Part 18

Skeeter arrived, looked at the machine, and listened to Red Cutt explaining its uses and manipulations to the crowd. He saw Hitch crawling around underneath, wiping the wheels with cotton, and pretending to be very busy, while actually afraid to touch anything he saw under there.

Skeeter decided that his place on the program was to be seated in the machine. The negroes very eagerly lifted him up, and as he took his place on the seat, he felt that he had reached the highest point of prominence in his entire career.

Vinegar Atts, who had lingered too long at his Sunday dinner, was the last to arrive, and when he rode up in his little automobile and saw Skeeter Butts seated in the airplane like a king upon the throne, he was glad, indeed, that he had been elected to the high office of observer.

He pushed his way through the crowd and bawled at Skeeter:

“Hey, Skeeter! I wants to set up dar wid you.”

“Dar ain’t no room to set wid me,” Skeeter announced. “Dar ain’t but one seat, an’ I am in it.”

“But I got to set up dar! I’m de observer!” Vinegar howled.

Thereupon he clambered up into the machine, lifted Skeeter out of his place, sat down on the seat himself, and let Skeeter sit on his knee!

At this point Hitch Diamond climbed out from under the airplane, stuck a handful of dirty cotton waste into the bag that contained the rest of the cotton, and tossed the bag into the lap of Skeeter.

“You two niggers put dis sack of cotton in the tool-box under de seat!” Hitch Diamond bellowed.

“I cain’t find de tool-box,” Vinegar said.

“Well, put it under yo’ foots den,” Hitch told him. “Fer you got to take dat sack of wipin’ cotton wharever you go.”

VII

THE SIGN OF AVIATORS

As the negroes had gone out toward the Little Moccasin Swamp, all of them had passed a buggy that was moving at the slowest gait of the horse. The driving lines were wrapped around the whip, the horse moved sedately and slowly down the middle of the road. On the seat of the buggy was a young man who seemed to be able to see nothing but the girl who sat beside him; and if any other man had been blind to the presence of that girl, it could have been said of him that he had no appreciation of feminine beauty and loveliness. As the buggy passed the long, straggling procession of negroes, there was one fact so striking that the man asked:

“What are all these people wearing chicken feathers in their hats for?”

“I don’t know,” the girl answered. “Nobody can tell what a negro is going to do.”

The negroes turned off into a little bridle path, leaving the road free for the horse and buggy, and the young folks promptly forgot them. But when they drove at the same leisurely gait into Tickfall, they passed the Hen-Scratch saloon. There they beheld a diminutive darky, dressed in ragged clothes, seated in a disconsolate attitude on the curbstone in front of that popular barroom. His name was Little Bit, and both noticed that he wore a chicken feather in his hat.

For some reason the horse stopped in front of the barroom. Possibly the animal had been there before. The young man and woman did not object, for they had no destination in mind, and it really did not matter where they went or where they were.

“Look here, colored boy!” Jim spoke. “What are you and all the other negroes wearing that feather in your hat for?”

“Dat sign is fer aviators, boss,” Little Bit answered.

Miss Juan Chieniere turned and shot a significant glance at the young man sitting beside her.

That young man’s face turned as white as milk. The lines of gentleness and good nature around his mouth changed until the whole face was drawn in lineaments of desperate recklessness. The one thought in his mind, of course, was that a scouting party had been sent out to look for the lost airplane, and the aviators had come to Tickfall. He had no idea what punishment would await him at the aviation camp if he was captured in Tickfall and taken back.

Something of his great danger was conceived by the girl, and she asked in a nervous voice:

“What aviators, Little Bit?”

“I dunno, Miss Jew-ann,” Little Bit answered. “But all de niggers has gone out to the Little Moccasin prairie to see the airships. Dey wouldn’t let me go. Dey made me stay at home and take keer of de saloon.”

