Part 18

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:

“On de yuther side of Jordon, In de sweet fields of Eden, Whar de Tree of Life is bloomin’, Dar is rest fer you!”

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:

“Blow--ye--de--trumpet--blow----”

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:

“Blow--ye--de--trumpet--blow--”

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:

“I muss tell de good Lawd all of my trials, I cannot bear dese here burdens alone!”

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: