him a nod of recognition in return.

Vinegar determined to find out the cause of this indifference, and he chose for his informant a man named Pap Curtain—a tall, slim negro with a yellow monkey face and an habitual sneer upon his lips.

“Whut ails you niggers to-day?” Vinegar demanded in a trembling voice. “How come dis here awful silence aroun’ dis church?”

“Hoodoo gal!” Pap Curtain answered laconically, pointing across the churchyard.

“Huh!” Vinegar grunted with popping eyes.

On the other side of the yard old Ginny Babe Chew, a woman of immense size, was walking beside a slim young negress dressed in white and very handsome.

“Huh,” Vinegar grunted again, unable to comprehend.

“How much will you gib me fer a piece of real news, Revun?” Pap inquired.

“Ef you got any tales to tell, bawl out!” Vinegar snapped, for the men’s actions were getting on his nerves.

“You remember hearin’ ’bout dat Dude Blackum whut got into trouble wid de white folks at Sawtown las’ Monday night?” Pap asked. “Well, suh, dat little gal wid Ginny Babe Chew is Dainty Blackum, Dude’s cote-house wife!”

“My Lawd!” Vinegar growled as he sat down upon the ground under a tree like a man suddenly overcome by weakness. He pulled out his corn-cob pipe and gave himself up to troubled meditation as he filled and lighted it. After a few moments he said:

“Pap, de niggers never will git over deir skeer ’bout dat little entertainment wid Dude Blackum. I don’t b’lieve he done whut de white folks said he done.”

“Hush!” Pap cautioned. Then he asked: “Whut diffunce do dat make now? He’s done dead!”

There was a long silence while the two men watched the handsome, graceful girl walking beside the elephantine form of Ginny Babe Chew. Finally Pap Curtain said aloud as if to himself:

“She’s tall an’ wavy like a stalk of sugar-cane, an’ sweet plum down to de groun’.”

“She ain’t mournin’ so powerful deep fer dat Dude Blackum,” Vinegar remarked. “She’s dolled up in a white dress!”

“Dat Dude Blackum shore did lose somepin beside his life when he parted wid dat female woman,” Pap said. “Ef I could hab a gal like dat keepin’ house fer me, I’d shore cut out all meanness ferever.”

Vinegar Atts shuddered and rose to his feet.

“I ain’t waste no time talkin’ ’bout dead niggers,” he said uneasily. “I done seed de ghost of dat Dude Blackum ’bout fo’teen times.”

“You ain’t by yo’se’f in dat, Revun,” Pap sighed. “Eve’y time I thinks of dat nigger I gits de jiggety-jams.”

“I knowed Dude Blackum a little bit—I seed him on de train once,” Vinegar said. “But ’pears like his ha’nt ain’t gwine let me alone a-tall!”

Dainty and Ginny Babe walked up the steps and entered the Shoofly Church, followed by the curious eyes of all the men in the yard.

“Dar now!” Vinegar mourned. “’Tain’t no use to try to hab preachin’ dis mawnin’—dat hoodoo gal is done got dis meetin’-house in a mess. I feels like somebody is done criss-crossed my head wid a rabbit-foot.”

He knocked the tobacco from his pipe and thrust it into his pocket, his eyes set upon the door through which the girl had passed.

“When did Dainty Blackum come to Tickfall?” Vinegar asked.

“Yistiddy. Ginny Babe Chew met her at de deppo. Some yuther niggers come up from Sawtown, too. You know how niggers is—dar’s a scatteration when somepin like dat happens.”

“Yes, suh. De guilty niggers scatterates as fur as dey kin git an’ as quick as dey kin go,” Vinegar agreed. “De not guilty niggers hikes out of de place to de near-by towns an’ waits till de clouds rolls by.”

“I’s jes’ whisperin’ to you ’bout dat Dainty Blackum, Vinegar,” Pap said suddenly. “I ain’t gwine ’round braggin’ no brags ’bout knowin’ dis Blackum gal. White folks gits awful rambunctious when a nigger kills a white man like Dude done.”

“I ain’t sayin’ nothin’,” Vinegar murmured. “I done j’ined de lodge of silunce.”

The two men separated, Vinegar enterin’ the large, cool, dilapidated church. The band of men standing in the yard followed, as a drove of mules follow a gray mare upon the dusty highroad. The buzzard-like men climbed from their perches on the fence, dusted the seats of their trousers by quick, sliding motions of each hand, and entered the building. In the intense silence their heavily shod feet made ugly noises upon the uncarpeted floor.

Vinegar sensed tragedy everywhere. He looked around him uneasily, spotting certain unfamiliar faces in the congregation.

Ginny Babe Chew sat on the front seat with Dainty Blackum, the two occupying the middle row of pews. On Vinegar’s right, on the front seat, sat a man who had a knife-scar in his neck, a bullet-scar on his cheek, and the top of his left ear was missing. On Vinegar’s left was a tall, ladder-headed negro, dressed like a preacher, sitting on a front bench.

There was no organ or other musical instrument in the church. Vinegar Atts, who had a voice like a pipe-organ, always raised his own tunes and depended upon Skeeter Butts, Figger Bush, and Hitch Diamond to carry the music in the congregation.

Vinegar looked in vain for his three friends to-day. Hitch Diamond had been gone for three Sundays; Skeeter Butts was organizing a baseball nine, and Figger Bush had gone away with a fishing-party of white people.

Suddenly the voice of Dinner Gaze, sitting on Vinegar’s right, rose loud and clear in the silence:

No one in the congregation knew the song, and the solo-voice floated out like the song of a bird. The people sat with bowed heads and listened. When the song ended Vinegar walked out of the pulpit and extended his hand cordially to Dinner Gaze.

“Glad to meet yo’ ’quaintance, my brudder!” he rumbled. “Will you h’ist de toons fer us?”

IX
DINNER GAZE SINGS.

Dinner Gaze rose from his seat and, stooping as if he were trying to catch a rat, walked to the front of the congregation. Pausing a moment, his body began to weave to and fro as if in conformity to the words of Scripture: “All my bones shall praise thee.” Then to the surprise of the congregation, after all this orthodox preparation for starting a tune, Dinner Gaze suddenly walked back to his former place and sat down! In the meantime Vinegar Atts was getting acquainted with the other stranger on the opposite side of the house.

“Yes, suh, my name is Tucky Sugg,” the stranger told him. “I ain’t no reg’lar preacher, but I exhausts a little befo’ de people sometimes.”

“I hopes you’ll take up yo’ stayin’-place wid us,” Vinegar said cordially. “Us needs good mens.”

He turned to motion to Dinner Gaze to start the song, and found that Dinner had gone back to his seat.

“Whut ails you, brudder?” he asked.

“I’s skeart I don’t know enough toons to lead de singin’,” Gaze said with a grin. “I retires.”

Vinegar’s eyes fell upon Ginny Babe Chew.

“H’ist a toon, sister!” he commanded. In a hoarse bellow Ginny Babe began:

One line was enough.

The words were not inspiring, the tune and tone and manner of the fat leader was a call to penitence, anguish, and tears.

Vinegar sprang to his feet.

“Dat’s won’t do, sister!” he interrupted. “Less sing dis toon!”

He began a song in a bellow which shook the rafters of the house and rattled the windows and threatened to crumble the foundations of the building. The song was a jay-bird affair, waltz-music to the stanza and jig-time to the chorus. The song might as well have been totally unfamiliar to the congregation. It was really one of their favorites—but, in spite of that, they let Vinegar sing it through as a solo.

Verily, the hoodoo was working.

Vinegar was appalled at the unresponsiveness of his congregation, and when the crowd had listened without objection or commendation to a solo prayer and to a reading from the old, worn Bible upon the desk, the preacher was almost in hysterics. He had never seen anything like that before.

Vinegar turned to Ginny Babe Chew a second time and said desperately:

“Now, sister Ginny, less hab anodder song—a lively toon whut eve’ybody knows!”

Ginny Babe Chew rose to her feet, her hand started the gestures of an old-fashioned singing-master, her body “weaved,” her voice arose in a high, drawling falsetto, utterly unlike her natural tone:

If the human eye had power to slay, Ginny Babe would now be dead. Vinegar Atts glared at her with such a murderous look that the congregation forgot to sing and watched him. Ginny Babe turned and gazed at the preacher with the air of a hurt child, and quietly took her seat.

There was continued silence in the congregation.

Vinegar raised another tune:

There was continued silence on the part of every one except the preacher. The congregation knew the song and loved it, but they acted like they had never heard either the song or the tune. They were certainly lacking in that Christian coÖperation which the song recommended, and Vinegar had to tell his troubles and trials without their assistance.

Then in utter desperation, Vinegar turned again to Dinner Gaze and said pleadingly.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, brudder, come out here an’ sing us a sweet toon—it don’t make difference even ef we don’t know it.”

Long after Dinner Gaze had ended his brief sojourn in Tickfall, the congregation of the Shoofly Church remembered him as he stood before them with his scarred face and sang the song of the shining shore:

After this Vinegar arose, announced his text, and began his sermon.

Thereupon Aunt Biddy Chivill, an old negress, deaf as an adder, arose from one of the pews and seated herself in a chair inside the altar railing. Unrolling a trumpet hose she had inherited at the death of a wealthy white woman in Tickfall, she screwed the parts together with great pride and ostentation, and settled herself to listen.

Vinegar spoke about four sentences to which Biddy Chivill listened attentively. Then with an air of final decision, Biddy removed the trumpet from her ear, unscrewed each part with great care and stowed the instrument away in a bag which she carried in her lap, taking great pains to lock the bag. Folding her hands across her lap she fell into peaceful slumber while Vinegar Atts bellowed on.

Sister Ginny Babe Chew, having attempted two abortive toots upon her trumpet, also fell asleep.