This remark confirmed Jim Gannaway’s fears that the scouting party had really arrived in Tickfall. He had scanned the horizon many times since his arrival in that neighborhood on the evening before, and he wondered how that scouting party had arrived without his seeing them. His soul was tormented with anxiety, and he turned and looked at the girl as if he was seeing her for the last time. Dismounting from the buggy, he stood close beside her and said:

“Juan, I took a desperate risk in coming from the aviation camp to see you. I could not borrow a machine for the purpose, and could not have got leave of absence, so I had to swipe a machine. I told you I had come to get your promise to marry me, but I cannot ask you now because I have no idea what they will do to me when they take me back to camp.”

“What about that beautiful lie, Jim?” she asked with trembling lips.

“It would have been all right if I had made my way back to the camp without being caught; but now they have come after me, and there is nothing for me to tell but the beautiful truth.”

“What is the beautiful truth, Jim?” she asked.

“It is that I loved you so much that I was willing to take the most desperate chances to see you. Whatever may happen to me for what I have done will be but a small payment exacted from me in return for the pleasure I have had.”

With the adorable impudence of the Frenchwoman, Miss Juan straightened back in the buggy and looked at him with eyes that sparkled.

“I have a beautiful truth to say, also,” she asserted. “It is, that I love you, and if you ever get out of your troubles alive I will marry you; and if you get killed for what you have done, I will mourn for you forever and forever.”

She reached out and drew his head to her and kissed him.

“Go!” she said, as she pointed toward the Little Moccasin Swamp, “and remember that my love goes with you.”

He did not hesitate a moment, but turned and left her, pausing only to wave back at her as he passed out of sight around the nearest corner. The girl turned her buggy and started slowly back toward her home, her heart heavy and her lovely face picturing her wretchedness.

To all of this, Little Bit had been an interested witness. It was a free show, no charge for admission; the first time in his life he had seen a love scene between two white folks.

It was evidently funny to him, for he sat there laughing aloud, and his laugh bore a strong resemblance to the cackling of a hen.

VIII

GOING UP!

On the Little Moccasin prairie the excitement and enjoyment of the negroes were at their greatest height.

The feeling of awe toward the airplane had passed away. One by one they had climbed up into the seat. After a while they seated Skeeter Butts and Vinegar Atts in the machine, and every man that had paid his dollar and wore his feather in his cap took his turn at helping to push the airplane over the ground. It was followed by all the other negroes who shouted and whooped as it bumped along over the prairie like some awkward, stiff-legged, ridiculous bird which spurned the earth and felt like it was a disgrace to be upon the ground.

In the midst of this excitement, with its noise of laughter and the shouting, James Gannaway appeared at the edge of the swamp and looked out over the field with a real fear that he had never felt, even in the most dangerous situations in the air.

What he saw filled his heart with joy. No more fear that scouting planes had found the lost machine. All that the feathers in the hats of the negroes meant was that the blacks of Tickfall had found the hidden airplane. He waited until they had pushed the machine near to where he stood concealed in the dense foliage of the swamp. At that moment Vinegar Atts and Skeeter stood up from their seats in the machine and began to sing. It was one of the best-loved songs among the negroes, and that great crowd sent it echoing through the majestic forest with their mighty organ tones until James Gannaway wondered that the human voice could express such music.

“O come, angel band! Come, an’ aroun’ me stand! O bear me away on yo’ snowy wings To my immortal home; O bear me away on yo’ snowy wings To my immortal home.”

At the conclusion of the song, for some reason, both Vinegar and Skeeter climbed out of the machine. Then Gannaway stepped forth, waved a dispersing hand, and exclaimed:

“You niggers, get to hell away from here!”

Nothing could have surprised the negroes more than the appearance of this white man. Up to that very moment they had never questioned that the machine belonged to the negro, Red Cutt. When they heard that voice of command and turned their startled eyes to Gannaway, they pushed backward in their fright and scattered across the prairie like so many chickens.

Gannaway sprang lightly into the machine and started the engine. Three times in rapid succession the engine back-fired, and the sound was so similar to the explosion of a big army pistol that the negroes believed the white man was shooting at them. Then came the steady exhaust of the engine, cracking like a rapid-fire machine-gun, and every negro fell flat on his face to dodge the bullets he thought were flying all around him.

The machine went hopping awkwardly across the long level stretch of ground, and the negroes raised their heads like so many black lizards, watching to see if the white man was shooting toward them.

