Part 14

First appeared the Rev. Vinegar Atts. Whiffle sat upon the steps and talked to him for some time, much to Shin’s disgust.

“Dat ole fat fool said he warn’t gwine to butt into my fambly scandal,” Shin grumbled. “I knowed he couldn’t keep hisse’f out. He sniffs aroun’ atter yuther people’s sins like a smell-dog!”

Some minutes later he brought his glasses again to bear upon the kitchen, and was disgusted to find Skeeter Butts on the steps.

“Dat nigger oughter hab sense enough to keep away from dar,” he grumbled. “He oughter watch when he knows I ain’t watchin’.”

Shin’s perch in the tree became very uncomfortable before Skeeter left. Then his long waiting was rewarded.

A strange man came to the kitchen door, and Whiffle rushed out to meet him with every manifestation of delight. They sat down together, and Whiffle left no doubt in the mind of her jealous, watchful husband that she was enamored of this new negro.

For more than an hour Shin hardly took the glasses off the man’s face. For a while he had the idea that he had seen the visitor somewhere before, but this impression gradually vanished.

He decided that the stranger was a city negro, because of his easy manners. His quick-moving lips showed that he spoke readily, and he carried himself in a way that suggested a soldier. He had typical Ethiopian features, and was what the negroes call “brown-skin.”

“Dat is one of dese perch-mouthed city niggers wid big ideas an’ small judgment,” Shin grumbled as he climbed down from the tree. “I think I’m done watchin’ him to-day. I’ll climb up here an’ hab a little session wid dat nigger to-morrer.”

When he got back to his place of business he found Whiffle just as she had been for several days, bubbling over with excitement and laughter, her nerves atingle with some great secret.

“Whut ails you, Whiffle?” he growled. “You ack like you done seen about seben angels or had about ’leven drams. I ain’t had nothin’ to perk me up like you is.”

“I don’t tell eve’ything I knows, Shinny,” she laughed, all unconscious of the clouds of jealousy which had gathered over him like a storm above a mountain peak. “A nigger husbunt hadn’t oughter know too much.”

“Why oughtn’t dey know too much?” Shin snapped.

“Because dey’s apt to lead deir wives a dance,” Whiffle snickered.

“Huh!” Shin grunted. “I’s like a jackass—I ain’t got no year fer music an’ no foot fer dancin’!”

Then he went and loaded his pistol and slipped it into the pocket of his coat.

IV

When Shin described to Skeeter Butts the strange man he had seen at the kitchen door, Skeeter evinced great surprise.

“Dat’s de picture of de man whut borrered some money from me an’ gib me dem spy-glasses fer s’curity!” Skeeter exclaimed. “You is spyin’ on dat man wid his own spy-glasses.”

“Ef you’ll borrer dat nigger’s pistol, I’ll shoot him wid his own gun,” Shin said.

“You git dat shootin’ notion off’n yo’ mind!” Skeeter snapped. “Dar is bigger fish in de bayou dan you ever fried in yo’ resteraw, an’ dar is better nigger women in de worl’ dan dat blockhead Whiffle gal you’s got in yo’ kitchen.”

“She suits me, an’ ef anybody tries to git her dar’s a right smart chance fer fun’rals!”

“Mebbe so,” Skeeter said; “but she ain’t wuth fightin’ fer, especially when a fight will land you in de jail-house.”

“Mebbe I kin think up some yuther way to chase dat nigger out of town,” Shin said: “but de best way I knows of now is to shoot at him till he gits good an’ skeart, an’ den throw rocks.”

“Dat’s de favoryte nigger way of chasin’ coons,” Skeeter agreed; “but don’t git to shootin’ an’ throwin’ ontil I tells you to. Ef dar ain’t no better way to disperse dat nigger, mebbe I’ll he’p you wid a few bricks myself.”

When Shin had gone, Skeeter hastened to the restaurant and called Whiffle out.

“Shin Bone is got jealous about dat new nigger whut hangs aroun’ yo’ kitchen, Whiffle. I ain’t know his name, but you knows him. Shin has already cleant and oilt his gun, an’ is warmin’ up fer activations. We don’t need no fust-class killin’ in dis town, so you better stressify to dat coon whut is comin’ to him an’ ’suade him to git out.”

“Is Shin a pretty good shooter?” Whiffle asked.

“He is de wuss shooter in dis town,” Skeeter told her. “He cain’t possibly hit nothin’ but a innercent standbyer, an’ dat would be a luck shot.”

“Ef dat’s de case, dar ain’t no danger,” Whiffle said easily. “He never will shoot at nobody.”