But while Aunt Biddy Chivill slept, her little four-year-old granddaughter became immediately active and very much awake. She crept out into the aisle and began to walk around aimlessly, her bare feet making no noise upon the uncarpeted floor.

For a while she amused herself by staring into the faces of the men and peeping under the sun-bonnets of the women. The hands which were stretched out to arrest her were carefully avoided, and she rewarded each person making the attempt with a childish scowl.

Then she sat down upon the floor and crawled under the benches. She lay on the floor and rolled under the benches, bobbing up at unexpected places with an angelic smile.

After this she found a large box in the rear of the church.

In spite of the town stock laws, the hogs ran wild in that portion of Tickfall known as Dirty-Six, where the Shoofly Church was located. Many of these animals had their sleeping place under the church, and the building was infested with fleas.

It was a custom when a church meeting was to be held, to sprinkle the floor with lime and sweep it out, thus ridding the house temporarily of the insects. For that purpose a large box of lime was kept in the rear of the church.

It was this box that the little black baby girl discovered. She stood on tiptoe, stretched herself up, and looked in. It was white, very white, inside. She reached over the edge and touched the whiteness. She brought the hand out and looked at it. It also was white.

Then the child reached into the box with both hands, filled them with lime, and rubbed them on her face. By the mercy of heaven, she did not get any of the stuff into her mouth and eyes. Then she sat down and rubbed her feet with lime. The effect was gratifying and she smiled.

By this time the sermon was ended. Vinegar had not done much, but he had done the best he could.

“Brudder Tucky Sugg will pray for us!” Vinegar bawled.

The congregation reverently bowed.

Then a little black girl with lime-whitened face and hands and legs, trotted silently up the aisle and stood beside brother Tucky Sugg, listening earnestly to his bawling voice.

She stretched out a tiny, lime-whitened hand and touched Tucky Sugg timidly on the top of his step-ladder head.

“Who you tryin’ to talk to, Revun?” she asked in a bird-like voice.

Tucky Sugg opened his eyes and saw something he had never seen before.

With a loud bellow like a frightened cow, he rolled backward on the floor, and got up with an intense desire to run.

“My Gawd!”

The voice was like an explosion of dynamite, and expressed the consternation of the congregation as they rose to their feet prepared for flight.

Ginny Babe Chew awoke from her slumber. She stared at the little child a moment, then reached out a fat, motherly hand.

“Come here, honey!” she bawled. “Yo’ mammy oughter had washed yo’ face an’ hands befo’ she sont you to de meetin’-house.”

She wiped the lime off the child with the end of her apron, and took the child in her lap.

Then, while the congregation was still standing, Dinner Gaze from his place at one side of the house began to sing, while all stood and listened:

On the instant that the song ended, a long, wailing cry, that was at once full of anguish and heart-break, ran through the building!

Old Isaiah Gaitskill, superintendent of the Gaitskill hog-camp, ran down the aisle, clawing at the white wool which fitted his head like a rubber cap. His face was ashy with the dust of the high-way, and tears had streaked it where they had ran downward through the dust.

“My Gawd, cullud folks!” he wailed. “De white folks is done kotched Hitch Diamond—dey are fotchin’ him to jail right now! Here dey come down de big road. Oh, my Gawd!”

The old negro turned and fell with his hands clasping the altar, sobbing like a child.

X
HOME AGAIN.

The entire congregation ran out of the building into the churchyard and looked up the street. To the end of their lives they never forgot what they saw.

Hitch Diamond, bareheaded, barefooted, dressed in a red undershirt and a pair of blue overalls, was walking down the middle of the street, his hands manacled behind him, his head hanging in shame.

Dust covered him from head to feet, and perspiration streamed down his face. He had tried to wipe the perspiration away by rubbing his head upon his broad shoulders, and this had smeared his face with mud until he was a horrible creature to behold.

Hitch looked old, he looked sick. All of the pride and jauntiness which had characterized him when he left Tickfall for the prize-fight had dropped away, and he was merely the shell of the man who had gone away from home to certain pugilistic victory.

On either side of Hitch Diamond rode a strange white man—New Orleans detectives employed by the mill owners of Sawtown to track the fugitive down. Behind the three rode the sheriff of Tickfall Parish, Mr. John Flournoy.

Dainty Blackum ran back into the church and brought from the pulpit a glass pitcher with a broken spout. She met Hitch and the officers right in front of the church, and the officers called a halt as she held the pitcher up to Hitch Diamond’s thirsty lips. Then, dipping a handkerchief into the water, she wiped the mud and sweat from the tortured man’s face.

Wail after wail arose from the crowd of negroes in front of the Shoofly Church, and Hitch turned and looked at them as if he did not realize where he was.

Vinegar Atts ran out and placed his trembling hand upon Sheriff Flournoy’s dusty stirrup.

“Whut dey got Hitch fer, Marse John?” he sobbed.

“Murder!” Flournoy growled through jaws which were shut together like a bear-trap. “He killed the night watchman at the Sawtown mill!”

The party started again, and Vinegar stood in his tracks as if turned to stone.

It seemed to take a few minutes for the Shoofly congregation to comprehend what Flournoy had said, or else the shock was so great that even their emotions could find no expression, voluble as they are as a race. Then a moan of sorrow swept like a deep-toned note from some mighty musical instrument; it was rich, melodious, heart-breaking—an expression of the deepest and most acute grief of their humble lives.

For Hitch was the hero of the colored population of Tickfall. They had shared his glory as victor in many a hard-fought fistic battle. They had won many dollars on his prowess as a boxer. They had helped to train him and perfect his wonderful physical organization for every contest he had ever participated in, and they loved him!

And Hitch deserved their affection. According to his lights he was a good man, a clean liver, one who took the best care he knew how of his superb body. There was nothing vicious or ugly about his disposition. He was merely a great, strong, bone-headed pugilist, who had made the most of himself by developing and using the best talent he possessed, namely, his giant strength.

Still moaning like the sea as the tide flows out, the Shoofly congregation flowed out into the road and fell in behind, forming a long procession of sorrowing friends.

Suddenly, above the low moan, in a tone which ripped and roared and snarled like the angry water breaking through a levee, came the mighty voice of Ginny Babe Chew:

“Murder! Murder! Murder! Whut do Gawd Awmighty think about dat?”

She pranced down the street, thrusting the people aside with her ponderous body as a steamboat cuts through the mushy ice upon a river. Her voice howled like a wolf’s call, with a taunting, bark-like, malicious, nerve-searing gratification:

“Murder!”

She managed to reach the head of the procession and walked just behind Sheriff Flournoy’s horse.

She whirled round and round like a Dervish, stooped and threw dust in the air, tore her clothes, and waving her fists at the sky shrieked like a maniac:

“Murder! Murder! Murder!”

John Flournoy stopped his horse, and turned and looked at her with a queer expression upon his face. Once he opened his mouth to speak, then shut his jaws tight, turned his eyes forward and rode on.

“Murder!” Ginny Babe Chew screamed.

Vinegar Atts could endure the horror no longer. He ran forward, and caught Ginny Babe by her fat shoulder and whirled her around. Vinegar had had years of experience as a pugilist and was Hitch’s boxing partner to this day. He knew exactly where to place his blow.

His open palm with all his strength behind it flattened upon Ginny Babe’s squalling lips. She uttered a low grunt, and fell in the street.

John Flournoy looked back and nodded his approval.

The crowd coming behind split in two halves, and walked around Ginny’s prostrate body, noting without pity that a stream of blood was flowing from her thick lips. The crowd behind had been augmented by hundreds before they reached the Hen-Scratch saloon.

Skeeter Butts had just come to town in his automobile, and was standing in front of his place of business. His face turned the color of ashes, and his lips stiffened with horror as he realized what was coming down the street to meet him.

“Oh, Hitch!” he wailed. “Shorely dey ain’t got you right, is dey, Hitch? Tell me dat dey done missed it!”

But Hitch was too tortured to reply. He cast one lingering look upon his friend, and turned away with blood-shot, agonized eyes. Skeeter Butts reeled back from the middle of the street and covered his eyes with his trembling hands.

For a while after that the procession moved forward in silence. Then a succession of piercing screams shattered the atmosphere. A handsome girl, whose hands and face were the color of old gold, came running down the street, and threw her arms around Hitch Diamond’s neck.

“Oh, Hitchie! Hitchie! Hitchie!” she screamed.

It was Goldie Curtain, Hitch’s wife.

For a moment Hitch’s giant body wavered, his knees bent under him, and he staggered as if about to fall. He stopped and leaned heavily upon the sobbing girl whose arms clasped his neck.

“Move on!” a sharp-voiced officer spoke.

Goldie Curtain fell in the dust of the street like one dead. Sheriff Flournoy, whose face was turned to look behind him, did not see her lying there. His nervous horse leaped over her prostrate body.

Vinegar Atts, sobbing aloud, picked the girl up in his powerful arms, carried her into her own house and placed her upon a bed. Then he came out and joined again with the crowd which followed Hitch until the doors of the jail closed behind him.

When Hitch had passed out of sight behind those doors, Ginny Babe Chew came staggering down the street, wiping the blood from her lips and the front of her dress. She stood in the middle of the street in front of the jail, shrieking like a maniac. She stooped and gathered handfuls of sand and tossed them into the air above her head, while her calliope-like voice shrieked again and again:

“Good-by, Hitch! Good-by, Hitch! Good-by, Hitch!”

XI
UP AGAINST IT.

A whole week passed during which Skeeter Butts sat in the Hen-Scratch saloon, nervously smoking cigarettes and listening to the whispered tales which came to him from his negro friends.

Skeeter had made no attempt to see Hitch Diamond, and had not talked about him to any of the white people. He knew it was not wise to show too much interest in the case of a negro criminal. He did not care to get himself under suspicion. All of Hitch’s friends felt the same way, and since their first dramatic display of emotion as Hitch was led captive before the Shoofly Church, they had assumed an attitude of indifference toward Hitch and his pitiable plight.