A moment later five hundred negroes gave utterance to an astounded “Ah!”

Of that great crowd, Vinegar Atts and Red Cutt had seen the airplane land; if Skeeter Butts was not lying, he was the third of the crowd who had seen an airplane in the air. Not one of the others had ever witnessed such a flight, and this universal exclamation emerged from their throats when they saw the machine rise from the ground like a wild goose and go sailing over the tops of the trees.

Five hundred negroes lying flat upon the ground, with their noses almost touching the dirt, put their hands on the feathers in their hats, to be sure that their insignia of office had not departed with the machine, and repeated their exclamation: “Ah!”

Suddenly the entire forest seemed to become vocal and scream in fright. Thousands of birds rose from the trees and circled round and round in the air as if they were intoxicated. The smaller birds flew from tree to tree, moving in a straight line, all going in the same direction, as they do when fleeing before a cyclone. The pigeons and hawks shot straight up in the air and then tumbled over and over as they came down, as if both wings were broken. The great eagles rose like the fighting creatures they are and threshed madly about high up in the heavens, sending their ugly snarl-like cries down to the earth, while from countless pools in the swamp every sort of water fowl rose with hoarse croaking voices and added to the aerial tumult.

To the negroes it seemed that the very skies were dropping down upon them every feathered creature God had ever made. They saw fowls of the air that they did not know existed under the heavens, and they heard bird-voices expressing fright which possibly had never been heard by human beings before.

Somewhere outside of their range of vision the airplane was still moving, for they could hear the exhaust like a steady purr in the distance. Everywhere that the machine went it caused the same excitement among the birds, so that a great multitude of these winged creatures were in terrified flight.

The terror laid hold upon the animals in the swamp, for there suddenly rose in a mighty chorus the scream of the panther and the wailing bark of the wolf and the angry, frightened roar of the bear. All the animals in the vicinity of the Little Moccasin prairie very naturally ran toward that open space; if rapid flight was necessary, any land animal could travel faster where there were no vines or stumps or trees or marshy places to hinder flight.

A drove of wild hogs, numbering several hundred, traveling with the speed and noise of an express train, and, like the exhaust of an automobile, uttering at every jump their frightened exclamation: “Whoof, whoof, whoof!” swept across that prairie, and every negro flattened himself upon the ground where he was lying and bawled aloud his supplication to the Almighty: “Dat He wouldn’t let no wild hawg step on him!” The drove of hogs passed without damage.

Then three young deer came galloping across the field, leaping over those prostrated bodies and dancing among the men, women, and children like so many pet rabbits. Behind them two panthers slung across the open space, spitting venomously at something they thought they had left in the woods.

After that something arrived upon the scene which brought every negro to his feet. Four black bears came out of the woods and lumbered over and joined the terrified negroes. The black bear of Louisiana is small and harmless. But to a negro he always looks extremely large and very ferocious. The other wild animals that had crossed the prairie seemed to have a destination, and they went on across.

When the black bears came they seemed to have arrived at the place they were going and appeared to be delighted at finding five or six hundred black folks at the same place to receive them and protect them. But the negroes sprang upon their feet with five or six hundred assorted yells of terror, and were getting ready to scatter out into the woods when a sound above their heads caused them to look up, and lo! the airplane had returned and was now three thousand feet above them.

It was the gloriously beautiful hour of sunset. The sky was clear and the air was still. In a little while the moon, which was even then visible in the sky, would shine in full effulgence, and would make an ideal night for the return of the airplane to the aviation field.

James Gannaway was feeling fine, and he showed it by giving the negroes an exhibition of stunt-flying. If he had known that the negroes did not appreciate this exhibition for what it was worth, he doubtless would have done the kindly thing and gone on his way. But when the negroes looked up in the air and saw the machine not much larger in their sight than a toy, they forgot all about the frolicking bears and were petrified by terror at the vision above them.

The machine turned upside down, then righted itself, then began to ascend in long, spiral glides; then turned upside down, and the aviator flew in that position for some moments. Again the machine righted itself and began to mount upward until it was hardly more than a tiny speck in the sky. Hovering directly above them it dived and seemed to drop with the rapidity of a falling star.