“When a nigger gits jealousy, he goes crazy in his head, an’ he’s liable to do mighty nigh anything,” Skeeter said earnestly.

“I’ll take keer of Shinny,” Whiffle laughed. “I’s mighty glad you tole me, so I’ll know whut to do.”

Skeeter returned to the saloon, and half an hour later the strange negro who was owner of the field-glasses came in.

“Skeeter, I wants to gib a free show at de nigger picnic-groun’ on de Cooley bayou dis afternoon. I invites eve’ybody, but I ’specially wants you an’ Vinegar Atts, an’ I would like to hab a nigger named Shin Bone.”

“How come you pick out such a crowd as dat fer special eye-witnersers?” Skeeter asked.

“A preacher, a saloon-keeper, an’ a resteraw man,” the stranger smiled. “A bunch like dat is able to supply all human needs.”

“It ’pears to me like you also needs a doctor an’ a undertaker,” Skeeter remarked; “but of co’se you knows yo’ own bizzness best.”

“You’ll know my bizzness better at de picnic-groun’,” the stranger returned.

“Us will be dar at three o’clock.”

V

A great crowd assembled at the picnic-ground. The three men specially invited were sitting under a tree, smoking and waiting. The showman came promptly on time, and shook hands with the three, but did not offer to tell his name.

“Whut name does dey call you by?” Vinegar asked.

“I ain’t got no name,” the negro grinned.

“Dat’s strange!” Vinegar muttered. “I’ll call you Stranger, fer shawt.”

Stranger carried a heavy sack, and he now untied the top and poured the contents upon the ground. There were two or three dozen marbles, such as children use in their games; there were a dozen or more small apples, about a dozen empty pop-bottles, and several dozen tops of small tin cans.

“I’s a pistol-shooter,” the stranger announced. “Ef you misdoubts my confession, jes’ take a look.”

He tossed an apple above his head; quickly he tossed two more, juggling them in the air. Suddenly from somewhere he drew a big pistol, shot three times with startling quickness, and the shattered apples dropped at his feet.

There are men who are born with the strange gift of demonstrating that the hand is quicker than the eye. In civilized sections of the country men so gifted are sleight-of-hand performers; in other sections, less civilized, they become card-sharps, with the ability to “pitch a good game” and deal themselves cards from the bottom of the deck; in still other sections, they become expert gunmen whose skill as marksmen is a wonder to behold.

The Tickfall crowd stood breathlessly watching the juggler of bottles, apples, marbles. He tossed pop-bottles in the air, and while they were spinning he shot through the neck of the bottle and broke the bottom to pieces without injuring the neck. He threw up the tin tops of the pop-bottles, and unerringly shot through the center of each. He tossed the apples into the air, and shattered them with bullets. He threw marbles three at a time above his head, and they came down in dust.

There was one man on whom this exhibition made a deep impression. Shin Bone had bragged his brags about chasing that very darky out of town by shooting at him and throwing rocks. He now abandoned his idea. That was certainly not the way to rid Tickfall of the presence of the dangerous stranger.

When the exhibition was over, the stranger turned to the three men who were especially invited and said:

“I’m much obleeged to you niggers fer comin’ out to de show. I would like to walk back to town wid you-alls, but I ain’t gwine dat way.”

“You shore is a shooter, brudder!” Skeeter exclaimed. “Ef you ain’t gwine our way, us’ll see you later.”

As the three walked back to town, Shin said thoughtfully:

“Skeeter, I think you wus right when you said not to hab no shootin’ scrape about Whiffle. De way I feels now, ef dat Stranger nigger is gwine shoot fer my wife, he kin jes’ take her along ’thout no good objections from me!”

VI

“Looky here, Skeeter,” Vinegar Atts announced, when they got back to the Hen-Scratch saloon. “Somepin is got to be did fer Shin Bone. Us cain’t let dat Stranger run off wid Shin’s wife. It’s ag’in’ conscience an’ religion.”

“How we gwine chase him?” Skeeter asked, glancing pityingly at Shin’s gloomy face. “Skeeter cain’t think up no scheme to apply to him. He don’t ’pear to be skeart to shoot it out wid nobody.”

“Dar is somepin or yuther dat eve’y nigger in de worl’ is skeart of, fellers,” Vinegar declared. “Less find out whut dat coon’s pertickler skeer is, an’ put it on him.”

“How we gwine find out?” Shin asked.

There was no answer to this inquiry, and the three sat silent for a long time, smoking their pipes in gloomy meditation. At last Vinegar sprang to his feet with a yell.