It was the Sunday following Hitch’s return to Tickfall when Skeeter determined to interview Sheriff John Flournoy. Skeeter timed his call with the sheriff’s custom of sitting on a little side porch of his home and smoking an after-dinner cigar.

Skeeter fumbled for a few minutes with his hat, considering how to begin what he had to say. Then he asked:

“Marse John, whut is de white folks gwine do wid Hitch Diamond?”

“Hang him!” Flournoy said bluntly, merely for the purpose of seeing what Skeeter would say next.

The colored man said nothing for five minutes. He sank down weakly upon the bottom step of the porch, his shoulders pathetically hunched, and his head resting upon his hands. At last he mumbled:

“Marse John, I don’t b’lieve Hitch kilt anybody. He never done it.”

“Have you any proof of his innocence, Skeeter?” Flournoy asked.

“Naw, suh.”

“It’s hard for me to believe, Skeeter,” Flournoy continued quietly. “Hitch Diamond was born on my plantation, and ever since I have known him he has been a big, good-natured, bone-headed, peaceable, law-abiding negro. Robbery and murder are not in his line.”

“Dat’s right, Marse John—Hitch never done it.”

There was a little silence, after which Flournoy said:

“I think they’ve got Hitch, Skeeter. Some of the white people in this town have always been very fond of Hitch. They ought to come to his aid at once—he’s their nigger. But all the white folks have kept away.”

“Dat’s a bad sign, Marse John,” Skeeter agreed mournfully.

“Yes. It means that Hitch is up against it.”

“Whut proofs is dey got, Marse John?” Skeeter asked.

Replying, Flournoy spoke slowly and painfully, as if the narration was repugnant to him:

“Hitch Diamond got off the train at Sawtown about three o’clock on Monday afternoon. A grocer saw him dressed in a stove-pipe hat, a Prince Albert coat, and a yellow waistcoat. A little later he was seen by two small white boys without his hat, coat, or vest, sitting on the wharf-boat. A watchman on the wharf-boat says that Hitch attempted to run when he came near, and in the effort to arrest Hitch his shirt was torn off his back. Dainty Blackum says that Hitch came to her home, barefooted, bareheaded, with no outer shirt, but wearing a red undershirt.

“Hitch Diamond and Dude Blackum had a drink together, and then both men left Blackum’s cabin about dark and went toward the sawmill. Five hours later the commissary store was robbed and the watchman was killed.

“The mill employees organized a search-party and had a hand to hand battle with Hitch Diamond inside the lumber yard, and Hitch escaped. The flash-lights were playing on Hitch, and everybody saw him and recognized him.

“After Hitch escaped, Dude Blackum was caught inside the lumber yard, and in attempting to escape by swimming the Mississippi River, Dude was drowned.”

“My Lawd!” Skeeter shuddered.

“Now, here is the worst part of it,” Flournoy continued. “A stove-pipe hat, a Prince Albert coat, and a yellow waistcoat were found under the steps of the commissary store, and these garments fit Hitch Diamond perfectly, and Hitch admits that they are his. A pair of black trousers, torn at the seat and with one leg split up the front from the bottom almost to the waistband, was found near the scene of the fight in the lumber yard, and this pair of trousers fits Hitch and he admits that the garment is his.”

“Oh, Lawdy!” Skeeter shuddered.

“Hitch can give no reason for his visit to Sawtown except that he had never been there and wanted to see the place. He explains the loss of his hat and coat and vest by saying that he surrendered them to a negro whom he had never seen before and whose name he did not know to be hung up in the Sawtown barracks where the homeless workmen sleep. He confesses that he abandoned his trousers in the lumber yard for the purpose of fighting his way through the mob of searchers and escaping.

“Hitch declares that he did not know a human being in Sawtown. Dainty Blackum says that Hitch told her that he had known Dude Blackum for many years. Hitch says he went to Dude Blackum’s cabin to get a drink of liquor. Dainty says he pretended to be a negro preacher, and claimed to be much hurt because Dude had not secured him to marry them.

“Hitch admits that he traveled from Sawtown to the Gaitskill hog-camp wearing no garments except his underclothes, and going by night. Old Isaiah Gaitskill says that Hitch came to his cabin in that undressed condition, sick with hunger and exhaustion, and would not permit him to send for a doctor, to inform his wife, or let any of his friends know where he was!”

“My lawdymussy!” Skeeter chattered. The little barkeeper felt as though cold snakes were crawling up and down his spine, and he sat for ten minutes without saying a word. At last Flournoy asked:

“What do you make of it, Skeeter?”

“Marse John,” Skeeter protested in a wailing tone, “Hitch Diamond is done cornfessed too much!”

Flournoy understood exactly what he meant.

“Certainly,” he said. “Hitch has talked too freely to be guilty—his statements have been too frank. A guilty negro never does that; if he commits a crime, he denies everything to the very last, and offers no explanation for anything.”

“Dat’s right,” Skeeter sighed. “Dat’s how he do.”

“But you’d have a happy time convincing a jury of Hitch’s innocence on the ground that he had talked too much!”

After a long silence, Skeeter asked:

“Whut does you think about dis case, Marse John?”

“I think Hitch was drunk,” Flournoy answered. “I doubt if Hitch himself knows whether he committed that crime or not. He talks a lot of stuff about meeting a man on the train, about losing some money, about giving his clothes away, about being stepped on by some man while he was lying asleep in a gulley—all of it a perfect mess. I hate to admit it, but I really believe that Hitch committed the crime while in an intoxicated condition. Dainty Blackum says that he took fourteen swallows of bust-head, pine-top, nigger whisky in her cabin, and that he and Dude took the jug with them when they left.”

“My gosh!” Skeeter sighed. “When did de white folks ’terrogate Dainty Blackum?”

“They questioned her in Sawtown the day after Dude was killed by the mob,” Flournoy replied. “Dainty is here now—in Ginny Babe Chew’s house. I’m keeping watch on her, because she’s a material witness.”

“When am Hitch’s trial gwine be, Marse John?” Skeeter asked.

“It begins a month from next Tuesday,” the sheriff said.

“Pore old Hitchy!” Skeeter mourned.

Two big tears rolled down his cheeks and dropped upon his brown hands. His lips began to tremble, and he hid his face with his hat and sat with his shoulders shaking with grief. Finally he said in a mournful voice:

“Hitch is always been de bes’ nigger frien’ I’m had, Marse John—him an’ Vinegar Atts. I wus always a little runt nigger an’ I didn’t had no kinnery, an’ Hitch an’ Vinegar, dey always deefended me when de yuther nigger-boys pecked on me——”

Skeeter began to sob and sat mourning for his friend as though he were already dead.

Flournoy endured the racket as long as he cared to, then tossed his cigar-stub into a rose-bush, walked down the steps, and climbed into his automobile.

Without a word to Skeeter, he shot down the runway into the street and turned toward the courthouse. In a moment he was swallowed up in a cloud of dust.

XII
HITCH’S MOTHER.

Skeeter sat for two hours turning over the appalling array of facts which the sheriff had set before him for the condemnation of his friend. Nothing seemed to be lacking except Hitch’s confession that he had robbed the store and killed the watchman.

“Dis here is awful!” he sighed. “I’s gwine over an’ git some religium advices from de Revun Vinegar Atts.”

He found Vinegar occupying his customary seat under a chinaberry tree in front of the Shoofly Church. Vinegar moved his chair only when the shadow of the tree shifted and the sun shone upon his head. He called this diversion “settin’ de sun aroun’ de tree.”

“Revun,” Skeeter began, “I been cornversin’ Marse John Flournoy about our chu’ch an’ lodge brudder, Hitch Diamond.”

“No hope!” Vinegar grumbled. “Hitch is done flirted wid a hearse one time too many. He’s as good as dead.”

“Cain’t we do nothin’ fer him?” Skeeter asked.

“We kin save up money in de chu’ch an’ de lodge fer a real nice funeral,” Vinegar said. “Atter de white folks is done deir wuck, Hitch’ll furnish de corp’.”

“Is you interrogated any of de white folks?” Skeeter inquired.

“Yes, suh. Marse Tom Gaitskill tole me all I knows. Hitch wucked fer de kunnel, an’ kunnel say he’s got to git him anodder nigger—de cote-house is gwine spile Hitch!”

“Ain’t de kunnel tryin’ to he’p Hitch none?” Skeeter asked.

“Naw. What kin be did fer a nigger whut is kotch his tail in a cuttin’-box like Hitch done?”

“I feels sorry fer Hitch, Revun,” Skeeter mumbled piteously. “Gawd, I’d do anything fer him dat I could!”

“Not me!” Vinegar bellowed. “When de white folks backs off, dat’s de sign fer Revun Atts to git away befo’ de bust-up comes. Naw, suh, Hitch ain’t got no hope!”

Vinegar’s voice was a bellow which could be heard a block away. He stood up, took off his stove-pipe preaching hat, and mopped the sweat from the top of his bald head with a big, red handkerchief.

“Naw, suh!” he howled. “You oughter had been to chu’ch dis mawnin’ an’ heered me orate ’bout Hitch Diamond. I shore preached his funeral good! I tole dem niggers how Hitch went to N’Awleens an’ fit in a sinful prize-fight an’ got on a big, bust-head drunk an’ vamoosed up to Sawtown an’ robbed an’ kilt, an’ is fotch back here now to dis town to show whut happens to de members of de Shoo-fly Chu’ch when dey rambles away from de highways of holiness—whoosh!”

Vinegar broke off with a snort and a flourish, seizing the chair in which he had sat and thrust it up so close to Skeeter’s chair that he pinched Skeeter’s fingers.

Then he sat down with his thick lips not two inches from Skeeter’s ear.

“Listen, Skeeter,” he whispered. “Marse Tom Gaitskill an’ Sheriff John Flournoy don’t think dat Hitch is guilty—dey’s bellerin’ it aroun’ town that Hitch is shore a deader so dey kin hunt fer de real guilty man on de sly!”

“Bless Gawd!” Skeeter grinned.

“I been buttlin’ fer Marse Tom ever since Hitch went to N’Awleens, an’ I been snoopin’ aroun’ an’ listenin’ to deir talk. Marse Tom an’ Marse John sot up mighty nigh all night las’ Friday talkin’ an’ smokin’ an’ cussin’ in Marse Tom’s dinin’-room. I sot up out on de porch an’ listened to ’em. Dey done agree dat de bes’ thing fer Hitch is fer eve’ybody not to hab no hope. I agrees wid de white folks.”

“Bless Gawd!” Skeeter Butts cackled.

“Git yo’ nose on de trail an’ sot yo’ mouth to howlin’ like a houn’-dog, Skeeter,” Vinegar grinned. Then, in a bellow which echoed back from the woods in the rear of the church, he howled: “No hope!”

“Dem is de best religium advices you ever orated, Revun,” Skeeter cackled as he rose to his feet. “I’s gwine turn detecative right dis minute an’ snoop aroun’ seein’ how much I kin find out!”

He walked straight to the courthouse and entered the sheriff’s office.

“Could I be allowed to see Hitch, Marse John?” he asked.

“Certainly. Any of his colored friends may see him if they come at a reasonable time. I’ll admit you to the jail.”

When Skeeter was admitted and locked behind the bars of the jail, and saw Hitch Diamond pacing up and down the corridor in the second story, the only occupant of the prison, he found to his annoyance that he could not begin a word of conversation with his lifelong friend. When talking to others, he could speak about Hitch and his misfortune with great volubility, but face to face with Hitch, what was there to say?

The two sat down, Skeeter laid a package of cigarettes upon the seat of a chair beside them, and after that for twenty minutes there was perfect silence. Not a word had been spoken except their first brief and embarrassed greetings. Each sat, smoking furiously, and lighting a fresh cigarette upon the stub of the old one.

At last Skeeter managed to speak, and made the one request which opened the floodgates of Hitch Diamond’s talk:

“Tell me all about it, Hitchy. Don’t leave out no little thing.”

Hitch dropped his cigarette at his feet and began.

For two hours his low voice rumbled on, the narrative beginning from the moment he left Tickfall to go to New Orleans to the prize-fight and progressing with minute particularity to the moment when he sat in the jail beside Skeeter Butts.

Skeeter listened with a heart as heavy as lead. It seemed to him that Hitch had confessed everything except the actual commission of the crime of murder and robbery. The array of proof which Flournoy had was sustained and established in every particular by Hitch’s story. Vinegar had fired his hopes for a moment by betraying the secret that the white folks were unconvinced of Hitch’s guilt and were hunting for the perpetrator of the deed. But Skeeter knew when Hitch had finished his story that Hitch would pay the penalty for his crime.

Not a word did Skeeter utter until the narrative was ended. Then he arose and held out his hand.

“Good-by, Hitch,” he said, with a catch in his voice. He walked down the steps, and the jailer opened the door and let him out.

Passing across the courthouse yard he met Sheriff Flournoy.

“Marse John,” he said, “you tole me dat Hitch wus borned on yo’ plantation. Does you know who his maw is?”

“Certainly.”

“Is his maw livin’ yit?”

“Yes.”

“I ain’t never heerd Hitch say nothin’ ’bout his maw,” Skeeter remarked.

“Hitch don’t know who his mother is,” Flournoy smiled. “I doubt if she knows that Hitch is her son.”

“How come?” Skeeter asked.

“Hitch’s mother committed a little crime the year before I was elected sheriff. Hitch was then one year old. His mother abandoned him—ran off and stayed away for thirty years. Hitch was taken care of by the other negroes on the plantation, and all who once knew who Hitch’s mother is are now either dead or have gone away from here.”

“Fer Gawd’s sake, Marse John!” Skeeter wailed. “Why don’t you tell Hitch who his maw am? Who is she?”

Flournoy considered this question while he took the time to light a fresh cigar. Then he asked:

“If I tell you who Hitch’s mother is, will you promise never to reveal it?”

“I promises!” Skeeter exclaimed.

“His mother is Ginny Babe Chew!” the sheriff told him.

Skeeter reeled back from the shock, and an exclamation shot from his throat like a bullet.

He turned round and round like a man who was dazed, uttering a series of highly profane expletives like the crackling of thorns under a pot.

“You asked me why I didn’t tell Hitch who his mother was,” the sheriff continued, as he started away. “I think you know the answer!”

Ginny Babe Chew!

Like a panorama the events of the Sunday before passed before his dazed and horrified vision—Ginny Babe Chew, shrieking, cursing, whooping, thrusting the people aside and pressing up behind the sheriff’s horse, howling after her son the charge of “Murder! Murder! Murder!” Again he saw her struck down by the massive fist of Vinegar Atts, the blood streaming from her lips, the mob splitting into halves as they walked past her, while she groaned and cursed, groveling in the dust. Again he saw her staggering down the street, the blood reddening the front of her dress and making a red froth upon her lips, as she stood in front of the jail tossing dust into the air, gyrating, shrieking, cursing, and wailing, “Good-by, Hitch! Good-by, Hitch!”

What a mother for any man to have!

Skeeter staggered across the courthouse yard, wiping the clammy sweat from his temples.

“Marse John made me promise not to tell nobody who Hitch’s maw is. Ef I wus to tell dat fack, de white folks would hang Hitch Diamond befo’ night. Dat’s de awfullest fack agin him yit!”

In front of the post-office he met Vinegar Atts.

“Revun Atts,” Skeeter said earnestly, “ef you know any good religium advices to gib to a nigger whut is about to die, fer de Lawd sake go preach ’em to Hitch Diamond. De white folks is got him—got him good!”

The sunshine lay hot upon the sand in the negro settlement called Dirty-Six when Dainty Blackum arose from her bed, dressed, and walked out into the yard. In the rear of Ginny Babe Chew’s house was a large number of fig and pecan-trees, and under the shade of one of these trees, patiently waiting and smoking a cigarette, was Skeeter Butts.

For a moment Dainty was surprised; then she reflected that she had expected some man to be there that morning, as some man had been there every morning, and she would have been disappointed if she had not found one.

But Skeeter Butts had never been there before. She had heard that he was very susceptible to the charms of women, but up to this time she had received the devoted attention of only two men—Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg.

She came over and sat down beside Skeeter.

“Yistiddy wus a busy day fer me, Skeeter,” she began. “Two men tole me dey loved me an’ axed me to marry ’em. Dat’s a pretty good starter.”

Skeeter had entertained no idea of making love to Dainty when he called to see her, having had an entirely different purpose. But as he did not know exactly how to approach the subject which he wished to discuss, he decided to follow her line of conversation, hoping to direct it at a later time.

“Yes’m, dat’s so,” Skeeter remarked without enthusiasm. “De fack is, I wus so busy dat I looked over de chance to ax you to marry me yistiddy, so I comed early dis mawnin’ to git in a word ’bout dat——”

“I tole de two yuther men dey wus losin’ time, an’ I tells you dat same word in eggsvance.”

“Of co’se, I don’t expeck you to fall right in wid dat suggestion,” Skeeter hastened to say. “But I wants you to know whut way I is leanin’.”

“You done took a notion to lean mighty sudden,” Dainty snapped. “You better lean de yuther way. You ain’t able to suppote no wife.”

“Whut’s de use of gittin’ able to suppote somepin you ain’t got?” Skeeter asked absently. “Us owns a hoss befo’ us buys any hoss-feed.”

The girl made no reply.

After a while Skeeter added another remark in an absent-minded way:

“Sometimes niggers buys a hoss an’ depen’s on stealin’ de hoss-feed. Dey always gits in trouble wid de white folks, too, when dey does dat.”

Instantly the girl’s manner changed completely. She bit her lips and her hands began to tremble. She looked as if dizziness and weakness were about to overcome her.

“When a nigger gits in trouble wid de white folks, it’s all off wid him,” Skeeter blundered on, his mind upon Hitch Diamond, and all unconscious of the impression he was making upon the girl beside him. “Sometimes luck is wid him an’ he kin run off, but most often he——”

Suddenly Skeeter broke off and looked at Dainty with popping eyes. For the moment he had forgotten the tragedy in the girl’s life, and now he was struck speechless, and merely sat there and stared and gasped. At last he murmured:

“I done slopped de wrong pig!”

“Dat’s right, Skeeter,” the girl said in a bitter tone. “De best thing you kin do is to ramble outen dis yard an’ don’t come back no more.”

“I didn’t mean nothin’, Dainty,” Skeeter said humbly. “I’s done had a heap of trouble, an’ it ’pears like I ain’t got my real good sense.”

“Dat’s a fack,” Dainty said.

“I won’t never do it no mo’,” Skeeter pleaded.

“Dat’s a fack,” Dainty announced. She arose and walked into the house.

Skeeter remained seated upon the bench, trying to think up some way to square himself with the girl, but his mind would not work with its usual facility.

Then in the yard on the other side of the house there was a loud, angry squall, followed by the wild, frightened squawking of a hen, and Ginny Babe Chew waddled around to where Skeeter was sitting.

At the corner of the house there was a barrel of rain-water setting under a gutter-spout, and into this water Ginny Babe ducked the hen viciously a number of times.

She tossed the hen on the ground, where it lay gasping for air and half drowned.

Skeeter sat and cackled like another hen.

“Shut up, you little devil!” Ginny Babe squalled. “I’ll ketch you an’ do you de same way!”

“Whut ails de hen, Ginny?” Skeeter laughed.