Every negro nerved himself to see the machine crash down upon the ground, when suddenly it turned and once more began its beautiful flight, up above the birds that screamed and circled and tumbled in the air like circus performers.

Vinegar Atts dropped upon his knees and lifted up two black hands in the direction of the ascending machine which now looked not much larger than a wasp and bawled aloud:

“O Lawd, ef you got any pity on dis pore nigger, jes’ keep dat machine a gwine up!”

“Keep her gwine up, Lawd!” five hundred voices wailed in a mighty chorus of endorsement.

“O Lawd, Thou hast told us dat de early bird ketches de worm. Us is pore worms of de dust! Perteck us from dat cherubim of de sky wid de hands of a man under its wings!” Vinegar whooped.

“Perteck us, Lawd; hab mussy on us wormes!” answered the frightened negroes in a mighty chorus.

“Keep dese here ole hawgs an’ bears an’ deerses offen us, too, good Lawd!” Vinegar wailed. “We don’t wanter ax too much of you-alls, but dese here is perilous times fer pore he’pless niggers!”

“Us pore niggers!” the chorus howled. “O Gawd, de birds of de air an’ de beasts of de field is sot ag’in’ us, an’ ef you don’t he’p us, we is blowed up blacks!”

“Dar won’t be nothin’ left of us but remainders!” Vinegar amended. “Some of us ain’t never axed you fer nothin’ befo’, an’ we ain’t never aimin’ to pester you agin. But we needs you now, Lawd—dis here is a groun’-hawg case!”

“A groun’-hawg—case!” the negroes wailed.

“O Lawd, she’s a gittin’ littler an’ littler!” Vinegar whooped. “She’s gwine up—gwine up—gwine up! Don’t go back on us now an’ let her drap down no more! Keep her gwine up!”

“Keep her gwine up!” the mob pleaded.

The animal noises in the swamp had ceased. The wild flight of the birds had taken them somewhere else. The airplane was a tiny speck in the sunset sky. But the mighty emotional crisis through which the negroes had passed left them raving in a delirium and acting like maniacs.

Vinegar Atts was temporarily insane. The other negroes were as crazy as bats. So, as they knelt upon the grass of the prairie, they began a mighty antiphony of Biblical quotations, Vinegar leading the vociferation with a voice which shall never be excelled in volume until the angel of time shall stand with one foot on the land and the other on the sea and swear that time shall be no longer.

“I seed a mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed wid a cloud, an’ a rainbow wus upon his head—” Vinegar roared.

“An his face wus as de sun an’ his foots wus pillars of fire!” the crowd answered.

“An’ he helt in his hand a little book—” Vinegar screamed.

“An he sot his right foot in de sea an’ his left foot on de yearth!” the mob responded.

“An’ cried wid a loud voice as when a lion roars!” Vinegar vociferated.

“An’ when he had cried seben thunders uttered deir voices!” the people whooped.

They seemed to think that all of this was efficacious in expediting the ascent of the airplane, for as long as they kept it up the machine kept climbing.

In a moment it disappeared from their sight.

“She’s gone!” they howled in a mighty chorus of relief. “Bless Gawd, she’s done went up outen our sight ferever!”

IX

A BAG OF COTTON

The negroes drew the first easy breath they had taken for several minutes.

“Praise de Lawd!” Vinegar laughed. “I’s glad I kept my good senses and didn’t git skeart!”

“Skeart!” Hitch Diamond mocked derisively. “You wus so skeart you wus squealin’ like a burnt pig!”

“I warn’t really a coward,” Vinegar said defensively. “But I wus sort of discreet. An’ I wusn’t by myself in dat—dis whole mob of niggers wus movin’ from side to side in dis here prairie like butter-beans b’ilin’ in a kittle.”

“Shore dey wus,” Hitch Diamond answered. “Dey wus skeart an’ I wus skeart an’ eve’ybody wus skeart—escusin’ you.”

“Dat ole airship is jes’ like a ole dog widout no teeth—it makes a lot of noise, but ’tain’t no harm,” Vinegar said complacently.

