Part 17

“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!”

VI

THE TICKFALL TIGER STRIKES.

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.