“She wants to sot, an’ I ain’t got no eggs to put under her,” Ginny whooped. “I locked her up in de wood-house an’ she foun’ a ole china door-knob an’ sot on dat. I put her in de corn-crib an’ she sot down on a lot of corn-cobs an’ tried to hatch ’em out. I’s ducked her in dat barrel of water ’bout fo’teen times, an’ it ain’t done no good whatsumever. I never did see such a fool!”

“Why don’t you try on somepin else?” Skeeter giggled.

“Whut’s dat?” Ginny whooped.

“Pour a leetle coal-ile on her tail an’ sot it on fire,” Skeeter snickered. “I figger she won’t sot no more atter dat.”

“By gosh, I’ll do it!” Ginny Babe howled.

She walked over and pushed the hen with her foot.

“You don’t git no coal-ile on yo’ tail yit!” she bellowed. “But as soon as dem feathers gits dry, I got a good mind to try it!”

Skeeter looked at Ginny Babe Chew, and a cold chill ran down his spine. She was the one woman in Tickfall of whom every negro was afraid. She was a wicked, vicious, horrible old woman, whose little, green pig eyes glowed poisonously through the rolls of facial flesh. She possessed an ugly and venomous laugh, and generally ended her profane and vicious remarks with an irritating chuckle.

Ginny knew the history of all the people in Tickfall parish, both white and black, and most of her conversation on ordinary occasions was a discussion of their characters. She especially loved to drive nails in the coffins of moribund reputations.

Now she sat down heavily and began a conversation upon her favorite theme.

“I done wucked in de house of eve’y white man in dis parish whut is able to hire he’p,” she bawled. “I knows all de fambly secrets, an’ I done got my little, bullet eye on all de fambly skelingtons. I’s made acquaintance wid all de niggers in dis parish, too, an’ I tells you dis—some niggers is bad, an’ yuther niggers is wusser; but dar ain’t no good niggers, livin’ or dead! I knows ’em! So I spends my happy old age findin’ out all de bad I kin about ’em!”

“Yes’m,” Skeeter gasped, looking at her with frightened eyes.

“All you niggers in Tickfall—whoof!” the old woman exploded.

“I hopes we is as good as most niggers,” Skeeter said timidly.

“Whoof!” the old woman exploded again. “Does you want me to tell you whut I knows about you, Skeeter Butts?”

“Fer Gawd’s sake, no’m!” Skeeter quavered. “My memory is powerful good.”

The woman’s fat body shook with silent laughter and her little pig eyes glowed like emeralds. She laid a heavy, fat hand on Skeeter’s knee.

“I’s got a hoodoo face, Skeeter!” she bawled. “When a nigger looks at my fat mug, all de meanness in him comes right out on his face so I kin read it like de white folks reads a book. Yes, suh, I got a hoodoo face!”

While Skeeter Butts sat beside her and trembled, wondering what to say, and very much wishing himself somewhere else, Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg came around to the side of the house where they were sitting.

“You want me to cornfess yo’ sins fer you, Dinner Gaze?” Ginny Babe howled, turning her green eyes upon him.

“You don’t know nothin’.” Dinner asserted, gazing at her with his beady eyes without a trace of fear, his black, dough-like face as expressionless as when Hitch Diamond had first seen it.

“Whoof!” the old woman exploded the third time. Shifting her mountainous fat to her feet and standing up, she glared at Dinner Gaze in a perfect fury; then, to Skeeter’s surprise, her voice changed completely from its bellowing tone to an intonation as soft as Dinner’s own. She muttered aloud, looking at Dinner with intent gaze as if she were seeing him for the first time:

“Naw, suh, I don’t know nothin’ agin you!”

“I gambles fer a livin’,” Dinner grinned. “Dat ain’t no highbrow job. I follers de races an’ hangs aroun’ prize-fighters, an’ drinks a little booze an’ plays a little craps an’ coon-can, but I ain’t got nothin’ to hide from nobody.”

“Dar now!” Ginny whooped in a triumphant voice. “Didn’t I jes’ tole you dat I had a hoodoo face? Nobody kin look at me an’ hide deir sins!”

“I ain’t allowin’ nobody to low-rate me, neither,” Tucky Sugg proclaimed. “You wanter cornfess my sins, Sister Ginny?”

Ginny broke out into a loud, whooping laugh. “You ain’t got no sins, Tucky,” she guffawed. “You ain’t nothin’ but a idjut—an’ no limb didn’t fall on you, neither. You was nachel-bawned dat way. Idjuts ain’t responsible!”

Chuckling to herself, she picked up her fast-reviving hen, carried it back to a large hen-house on the other side of her home, and threw it inside the door. Closing the door she waddled back, and waved a fat hand at the three men. “Don’t fergit dat Ginny’s got a hoodoo face, niggers!” she bawled.

“Huh!” Dinner Gaze grunted. “Listen to dat ole fat fool!”

“Come on, niggers,” Tucky Sugg said in a disgusted tone. “Less git away from dis place.”

As the three men walked down the street, Skeeter said: “Dinner, is you ever had any expe’unce ’tendin’ bar?”

“Yes, suh.”

“Would you wish to he’p Pap Curtain take keer of my saloom fer de nex’ ten days?” he asked next.

“It’ll suit me fine,” Dinner told him.

They discussed the business for a little while, then Skeeter left them at the next corner.

“I leaves it wid you an’ Pap, Dinner,” Skeeter said. “I needs a leetle rest an’ I’s gwine to trabbel some.”

XIV
SKEETER STARTS A BLAZE.

For the next four days Pap Curtain and Dinner Gaze tended bar in the Hen-Scratch saloon for Skeeter Butts.

Vinegar Atts and Tucky Sugg started a protracted meeting in the old Shoofly Church which was attended by throngs who listened with bated breath to Vinegar’s bawling exhortations to righteousness based upon the horrible example of Hitch Diamond, who found himself in a predicament where there was “no hope.”

Meanwhile Skeeter went to New Orleans, and to Sawtown. He tracked Hitch Diamond from the moment he left Tickfall to go to the prize-fight until he returned to Tickfall, bareheaded, barefooted, with his hands manacled behind him, and under the escort of the officers of the law.

In both places he dodged Sheriff John Flournoy, who was also conducting an investigation. Both were on the same mission, and Skeeter saw Flournoy a dozen times at different places.

Skeeter and Flournoy returned to Tickfall, crushed and hopeless, appalled at the array of evidence which Hitch Diamond had to confront at his coming trial. It was not a pretense, but a fact, that Hitch Diamond had no hope.

It was almost dark when Skeeter climbed wearily off the train at Tickfall and started up the street toward Dirty-Six. He overtook Sheriff John Flournoy walking slowly up the street.

“Whut is Hitch’s chances now, Marse John?” he asked.

“He has none,” Flournoy replied. “There is no longer a shadow of doubt in my mind that Hitch Diamond committed the crime with which he is charged.”

“Yes, suh, dat’s de way it looks,” Skeeter agreed sadly. He dropped behind, stopped, and let the sheriff go on alone. He stood leaning against a fence for a while, wondering what to do next. Finally he said to himself:

“I’s gwine to Ginny Babe Chew’s cabin an’ narrate her all I is found out. Mebbe dat ole hoodoo face kin see mo’ hope dan I kin.”

He passed the Hen-Scratch saloon and peeped into the window, where he saw Pap and Dinner Gaze playing cards at a small table. He passed the Shoofly Church, where he heard the voice of Vinegar Atts bellowing like a lost cow. On the edge of the settlement he entered the yard of Ginny Babe Chew’s home, and found Dainty sitting alone upon the porch.

Ginny Babe was in the hen-house rendering profane ministrations to the same old hen which was still of a mind to brood, whether there was anything to hatch or not.

That hen had entertained Ginny Babe for a week. She had exhausted every known method to break up the fowl’s desire to “set,” dousing it in water, ducking it in ashes, tying a long red trailer of wool to its feet, and other things of that general nature. Now she stood growling profanity, wondering what else she could do to the obstinate old biddy.

Suddenly she thought of the suggestion made by Skeeter Butts: “Pour coal-ile on her tail an’ sot her on fire!”

She picked up an old rag lying in the yard, wrapped it around the squawking hen’s tail, carried the fowl to the back porch, where she found an oil-can, and saturated the rag well with the petroleum.

Then she struck a match and set the rag afire.

The startled hen fluttered out of her arms, ran straight into the hen-house, shed the oil-soaked, blazing rag with most of her tail feathers, and ran out of the hen-house into the high weeds.

But the burning rag left in the hen-house got busy with the loose straw and the other dry trash, and in a moment the whole house was in a blaze!

Ginny was famous for the noise she could make with her throat. Her very name was a perversion of the word for that noisy hen the guinea, and from her earliest childhood this word had been indicative of her chief faculty. But on this occasion she broke all previous records for racket.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” she began.

What she said after that and the noises she made cannot enter into this narrative because they cannot be reproduced in print.

The dry grass, the straw, the inflammable trash, the dusty accumulations of years, due to Ginny’s idea that the way to clean up her yard was to sweep everything inside the hen-house—all was afire and blazing merrily.

Skeeter and Dainty heard her wails and ran around the house. Then Skeeter grabbed a tree with both hands, spread his alligator mouth to its utmost limit, and laughed himself into hysterics.

The portion of Tickfall occupied by the whites had water-works, and adequate fire protection. The negro settlement known as Dirty-Six had no water, but was protected from fire by a chemical engine. There was a fire-engine house, a pole beside it with a bell on top, and a rope suspended from the bell within reach of the hand.

When the engine-house was first erected four years before, the negroes had waited rather impatiently for some one’s house to catch on fire. They wanted to see their new engine in operation. Nothing caught fire, not even a chicken-coop. For four years the bell at the engine-house had not been rung.

Then, on some occasion which called for a celebration on the part of the negroes, they had asked and had been given permission to take the chemical wagon out, attach the hose, and sprinkle the street, merely to show that the hose would actually squirt water and the engine pump it.

After the celebration the apparatus was dragged back and placed in the engine-house, and the inhabitants of Dirty-Six resumed their watchful waiting.

Now the cry of “Fire!” echoed through the settlement.

It was caught up on every corner. Negroes seized their shotguns and pistols and ran down the street, firing them into the air—the fire-signal in all Southern villages.

Vinegar Atts, standing in the pulpit of the Shoofly Church, paused in the midst of a fiery exhortation, listened to the cry of “Fire!” ringing through the settlement.

“Fire!” Vinegar bellowed, and started in a lope for the street, leading all the congregation in the race. They, with the other inhabitants of Dirty-Six, gladly assembled, not at the scene of the fire, but at the engine-house!

“Ring de bell!” a hundred voices bawled.

The bell-rope was gone. Some little piccaninny had needed a rope to tie his dog and had helped himself.

Two or three boys tried to climb the post and ring the bell, but they could not reach it.

“Open de door an’ fotch out de engyne!” the crowd whooped.

Forty men ran their hands into their pockets and brought them out empty. They did not have the key to the door. They had never had the key. The action was mechanical and unconscious.

Who had the key? No one knew. It had been two years since any one had entered the building. The door was locked and the key was lost.

“Bust de door down!” was the next call from the crowd.

Strong shoulders were pressed against the fragile door, and the crash of its timbers was answered by the shouts of the people and the onrush of the crowd. They laid hold upon the rope and pulled the machine to the scene of the fire.

Down the alley by the side of the house they ran, broke down the fence and pulled the machine into the yard. With many shouts they unwound the hose, attached it to the engine, turned the faucets and began to pump.

From the hose came a long whistling sound of air:

“Whee-ee-ee-e!”

Not a drop of chemical water. The celebration two years before had exhausted the chemical, and the engine had never been recharged. The hen-house burned without interruption.

Ginny Babe Chew turned toward that crowd of heroic negro firemen, and the pumps of her profanity worked without a hitch as she poured out a stream of sulphurous and vitriolic language upon their luckless heads. Skeeter Butts still hung to the tree with both hands, laughing with whoops like a yelling Comanche.

The firemen laid hold upon their chemical machine and dragged it out of the yard.

Suddenly Skeeter’s laughter ended with a gurgle of choked surprise. With his mouth still open wide, he gazed upward at a little dormer window which looked out of the attic of Ginny Babe Chew’s home. Slowly his hair rose up on his head, and cold chills ran down his spine.

The light reflected from the burning hen-house clearly revealed a male human face at the dormer window!

The man was looking down into the yard, watching the crowd, watching the fire, and at times grinning at something he saw. Skeeter watched that face for two or three minutes; its clear outlines were stamped indelibly upon his mind. He had never seen the negro before!

Then he sprang to the side of Vinegar Atts and squalled:

“Come on up-stairs wid me, Vinegar—quick!”

The two ran into the house. Skeeter took his automatic pistol from his pocket, and leading the way, ran up the little, narrow stairs which led to the attic. They pushed open the door of the room and entered.

The room was empty!

Skeeter ran to the window and looked out, just as he had seen the strange negro do. Instantly the fat face of Ginny Babe Chew was raised to the window, her green pig eyes glowed malevolently, and her fat fists were clenched and raised in malediction.

“Come out of dat attic, you little yellow-faced debbil!” she whooped. “I’ll bust yo’ neck!”

XV
COUNSEL FOR THE DEFENSE.

On the first Tuesday in September the open spaces in front and on the sides of the Tickfall courthouse filled up early with a crowd of negroes. It was the occasion of the opening of the criminal term of the district court, and all witnesses and talesmen were called to court for the trial of Hitch Diamond, charged with murder, against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth of Louisiana and the statutes made and provided.

The witnesses and talesmen already sat in the court-room, along with as many other people, mostly colored, as could squeeze in there. Even now, at nine o’clock in the morning, the heat of that ill-ventilated room was stifling, the odor was overpowering. Men sat on the bench seats, on the back of the benches, on the ledges of the windows; they stood in the aisles, in the corridors, on the stairways, and were ranged in rows along the soiled and dusty walls.

Inside the low railing which divided the room, and nearest to the chairs which the jurors were to occupy, Hitch Diamond sat at a long table with Goldie Curtain by his side. In that crowd of people, either white or black, Goldie was the one splotch of vivid coloring—her face and hands and neck a beautiful orange in color, and her half-caste beauty most striking and attractive. Hitch sat beside the table as stolid and indifferent as a wooden man, but Goldie trembled, her nervous fingers plaited in and out of each other like squirming snakes; she was scared and shrinking, pitiable and lonely.

Just outside the low railing sat Ginny Babe Chew and Dinner Gaze, directly behind the broad back of Hitch Diamond. Ginny slowly slapped at her fat face with a turkey-wing fan. Her big mouth was clamped shut like a steel trap, and her little green, greedy, pig eyes glared through the rolls of facial fat with baleful, condemning gaze upon everything and everybody around her.

A little farther away from Hitch, but on the same front seat with Ginny Chew and Dinner Gaze, sat the Reverend Vinegar Atts and Tucky Sugg.

There was a window behind the jury-box, so that the light falling over the heads of the jurors would fall full upon the faces of the witnesses as they sat in the chair, and would illumine every line in the faces of the lawyers as they presented their sides to the jury.

On the opposite side of the room there was another window, and within this window, sitting precariously on the ledge, was Pap Curtain. He had asked and obtained permission from Sheriff Flournoy to sit within the bar on the ground that it was his son-in-law who was being tried for his life.

Across from Hitch Diamond the district attorney sat at another long table to represent the cause of the State. Tall, urbane, white-haired, with the reputation of being a pitiless prosecutor of criminals, Dan Davazec was confident and jaunty. He fussed about busily, arranging and rearranging the table in front of him, shoving aside the water-pitcher, the ink-bottle, a pile of law-books with freckled-leather covers, as a battleship strips her decks for action.

“It’s a cinch, Sam,” he chuckled to the editor of the Tickfall Whoop. “Dead open-and-shut!”

Davazec had tried in vain to find a wife, or mother, or sisters of the night-watchman for whose murder Hitch Diamond was to be tried. He wanted somebody to lend force and eloquence to his plea by sitting before the jury dressed in black and wearing a long, thick mourning veil. But the murdered man apparently had no kinsmen, so Davazec lacked these eloquent figures of desolation and sorrow.

But the two owners of the Sawtown mill sat at the table beside Davazec, and the room in the rear of the judge’s bench was crowded with witnesses. Davazec felt the importance of his place and the certain triumph of his cause, and he swelled and expanded in his clothes at the thought of how helpful this day’s proceedings would be to him when he announced himself for reËlection.

From his office in the rear the judge entered the court-room, followed by a clerk bearing a few law-books and some sheets of paper and a large palm-leaf fan. Judge Haddan was a pale, sickly looking man with a weak voice, trembling hands, and stooped shoulders. But his head was massive and Websterian, and his eyes glowed like the eyes of some jungle beast. No man within the borders of the State commanded more respect as a lawyer and a jurist.

Hitch Diamond raised his massive head and eyed the judge with the stolid gaze of a stupid horse. Goldie gasped, and laced and interlaced her nervous fingers in her lap.

The opening ceremonies of the court were soon over. No one paid any attention to the few formalities, for they were all hastening to get at the thing of big interest.

The clerk called the case of the Commonwealth versus Hitch Diamond.

“We are ready, your honor,” Dan Davazec said in his clear voice.

“Where is your counsel, Hitch Diamond?” Judge Haddan asked.

“I ain’t got none, boss,” Hitch answered.

“Do you wish me to assign you counsel?” Haddan inquired.

Hitch stood up and scratched his woolly head.

“Boss,” he said, in a sad tone, “one time when yo’ leetle gal got sick an’ you lived out on yo’ plantation in de country, I done you a leetle favor. Does you remember, boss?”

Haddan looked straight at Hitch Diamond while his nervous fingers drummed upon the arms of his chair. He seemed not to have heard what Hitch had said.

“Do you wish me to assign you counsel?” he asked again.

“Boss,” Hitch continued, “when yo’ little gal got sick, de water had done riz up an’ de Dorfoche Bayou wus seben miles wide—an’ you axed me to go atter de dorctor. I waded an’ swum dat bayou—I got acrost dat seben mile of water—I fotch de dorctor—an’ yo’ little gal got well. Boss, you tole me den, dat ef I ever needed any he’p, you would he’p me at any cost—an’ boss, befo’ Gawd, now is yo time!”

Hitch Diamond sat down at the table.

Involuntarily Judge Haddan looked at the State’s attorney; their eyes met, and Davazec murmured, “Don’t that nigger beat hell!”

“Do you wish me to assign counsel for you, Hitch?” Judge Haddan asked for the third time.

“Naw, suh, boss!” Hitch said. “I think you an’ me had better law dis case togedder!”

“Do you plead guilty or not guilty?” Haddan asked.

Hitch grinned.

“Ain’t dat jes’ whut we is come to try, boss?” he asked.

“The defendant pleads not guilty!” Judge Haddan announced with an amused grimace at the State’s attorney.

Then the clerk called the name of a talesman.

In an hour the jury was complete. Hitch Diamond left that work entirely in the hands of Dan Davazec and Judge Haddan. Whenever the judge excused a talesman from service, Hitch smiled, and felt that the judge was certainly winning the case for him!

Then for two hours the crowded court-room of people sat in breathless silence, while District Attorney Davazec drove nail after nail into the gallows which should hang Hitch Diamond. It was a savage and pitiless prosecution, not because of the efforts of Davazec, but because of the force of the testimony, developing a chain of evidence without a weak or missing link. The jurors, grim, silent, attentive, fixed their eyes upon each witness, and when the witness-chair was empty, they looked down at the floor.