Suddenly, from the direction of the setting sun, a long, slanting shadow crossed the prairie like a black knife cutting through their composure and leaving them wide open to the terror which approached.

The airplane was advancing upon them, apparently just skirting the tops of the trees, and the noise of the exhaust of the engine was deafening, terrifying, nerve-racking, a sound which reminded these country negroes of nothing so much as a great forest fire in a cane-brake where the popping of the cane is like the musketry of battle. They did not know whether to run or lie down or stand still, but finally their action was universal and automatic—they tumbled over on the ground like a lot of dead geraniums in a broken pot. All of this was an experience so entirely new to them that there was no precedent; they had never been along that path before. That great motor sounded to them like disease and death, and it made enough noise to make a snail jump through a barrel-hoop.

But there is one thing every negro can do. His fright is like kerosene poured on hot coals: it goes up in vapor and goes off with a bang. When those explosive sounds began to prod the negroes like hat-pins running into their ears, they began to howl and pray, and from five or six hundred throats there arose an assorted series of yells—they sang a long scale of variegated vociferations of fright—and they uttered implorations and prayers, and made promises to the God of heaven in return for his protection, promises which they could not have remembered in sober moments, much less performed.

As the machine came nearer to them and looked like it was coming down to the ground to mow them down with its wide-spreading wings, five hundred men, women, and children flattened themselves upon the ground, uttered a farewell gasp like a fish dying in the bottom of a boat and prayed that God would remove all rotundity and make them as flat as a withered leaf to meet this emergency that was upon them.

When about one hundred feet above the ground the aviator tossed out of the machine Hitch Diamond’s bag of cotton waste. Had he known the contents of that bag he would have tossed it out a long time before. During all his stunts in the air he had held this sack of worthless cotton waste, and out of the kindness of a heart that was full of love for a woman he had returned it to the rightful owners.

The bag landed on the shoulders of Vinegar Atts. Vinegar merely spread out like a busted bag of oats and sang an up-and-down tune of assorted prayers like the howling of a hound dog. After a long time, when the exhaust of the engine sounded far away, he slowly rose up like a mouse in a trap, scared and begging on its hind legs.

“My Gawd!” he whooped. “I had a powerful good chance fer heaven dat time. I’m got more lives dan a litter of kittens!”

Then, seeing the bag of cotton waste on the ground, for some reason he got the notion that Hitch Diamond had hit him on the back with that bag. He picked it up and struck Hitch over the head with it.

Hitch cautiously raised his head and elevated his face toward the sky, his nose wrinkled up like the front of a washboard. The airplane was far away. He slowly turned his head and saw Vinegar standing beside him with a bag of cotton waste in his hand. His eyes stuck out like the buttons on an overcoat, and he rose from the ground and started for Vinegar with a bellow of rage which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring in the South.

As if in answer to a signal every negro rose from the ground and started a free-for-all fight, a rough-and-tumble affair which is the delight of the darky and generally does no great harm. Men and women pushed and pounded at each other, and grunted, and slapped faces, and wrestled, bouncing chunks of wood off of each other’s heads and going after each other’s skin like they were working by the job and wanted to get it all off right away.

Then a few not participating in the scrap glanced up and pointed, exclaiming: “Look! Look dar!”

Far up in the sunset sky, getting smaller and smaller as it climbed, the beautiful airplane passed into the purple and gold shadows of the closing day and disappeared from their sight.

There was an awed silence which was broken after a moment by the snarling voice of Pap: “Whar is dat Red Cutt gone at?”

“He’s done gone!” dozens of voices answered.

“Did he hab our money on him?”

“Yep, he tuck it all!” Vinegar howled.

“I said I’d make dat nigger fly!” Pap exclaimed. “An’ now he has done flew!”

“De way he flew is de only way he could fly,” Skeeter Butts laughed. “I’m satisfied in my mind dat nigger didn’t know any more about a airship dan a dog knows about a white shirt. And now he’s done run off wid my dollar.”

“I don’t keer,” Vinegar said. “I done got my dollar’s wuth of fun outen dat machine, an’ I expeck I’d better be gittin’ back to town. I’m got to preach at de Shoofly church to-night.”