“I got it!” he howled. “A nigger is skeart of anything dat he don’t know nothin’ about. Dead folks, pest-houses, ha’nts, bein’ all by yo’ lonely in de dark, hospitals—niggers is skeart of all dem things, because us don’t know nothin’ about ’em. You cain’t ax none of dem things a decent question an’ git a respeckful respondence.”

“Whut is dat Stranger nigger igernunt about?” Shin asked, his eyes gleaming with hope.

“Pigs!” Vinegar howled. “Is you niggers done fergot dat Marse Tom pulls off his big pig drive to-morrer?”

“Dat don’t he’p us none,” Skeeter said disdainfully.

“It do!” Vinegar declared. “Us’ll git Marse Tom to put dat exput-shootin’ nigger at de shootin’-post, an’ when he sees dem wild pigs swoopin’ down on him, he’ll jes’ nachelly sprout a couple o’ feathers an’ fly away from dar. Dem hawgs will run him plumb to de Gulf of Mexico.”

“I gitcher!” Skeeter exclaimed. “Yo’ mind is suttinly popped off a noble idear. Less go see Marse Tom.”

The most interesting event of the year in Tickfall is the wild-hog hunt. Gaitskill owned the Little Moccasin Swamp, and he had let hundreds of hogs run wild in that jungle and shift for themselves. They lived on the mast and traversed the forest in bands of a hundred or more. They never fattened, being of the razorback variety; but they furnished plenty of cheap pork every year for the hundreds of negroes employed on the Gaitskill plantations.

The weather was cool, and the time had come for the fall drive. There had been no rain for months, the swamp was dry underfoot, and a great picnic crowd assembled from all over the Parish.

Hundreds of men and hundreds of dogs spread out across the swamp, fan-shape, making every sort of a noise that would drive the hogs before them to a point near the Gaitskill hog camp. Here Little Moccasin Lake upon one side and Alligator Lake upon the other were divided by a narrow ridge of land, where the slaughter of the animals would take place.

In the slaughter of the hogs care was exercised not to kill the big fighting males. They were the leaders of the herd, and when they led in a fight for the protection of the females or the young, everything cleared out of their path as before the onrush of an express train. The females were also protected. The young male hogs were slain, their flesh being tender and easily made into hams, bacon, and salt shoulders for food on the plantation.

This is one of the most dangerous games ever played in the Little Moccasin Swamp. Some of the big male hogs are six feet long and four feet high. They travel with the speed of a race-horse, and have the fighting instincts of a tiger. From their lower jaws great, ugly tusks protrude. They can run at full speed past a horse, and by an upward thrust of that lower jaw can split the flesh of the animal’s leg as if cut by a razor, or disembowel him completely.

A man in the midst of a fighting herd is helpless. When he hears an old sow pop her jaws, or sees her coming through the underbrush with a swinish roar, he will climb a prickly ash-tree or jump into a vat of tar to escape.

As the herd on this day was hedged in between the lakes and driven forward, the men heard before them, at the point where the slaughter was to be, the _crack, crack_, of a rifle. When at last the entire crowd had converged at the shooting-post, they found a strange negro standing with dozens of dead hogs around him. A dozen rifles were resting upon the top of a stump by his side; and as the young pigs rushed past him he raised a gun with a careless gesture, fired with seeming indifference but with absolute accuracy, and at each shot a young hog rolled over with a broken neck.

The men watched this exhibition of sharpshooting with great astonishment. The marksman never seemed to take aim, and yet never missed. Just as a man can reach up and put his finger on his nose, so this man could put a bullet through the neck of a running hog and think nothing of it.

In a little while nearly two hundred hogs were waiting for the knife of the butcher. Everybody lent a hand in the job of dressing them and loading them into wagons for their trip back to town.

Vinegar Atts, Skeeter Butts, and Shin Bone worked together. They spent a great deal of their time in low-toned conversation.

“I figgered dem wild hawgs would chase dat nigger off’n de top of de world,” Vinegar lamented as he glanced malevolently toward the stranger, who was sitting beside a stump, smoking a cigarette.

“It didn’t pester him at all,” Skeeter sighed. “He looked like he enjoyed hisse’f real good. Reckon how come dat nigger didn’t git in de army, when he kin fight an’ shoot so good?”

“De only way to skeer dat nigger is to take his guns away from him,” Shin remarked. “He feels powerful secure when he’s got a gun, an’ I feels—otherwise.”

“Me, too,” Vinegar agreed. “An’ I bet he sleeps wid dem guns on his pusson!”

Before the day was over, the marksman had been so loudly proclaimed by the white men for his skill that the negroes were feeling proud of this representative of their race and color.

The negro women of Tickfall had prepared a great dinner at the hog camp. While the negroes were eating, the distinguished stranger suddenly left the side of Whiffle Bone and walked around the table to where Shin Bone was standing with Atts and Skeeter Butts.

Shin saw him coming, and turned almost white. When the stranger thrust his hand into his pocket, Shin bleached some more; but the stranger extended toward Shin Bone not a gun, but a ten-dollar bill!

“I owes you dis ten-dollar bill, Shinny,” he said, loud enough for everybody to hear.

“I ain’t sold you nothin’,” Shin said, shaking his head and declining the proffered currency.

“Naw, suh, but you loant me dis money a good many year ago, when you got married,” the stranger replied. “You bestowed dis loose change on me to buy some ice-cream an’ cake fer yo’ weddin’, an’ I rambled up-town an’ got in a little crap-game, an’ dem bones didn’t fall right fer me. I lost yo’ money, an’ I decided I better make myse’f absent.”

“My Lawd!” Shin Bone exclaimed, reaching for the money. “Is you Whiffle’s long-lost brudder?”

“Suttinly,” the gunman answered. “My name is Pewter Boone, an’ I jes’ got back from whar we fit de Kaiser.”

“Fer Gawd’s sake, how come you didn’t tell me who you wus a whole heap sooner?” Shin exclaimed.

“I did tell Whiffle,” Pewter replied; “but I wus ashamed to ’fess up to you onless I had de money to pay you back. Soldiers of dis here gover’mint don’t do like I done—dey is true to deir trust. I borrered de money from Skeeter an’ gib him some spy-glasses fer s’curity, an’ waited till I got me a job. Now I pays up an’ squares off wid de worl’.”

Colonel Tom Gaitskill came up at this moment and announced:

“Boys, Pewter Boone is the new superintendent of the hog camp. Isaiah is too old, and I hired Pewter to-day.”

Shin Bone threw his arms around the new superintendent and expressed his delight in vociferous tones. Whiffle came over and joined them in the jubilation. The news quickly spread, and all the negroes in Tickfall welcomed the soldier.

“Look here, brudder,” Vinegar Atts bellowed. “Us niggers gib Marse Tom de recommend whut got you de job of killin’ dem hawgs. We knowed you could shoot ’em all right, but we didn’t expeck you would. We figgered when you perceived dem hawgs a comin’ through de brush, you’d skedaddle.”

“Huh!” Pewter grunted. “I don’t skeer so awful easy. All dem growlin’, gruntin’ hawgs reminded my mind of dem Bush Germuns. I jes’ nachelly craved to ’liminate ’em!”

The Ten-Share Horse

I

A white man entered the Hen-Scratch saloon and sat down at one of the little tables. He looked around him curiously. The glory of the Hen-Scratch had departed. Nothing remained of the saloon but its name. There was dust upon the tables. The mirror behind the bar was written all over with the unedifying literature of soft drinks. There were no patrons in the place. A little yellow barkeeper was wiping glasses and trying to arrange grape-juice bottles in an enticing array upon his shelves, glancing up from his task at intervals to gaze into the tragic face of Abraham Lincoln, which looked out from a fly-specked frame hung crookedly upon the wall.

Skeeter Butts laid down a bottle which contained one of the softest of soft drinks, came from behind the bar, and murmured politely into the ear of the white man:

“Us ain’t sellin’ no drinks to white men, boss. Endurin’ of de barroom time, it wusn’t allowed. De law made us hab sep’rate barrooms fer de whites an’ blacks. Dar ain’t no saloons no mo’, but——”

“I ain’t buying drinks,” the white man answered. “I have no money, no credit, no friends, no business.”

“Escuse me fer sayin’ it, boss,” Skeeter chuckled, “but dem is my fixes, an’ you is mighty nigh as bad off as a nigger.”

“I’m worse off than a nigger,” the white man responded, and he seemed to get a lugubrious satisfaction from a realization of the fact. “More is expected of my race than of yours.”

“Dat’s right,” Skeeter agreed. “Dey lets us blacks down easy; but neither de whites nor de blacks is up to expectations.”

The white man sat for a while in deep thought. Skeeter noticed that the top of his head was overdeveloped, like an infant’s; that his fingers were stained with cigarettes; that his clothes were of good material but badly worn. He decided that the man was an animated slosh in the desert of total abstinence, mourning the demise of John Barleycorn, and hopefully looking for a damp cloud on the horizon in the shape of a blind tiger.

Skeeter returned to his task of polishing glasses and wiping his bar, the habit acquired through twenty years of service to men who put one foot upon the brass rail. Meantime he watched the stranger from the corner of his eyes, and when the silence was prolonged he became nervous and fidgety. At last the man came to the bar and spoke.

“Can you lend me ten dollars?”

In all Skeeter’s varied career no such request had ever been uttered in his astonished ears. Skeeter wondered if this extraordinary thing was attributable to prohibition. Surely the old order changeth!

“I ain’t know yo’ favor or yo’ face, an’ I ain’t met de ’quaintance of yo’ name, boss,” Skeeter replied.

“My name is Dick Nuhat,” the white man responded promptly. “I am not altogether an honest man, but I am a gentleman. This is a request of one gentleman to another.”

“I likes to ’commodate white gentlemens, boss,” Skeeter said uneasily; “but I ain’t got de ten dollars, an’ so I cain’t affode to lend it.”

Without a word the man turned away, walked back to the table, and sat down. Once more there was a period of silence and deep meditation, while a nervous colored man polished glasses and watched the white man from the corner of his eye. Mr. Nuhat had the trick of sitting as motionless as a stone dog on a lawn, while even his eyes were fixed in a stony stare, oblivious to what went on around him and looking out across the spaces unseeingly.

“Dope!” Skeeter muttered to himself; but Skeeter was wrong.

There was twenty minutes of this ponderous thinking, and then the man came to Skeeter and made a proposition.

“I’ve got one thing I can sell, Skeeter. I rode to town on a horse that is worth one hundred dollars, intending to take him to Shongaloon, to enter him in the races at the fair; but I am broke. If you had lent me the ten dollars I would have gone on; but now, if I went, I would have no money to bet. So I am going to sell and go out of the racing business.”

“You don’t talk like no race-hoss man to me,” Skeeter said.

“I ain’t a race-horse man,” was the reply. “I am a scholar and a gentleman.”

“I ain’t got no hundred dollars,” Skeeter Butts said next. “Dar ain’t no nigger in dis town wid dat much money in one lump. You’ll have to sell out to de white folks.”

“Couldn’t you find ten colored people who had ten dollars each?” the white man asked. “All ten of you can own the horse, and when you make a win you can divide your earnings.”

“What kind of hoss you got?” Skeeter asked with a new interest.

“He’s a hard looker, Skeeter. He’s a hound dog. He limps in all four feet, but not in all at the same time, you know. He swaps from one foot to the other. Every time he stops he goes lame in a different foot, because he can’t remember which foot he was limping on before. He has an awful short memory that way. You never can tell what foot he is going to cripple in next, and he don’t know himself.”

“Dat’s a kind of trick hoss,” Skeeter snickered.

“Exactly,” Dick agreed. “I can make a killing with him at every race-track, for one look at him is aplenty. I can get all sorts of odds against him; but don’t make any mistake, little yeller nigger—that horse can run!”

“Dat sounds good to me,” Skeeter replied after a moment’s thought. “How much do I git fer makin’ de trade?”

“Get nine negroes to give you ten dollars each for the horse, and I’ll be satisfied with the ninety dollars. That will give you a ten-dollar share in the animal without costing you a cent.”

“Kin I try out de hoss an’ see if he is all right?” Skeeter asked eagerly.

“Certainly.”

“All right, boss,” Skeeter replied. “I’ll take you up!”

II

Skeeter staged his commercial transaction with some forethought. He chose nine negroes whom he knew to be possessed of ten dollars each, and asked them to meet him out at the old fair-grounds. He got Little Bit, who was the colored jockey of Tickfall, to give the horse a try-out.

In appearance, the horse was all the white man said he was, and more. He had a peculiar slinking gait, like a limp, sometimes in one foot, then in another. Often he seemed to be limping in all four feet at the same time.

The negroes howled in derision when Skeeter proposed to be one of ten to buy the animal. They examined his feet and made many comments, and finally proposed to bet Skeeter ten dollars that he could not tell what leg the horse would limp on the next time he started off.

But when Little Bit climbed on that horse the negroes stopped laughing. He could run like a jack-rabbit, and really had the jack-rabbit’s peculiar springy, limpy gait.

“Dis hoss is a powerful funny pufformer,” Conko Mukes howled; “but I puts my ten on him. He’s a runner!”

“Who’s gwine take keer of dis hoss whut belongs to us ten niggers?” Pap Curtain inquired.

“I’ll keep him an’ feed him,” Skeeter answered. “I kin turn him in a big pasture dat belongs to Marse John Flournoy, an’ Marse John won’t ever know he’s in de field. I’ll feed him Marse John’s oats and corn, an’ dat white man won’t ever miss it.”

Two hours later Skeeter returned to the Hen-Scratch and handed Mr. Nuhat the sum of ninety dollars.