Not one of them glanced at Hitch Diamond. Jurymen don’t like to watch a man whom they are making up their minds to condemn to death.

Hitch listened to the evidence without a word or question to a single witness. If Judge Haddan asked a question, Hitch grinned. He seemed never to comprehend the effect of the statements that were being made.

Dan Davazec arose and announced with dramatic emphasis:

“Your honor, the State closes!”

The crowd in the court-room drew a long breath; a humming murmur like a breeze in the tree-tops swept over the heads of the people.

Hitch Diamond arose.

“Boss,” he announced to the judge, “Mister Danny Davazec is shore done hisse’f proud, an’ all dem white men is tole de truth—as fur as dey knows it. I closes up de State’s case, too!”

A snicker sounded from the rear benches, where an assortment of white toughs and loafers had congregated for gratuitous entertainment.

The jury stared at the floor.

XVI
WITNESS FOR THE DEFENSE.

“Have you any witnesses, Hitch?” Judge Haddan inquired, nervously mopping at his temples with a handkerchief.

“Yes, suh. I wants to ’terrogate Skeeter Butts, please, suh.”

There was a slight movement in the crowd in the rear of the court-room, and Skeeter came forward and pushed open the little gate in the low railing, which, like a river levee, held back an overflow of black people.

He had moved slowly through the crowd, proud of being called as a witness, ostentatiously speaking to every colored person he knew, and bowing with fine courtesy to every white face.

Respectably dressed, and extremely respectful in his manner, Skeeter came to the witness stand with the air of a man who knew exactly how to act in the company of white folks.

The jurors straightened up in their seats, looking at Skeeter with interest, wondering what light he could bring to brighten the black cloud which hung over the defendant. Skeeter noted the movement and bowed.

“Mawnin’, gen’lemens!” he murmured.

At the admonition of the judge, Skeeter held up his right hand, a clerk rattled off a string of words which Skeeter could not understand, and Skeeter dropped his hand.

“Thank ’e, suh!” he said.

Then, for the first time during the trial, Hitch Diamond came to life.

He rose to his feet, picked up the heavy table against which he had been leaning, and set it entirely out of his way by placing it so close to the witness stand that Skeeter Butts could have reached out his foot from the chair and stepped on it.

A heavy iron cuspidor stood in the middle of the space which Hitch was clearing for himself, so he set it out of his way. After that he moved two heavy chairs.

Suddenly Sheriff John Flournoy woke up!

It looked to him like Hitch Diamond had cleared a space for himself clear across the court-room in front of the judge to the open window where Pap Curtain, Hitch’s father-in-law, was sitting. He noticed that Pap Curtain had slipped off the window ledge and was standing with his back to the window, one hand stretched out on either side.

Hitch was getting ready to run!

As quietly as possible, Sheriff Flournoy slipped across the platform behind the judge’s seat and stationed himself near the window where Pap Curtain stood.

Pap smiled and nodded knowingly.

“Dat’s right, Marse John,” he grinned, as he waved his hand toward Hitch Diamond. “Git a good ready! Dat Tickfall Tiger is gwine scratch somebody’s back!”

Having completed his preparations, Hitch Diamond turned to his star witness.

“Whut am yo’ name, Skeeter Butts?” he bellowed.

Skeeter got mad and began to swell up.

“You done called me by my name!” he snapped.

“Tell de white folks whut is yo’ name, Skeeter!” Hitch growled. “Mebbe dey is seed yo’ favor but disremember de name of yo’ face!”

“Skeeter Butts!” the witness replied grumpily.

“Does you know who kilt dat night-watchman down at Sawtown?” Hitch asked.

“Suttinly.”

“Was you dar when it happened?” Hitch inquired.

“Naw, suh.”

“Was it me whut done it?” Hitch bellowed.

“Naw, suh,” Skeeter answered positively.

“Who done it?” Hitch Diamond howled.

Skeeter hitched himself forward until he sat upon the extreme edge of the witness chair. He hung his brown derby hat upon the first finger of his left hand and turned it round and round with the finger and thumb of his right hand. He stared at the table which Hitch had lifted and placed before him.

The members of the jury suddenly sat up and took notice.

They had known negroes all their lives; they had had negro playmates when they were boys; and now they “read sign” on Skeeter. They knew Skeeter was going to explode something. Their backbones stiffened in their chairs as if the marrow had suddenly turned to rigid steel.

“Who—done—it?” Hitch Diamond bellowed.

Skeeter pushed himself back in his chair. His little brown derby hat fell from his finger, rattled and bounced in a ridiculous fashion across the table before him, fell to the floor and rocked to and fro on the curved crown.

Skeeter stretched out his hand with two middle fingers and the thumb flexed, and the first finger and the little finger extended in such a way that he pointed at the same time with one gesture to two men sitting in different parts of the court-room. Then he answered:

“Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg!”

Judge Haddan slumped forward in his chair, his delicate, fragile hands gripping the edge of the desk before him. The district attorney, a man who generally possessed perfect poise and self-possession, was jerked to his feet by this announcement and stood in absolute silence waving his hands to and fro like an embarrassed schoolboy who had suddenly forgotten how to “speak his piece.” The jury sank back in their chairs with a low sigh of gratification. They had tuned their ears for the sound of an explosion, and the effect had produced a pleasant shock.

Silence in the court-room, a silence appalling.

Hitch Diamond, who had been standing like a statue carved from ebony, slowly turned and faced the crowd of black men sitting behind him.

Then a voice cracked the silence like a starter’s pistol shot over the backs of two men straining for a race; it was the voice of Ginny Babe Chew:

“Dar—now!”

In the twenty seconds which had elapsed since Skeeter made his astounding statement, Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg had both considered the chances and the avenues of escape, as well as the possibility of remaining in their places and protesting innocence of the charge. Ginny Babe Chew’s triumphant exclamation decided the issue.

The low railing around the bar was directly before them. They sprang forward to clear it, and lo! Vinegar Atts was swinging to Tucky Sugg’s coat-tail, and Ginny Babe Chew was hanging to the coat-tail of Dinner Gaze!

In an instant each man had slipped his arms out of his coat and was free. They leaped the railing, standing in the open space which Hitch Diamond had so ostentatiously cleared.

Under their coats, the two men carried pistol holsters, and now they stood with their backs against the wall beside the judge’s bench, at bay, each with a pistol in his hand.

There was confusion for about ten seconds while the court-room cleared of its occupants. It took just that long for all to get out who wanted to go. That was sufficient time for some eager ones to pass the post-office two blocks away!

Suddenly Dinner Gaze’s dangerous, desperate voice rang out clearly, with an intonation which pierced like a sword:

“Don’t come dis way, white folks! Ef you do, you better come a-shootin’ an’ pick out yo’ grave befo’ you starts!”

XVII
SMOKE OF BATTLE.

By terrible and evil ways, the reckless feet of Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg had come to that cleared space in the Tickfall court-room. In the next few minutes, they were going to make Tickfall history.

No man knew this better than the sheriff, the district attorney, the judge of the district court, and the jurors, as each man stood in his place and planned his part in the coming battle. The negro is the deadliest fighter on earth—when he makes up his mind to fight.

Sheriff Flournoy raised his gun—and the fight was on. With a motion as easy and as mechanical as the gesture of a man flecking a speck of dust from his cuff, Dinner Gaze turned his hand and shot back. The two guns spoke simultaneously.

With an oath, Sheriff Flournoy dropped his useless gun at his feet—the bullet from Dinner Gaze’s pistol had struck it and put it permanently out of business.

Hitch Diamond snarled like an angry beast. By a thrust of his foot, he turned over the table before which Skeeter Butts sat, making a barrier for himself. At the same instant of time, he hurled a heavy chair straight at Dinner Gaze, who stood grinning, leering at Sheriff Flournoy, who was now weaponless.

Hitch dropped down behind the table as a bullet splashed through the wood two inches above him, and also splashed every juryman out of the box like a big flat rock falling in a puddle of mud!

Skeeter Butts jerked a pistol from his coat pocket and tossed it to Hitch Diamond. Lifting with his powerful left arm, Hitch held up that heavy table as a shield between him and his enemies, and crashed forward toward Gaze and Sugg, shooting as he went. Falling, he shot again; sprawling upon the floor, he raised himself above the table and shot still again.

Once more Hitch Diamond charged forward, drawing closer to the fighting pair, staggering with his heavy table as a shield, economical with his gun-fire, waiting for a chance to kill, blazing, terrible, alone, moving toward the flash and smoke and rattle of the two guns barking from the hands of the two men who stood with their backs against the wall with leering grins upon their faces.

The unarmed men in the court-room dodged behind the furniture and crawled under the seats, shuddering at the fury of battle, as the bullets tore the plastering from the ceiling and the walls, splintered the furniture, ricocheted around the room, smashing windows and the glass globes of the electric lights.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Hitch’s last bullet was fired and he snapped his empty gun into the faces of his enemies. At nearly the same moment Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg threw aside their own empty and useless weapons.

With a loud bellow, Hitch Diamond tossed the table from him, breaking off the two legs on one side. He sprang around, and in and out, striking blows which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring all over the State. He struck and parried and struck again, pounding, pounding at the faces of the two shrieking men who fought at him with weapons mightier than their fists, for they were fighting with the legs of the table which Hitch had broken off when he tossed his improvised shield aside!

There was a rush of help coming to the aid of Hitch Diamond—Sheriff Flournoy, the district attorney, the two mill owners, a court-clerk, twelve jurors, Skeeter Butts, and Vinegar Atts.

Then began a noise of shouting and tumult, oaths, curses; shrieking, horrible, blood-stained faces, snarling lips and gnashing teeth, and Hitch Diamond fought on, leading the hosts who stood for law and justice. Pain tore at his bruised and bleeding face, blood streamed from his hands and arms, his mighty, heaving chest left stains of red upon his white shirt bosom.

Men fell, and Hitch stepped on them. Hitch fell, and men stepped on him. All men slipped and slid in blood, crushed each other, dragged each other down, struck each other—and all heaved and cursed and shouted and hammered and tore at the shuddering tangle of human flesh and bone.

Standing on a chair close to the struggling men was a woman—a woman of wicked, half-caste beauty, her long Indian hair streaming down her back, her golden-colored hands weaving to and fro with clenched fists, her golden face blazing with hate and fury—fit mate for Hitch Diamond, whose wife she was.

Her voice rang like a trumpet:

“Kill ’em, Hitchie! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

Such a brutal, demoniacal struggle could not endure long. Vinegar Atts was senseless. Skeeter Butts lay flat on his back against the wall with the blood streaming from an ugly cut upon his head. Three of the jurors nursed broken arms, and several more had retired from the fray disabled by their injuries.

Sheriff Flournoy lay on the floor with the blood flowing from a wound on his neck. He crawled over and picked up the pistol which Skeeter Butts had given to Hitch Diamond and which Hitch had discarded. He extracted the cartridges from his own useless pistol and slipped them into Skeeter’s gun, for he had given that weapon to Skeeter and they were of the same calibre.

Just at that moment Tucky Sugg fought his way through the tangle of human arms and legs and sprang into the open window. Then he went screaming downward to his death as a bullet from the sheriff’s pistol went with him, pocketed in the murderer’s heart!

Then, as if the crack of the sheriff’s pistol was her cue to enter, another woman came up-stage and stood in the blazing light of battle. She weighed four hundred and ten pounds, and resembled a balloon divided in the middle by an apron string. She was conducted by Dainty Blackum and a strange young negro man, and her name was Ginny Babe Chew.

Inside the railing, she picked up a heavy iron cuspidor, and walked over to the table where, earlier in the morning, the district attorney had sat.

“He’p me up on dis here table, honey!” she grunted, hugging the heavy cuspidor in her arms.

The district attorney lay unconscious under the table on which Ginny stood.

Ginny announced her position by a loud bellow. She raised the large iron cuspidor above her head with her fat arms, and every pound of her monstrous weight was quivering with unspeakable hate.

“Git outen my way, Hitchie!” she whooped. “Gimme room accawdin’ to my fat, sonny! Let yo’ mammy put somepin acrost!”

For more than a minute Sheriff Flournoy had been fingering his pistol, waiting for a chance to shoot without killing Hitch Diamond. Ginny Babe Chew’s remarkable stunt gave him pause and caused him to lower his gun with astonishment.

Hitch reeled and stumbled backward. His eyes were glazing, his right arm hung broken and useless at his side, he was one bloody mass of wounds.

Dinner Gaze, his clothes torn from him until he was bare to the waist, his whole body screaming with pain from countless injuries, slowly followed Hitch in his retreat, chopping at him with weakening arms, still fighting with the broken table-leg.

“Look up, Dinner Gaze!” Ginny Babe Chew bawled. “Dis is yo’ la-ast time to see de hoodoo face!”

Unconsciously responding to the command, Dinner Gaze raised his pain-shot eyes upward, and looked into the fat face, through whose rolls of flesh two green pig eyes gleamed upon him with a serpent’s venom and deadly malignity.

The heavy iron cuspidor came down with a crash. It crushed the criminal’s head like an egg-shell. It bounced, fell on its rounded edge, and rolled slowly across the floor.

Dinner Gaze fell face downward, kicked the floor three times with the toes of his shoes, and died.

“Dar—now!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped.

Then she held out a fat hand to the slim young girl standing beside the table and said:

“Gimme yo’ hand an’ he’p me down offen dis table, honey! Dis here duck is too dang fat to be roostin’ so high!”

XVIII
THE HOODOO FACE SMILES.

The panic and outflow of negroes from the trial chamber in the Tickfall courthouse started a riot-call in the town.

A clerk in the Gaitskill store across the street ran over and tolled the courthouse bell ten times. In response, every white man in Tickfall dropped his task, armed himself, and came with all possible haste to the court square.

When Tucky Sugg fell screaming from the open window, Colonel Tom Gaitskill started at the head of a band of armed men up the steps leading to the court-room. The band arrived too late to do more than constitute themselves into an ambulance corps, and render first aid to the injured.

Four physicians came panting up the steps, bumping their instrument cases against the wall as they ran, and their arrival converted the room into a hospital where the doctor became a wise and efficient judge.

Colonel Gaitskill appointed ten men as assistants and runners for the doctors, assigned to the rest of his band the task of standing on the square in heroic attitudes and guarding the courthouse, and then he cleared the room of all the curious and useless persons and closed the door.

An hour later all the wounded sat up and took notice, and some of them smiled.

Skeeter Butts arose from his place, sobbing with pain. He staggered across the blood-splashed floor toward a pitcher of water which sat on the floor by the judge’s bench. Weakness overcame him, and he sank down in the witness-chair, almost fainting.

Judge Henry Haddan, whose Websterian head was considerably larger now on account of certain bruised and swollen places, and a big wad of cotton applied to them, thrust a glass of water into Skeeter’s trembling hands.

“Skeeter,” he asked, “how did you know that Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg committed that crime in Sawtown?”

“I didn’t know, Marse Henry,” Skeeter answered in a weak voice. “I sot down in dis chair an’ I said jes’ whut Ginny Babe Chew tole me to say!”

Everybody in the court-room heard Skeeter’s answer. There was a general gasp of astonishment.

Judge Haddan walked wearily up to his bench and sat down. It appeared later that he was seriously hurt, and he spent many weeks in bed. But now he was sustained by the excitement of the moment.

The district attorney dragged himself across the floor and sat down at his table near to where Dinner Gaze lay face downward, his hand still grasping the table-leg.

Ginny Babe Chew walked to the middle of the room, rested a fat hand on each fat hip, and looked up into the face of Judge Haddan.

“Yes, suh, boss,” she said. “Ginny Babe Chew is to blame fer dis here noble fracas!” Then she smiled.

“How did you know, Ginny?” Judge Haddan asked, twisting his pain-shot face into an answering smile, and feeling of an extremely sore place on top of his head.

“Dude Blackum tole me!” she answered.

“Dude Blackum is dead—drowned in attempting to escape!” Judge Haddan snapped.

“Naw, suh. He warn’t drowned. He’s a settin’ right dar by Dainty Blackum now!”

As she pointed a young, respectful, nicely dressed negro stood up, bowed to the judge, and smiled, flashing a gold front tooth.

“Naw, suh, jedge,” he murmured in a deprecatory tone. “I ain’t dead!”

Then they listened while Dude told his story.

After leaving his cabin with the jug, he had taken several drinks and had crawled under the porch of the commissary store to sleep because he was afraid to go back home to listen to what Dainty was sure to say about his conduct. He had been awakened by having something thrown over his face—and this afterward proved to be the coat and vest which Tucky Sugg had taken from Hitch Diamond. Dude heard two men talking, heard them call each other by name, heard them enter the store for robbery; then Dude had seized his jug and had run to the night-watchman and made a report.

The night-watchman, running to the store, had been killed.

Dude, dodging among the lumber piles, had been captured; the only man who could clear him of suspicion had just been killed; his captors would not listen to explanations, so Dude took a desperate chance by jumping into the river, and had escaped.

What the mob thought was Dude’s woolly head bobbing upon the surface of the water was really Dude’s derby hat. Expecting them to shoot at his hat, Dude waited until the right time, and artfully contributed a splash and a scream, and the mob thought he had got cramps and sunk.

Chucklingly, Dude told his auditors that he was beating his hat down the river about thirty yards, swimming like Jonah inside the whale.

He returned to his cabin that night, explained everything to Dainty, mounted a mustang, and rode to Ginny Babe Chew’s cabin, where she concealed him until the time of the trial. Skeeter had seen his face at the dormer window when the chicken-house burned down.

“I knowed dat Dinner Gaze an’ Tucky Sugg done it, Marse Henry,” Skeeter cackled. “I knowed it all de time—I had a hunch!”

“I knowed it, too,” Ginny Babe Chew rumbled. “I’s got a hoodoo face.”

“I knowed it,” Hitch Diamond growled. “Goldie told me.”

“I think we had better go home,” Judge Henry Haddan said, with a funny twisted smile. “My head hurts!”

“I beg your pardon, your honor,” the district attorney said, rising painfully to his feet and leaning weakly against the table. “Excuse me—but haven’t you forgotten something?”

Judge Haddan’s aching head was not working clearly, and he did not catch Davazec’s meaning at all. He thought he understood, and so he announced:

“Hitch Diamond, you are a brave negro. Your heroic fight in this court-room will be long remembered.” Haddan broke off, tried to smile, and continued: “Your masterly presentation of your defense disproves, in this instance, the aphorism that a lawyer who pleads his own case has a fool for a client.”

“Dat’s right, boss!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped. “Little Hitchie shore is brave an’ smart, ef I do say it myse’f, whut hadn’t oughter. Nobody in dis country don’t know it but me and Hitch—but I is Hitch’s mammy! He is kin to me by bornation on de Flournoy plantation fawty years ago——”

“Aw, hush!” Judge Haddan exclaimed. “I am feeling very badly, and I am going home——”

“I beg your pardon, your honor!” the district attorney repeated in a courteous but insistent tone. “Have you not forgotten something?”

Judge Haddan rested both hands upon his aching head and thought. Then he forgot his aching head and laughed. He straightened up and spoke:

“The indictments against defendant are dismissed, and defendant discharged—the jury is excused, and court adjourned! Hitch Diamond, you are free!”

“Dar now, boss,” Hitch bellowed, grinning into his honor’s face. “I wus plum’ shore you an’ me could win dis case ef we jes’ sot our minds to do it. Bless Gawd!”

THE END