Part 20

“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!”

XIII

THE HOODOO FACE.

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.