Part 5

“I haven’t got four dollars,” Org replied, and then ran down the street, waving his arms at an automobile.

The machine stopped and Dr. Moseley leaned out and listened:

“Doctor, I know you ain’t a mule physician, but I just bought a big mule and he’s took sick and if he dies it’ll cost a lot of money to have him hauled off. I ain’t got the money to have him hauled away, and so you must come and keep him from dying.”

“Got any money to pay my doctor’s bill?” the physician asked.

“No, sir.”

“Got any money to pay for medicine to cure your mule?”

“No, sir.”

“Charity patient, by jacks!” the physician grinned.

“No, sir,” Org protested. “Me and my mule will pay. Whenever your automobile breaks down, I’ll let you ride my mule!”

No offer could be fairer, so Org swung up on the foot-board and rode with the obliging physician to the sick-bed of the mule. That able physician had once been all-boy himself, and he understood.

“Bless my soul, if it ain’t Jinx!” he laughed as he drew near the prostrate animal. After a moment’s examination he added: “That mule is hungry, boys. Feed him! Feed him quick! Feed him high! Repeat the dose three times a day before each meal!”

Laughing, he turned his automobile and went off.

Two hours passed while the boys were getting feed and watching Jinx eat. They did not mind waiting. They sat on the curb in great contentment, discussing their purchase and planning for the future. Several men and women passed and stopped to chat with the boys, attracted by the novelty of a mule lying on the side of a road attended by two small boys. Without exception they recognized Jinx, for that mule was an established institution in Tickfall.

When Jinx got up the hill to the Gaitskill home he appeared very familiar with the place. In fact, he had been one of the Gaitskill mules several times in his varied career, and had found few other places where he had been as well treated.

“I guess we better let him stay in the front yard to-night, Little Bit,” Org said as he opened the gate and turned the animal in upon the Gaitskill lawn. “He’s too feeble to walk back as far as the stable, and I haven’t got any more time to fool with this mule. All our family are going to eat at Captain Kerley Kerlerac’s home to-night.”

The boys walked back together, separating at the court-house, and Little Bit went to the Hen-Scratch saloon.

He found Skeeter Butts in charge—told the story of Jinx, incidentally remarking that the whole Gaitskill family had gone to Kerlerac’s to eat dinner with his “boss.”

This last information pleased Skeeter Butts very much. He went out in the rear of the saloon to be by himself and think it over.

“Dat rabbit-foot is as good as got back already. I knows all about Marse Tom’s house. I done wucked in dat house so much dat I could walk eve’ywhar in it wid my eyes shut.”

About that time Hopey Prophet informed Dazzle Zenor of the absence of the Gaitskill family that evening. She knew the house, knew the people, and while she had not quite the liberty of an old family retainer, she fixed her plans to take this opportunity to raid the house.

“I’ll git dat foot certain,” she answered.

Skeeter waited impatiently until nine o’clock, then lighted a cigarette and sauntered out of the saloon. Under ordinary circumstances he would have entered the Gaitskill house from the rear. But, knowing that no one was at home, he came to the front porch and entered the front door. Once inside the house, he became extremely cautious. No use making a noise, even if there was no one to hear except himself.

It was very dark in the reception room, and while Skeeter was familiar with the house, and was sure that he was alone in it, he did not care to disarrange any furniture, and still less did he wish to fall over something and break it. He crept silently up the stairs and paused within a few feet of the room he intended to enter.

He heard a sound. Listening for a moment, he decided that someone was moving in the house, and that he had better not try to secure the rabbit-foot that night. His close-clipped hair stood up on his head like pig bristles as he began to retreat, and he lost no time in beating his way back to the hall below. He started to open the front door and escape that way, but on the second thought he decided it would be safer to go out through the kitchen.

As he passed into the back hall he heard some one coming down the steps of the back stairs. He crouched in a corner, waiting for the person to descend. Whoever it was, passed within a few feet of him, crossed the kitchen, and went out of the door. Skeeter noiselessly followed.

Once safely outside the house a senseless panic struck him, and he shot around the corner toward the front at full speed. On the walk in front of the house he collided with a terrible force with something, the impact jarring every bone in his body, and for a moment knocking him breathless, senseless. The second party in the collision, with a whistling expiration of breath sank limply against Skeeter Butts. He thrust out his arms and embraced a woman!

Skeeter was fond of the lady folks, and was usually chivalrous. But on this occasion he “dropped” the lady right there; cut her dead, so to speak. And started across the lawn at a speed never before attained by his pedal extremities.

Skeeter traveled crawfish fashion; he went forward, but he looked back. He turned to see where he was going, and there suddenly loomed before him a big, black object which looked to him as large as a house.

It was Jinx, lying on the ground.

Skeeter hit the front end of Jinx first and fell sprawlingly forward, and his arms and legs, outspread, were spraddled across Jinx’s bony back. The startled mule, aroused from his slumber, bellowed like a cow and began to get up, rising in bony sections, like a folding ladder.

For a moment Skeeter hung on to a few protruding bones, then he emitted a little whimpering sigh, slided off the bony sides of the ever-rising mountain, and lay flat upon the ground. The second collision had knocked him out.

Skeeter did not lose consciousness. He just lost breath. It was a long time before he rallied sufficiently to sit up, and when he did he heard a woman weeping softly.

“Who is dat onwindin’ dat bawl?” Skeeter inquired softly.

“Dis here is me,” the woman answered, which was enough for Skeeter, for he knew that voice.

“Whut wus you doin’ in dat house, Dazzle?” Skeeter asked, when he found her in the dark, sitting on the bottom step of the porch.

“I wus tryin’ to git dat rabbit-foot,” she said simply.

“How come you know about dat foot?”

“Hopey tole me. I wants de money Mustard is put up to git it back.”

“I wants dem dollars, too,” Skeeter laughed. “Less go in togedder an’ ’vide up de money even-Stephen.”

“I takes you on,” Dazzle said, finding comfort in her grief.

“Not no more to-night,” Skeeter said. “Dar’s a mule runnin’ loose in dis yard as big as a battleship. I butted him like a torpedo.”

“Whut happened?” Dazzle asked.

“I wus Jinxed,” Skeeter said simply. “Less go home.”

XIV

THE ALLIGATOR

Jinx became the greatest plaything that Org and Little Bit possessed. He could not fatten, but under the care and treatment he received he acquired a little more interest in life, and showed quite a fondness for his youthful owner.

Gaitskill laughed, and decided that the mule would keep Org out of mischief, which would justify the cost of its keep. Tickfall smiled at the sight of a little boy sitting on a big saddle while a diminutive black boy sat behind him, proud of his position and waving a greeting to all his black friends as he passed. Org and Little Bit would not have swapped Jinx for an automobile.

“A automobile gits out of fix,” Little Bit said as they discussed this one day. “When she stops nothin’ kin make her go. Ef somepin gits de matter wid it, nobody knows whut ails her.”

“But this mule is different,” Org said proudly. “I like something that wags its tail.”

“Dis hay-burner suits me,” Little Bit agreed.

They found to their delight that Jinx was thoroughly familiar with that great jungle called the Little Moccasin Swamp. The boys could ride out to that swamp upon Jinx and turn into any path which led into the jungle. The mule would carry them for miles along the winding animal trails, and then to their surprise they would find themselves in the highway again. They explored recesses in that swamp which they could never have reached without the mule, and they were never uneasy about losing their way.

They found great pools of water where large fish swam that were easily visible to the eye, and apparently unafraid. They found great sinks of vegetation where ugly snakes crawled, and they learned that Jinx could smell a snake as far as the eye could see, and that he had no desire to get near enough to be bitten. They saw immense turtles sunning themselves upon the logs and stumps. They found droves of wild pigs, extremely dangerous to man when he was standing upon his two feet, but harmless when a four-footed animal carried them upon his back.

Hence arose this matter of debate between them: Can a wild hog count? If he cannot, how does he know the difference between two legs and four legs?

They found an eagle’s nest, came too near, and were followed for miles by a screaming bird which swooped down upon them, fanned her immense wings within an inch of their hats, and snapped her vicious beak in their faces with a noise like the snip of immense shears. Once they saw a panther crouched upon a live-oak limb, his eyes glowing in the jungle shadows like living rubies; the animal screamed at them—the only thing which ever extracted a burst of speed from Jinx. They were followed for miles as they went out of that swamp by that screaming, snarling, hissing, spitting cat.

Once Little Bit turned around and made a noise like an exploding pop-bottle, a method which he had found efficacious in frightening domestic cats away. The vocal answer to Little Bit’s elocutionary effort was so terrifying that Jinx nearly jumped out of his skin.

Then one day, on the edge of a little clearing, they found a six-foot alligator asleep in the sun.

They dismounted and walked closer. The alligator slept on.

“How close can we get to this thing before he wakes up, Little Bit?” Org asked.

“He’s awake right now,” Little Bit told him. “He pretends like he’s so sleepy he’s mighty nigh dead, but he knows we is here all right. But he won’t move till you gits right on him, close enough to tech him wid yo’ hand.”

“What’ll he do then?” Org wanted to know.

“He’ll slap his tail aroun’ and knock yo’ foots out from under you an’ bite yo’ leg plum’ off,” Little Bit informed him. “He’s layin’ dar now waitin’ fer a wild pig to come rootin’ aroun’ him like wild pigs does aroun’ logs. Den he’ll slap ’em wid his tail an’ bite ’em in two.”

The boys backed away, climbed upon the trunk of a fallen tree, and looked across the underbrush at the alligator. He was as still as an old rusty stove-pipe, which he somewhat resembled.

“Less take that rope off our saddle and rope him,” Org suggested. “They rope everything in California, cattle and everything.”

“Who’s gwine put dat rope aroun’ dat alligator?” Little Bit asked.

“You can do that,” Org replied as he untied the rope from the saddle.

“Mebbe I kin, but I ain’t gwine to,” Little Bit asserted, climbing up on the back of the mule. “Little Bit don’t choose but a little bit of alligator in his’n. Dis mule don’t hanker fer none.”

“All right, ’fraid-cat,” Org taunted. “You hold the mule, and I’ll throw the rope.”

Like most boys who had lived in the West, Org had often played with a rope, looping it and throwing it in imitation of the cowmen. He climbed upon a trunk of a fallen tree about thirty feet from the quiescent alligator, coiled the rope, and threw it with wonderful luck. The coil straightened, and the open loop fell right in front of the alligator.

In the less remote sections the alligator is fearful, for it has learned the menace of man. But this one had possibly never seen a human being before. When the rope fell it moved forward a few feet and became quiet again. Org gave the rope a quick jerk, and the loop caught under one of the alligator’s front feet and over his head. Org was standing by a limb upon the fallen tree, bracing himself to keep his balance. Quickly he twisted his end of the rope around the limb and tied it.

The creature was still unaware that it was captive. Org threw a few branches from the tree in its direction, and it crawled slowly forward a few feet. At last it came to the end of the rope.

A hoarse, coughlike bark rang through the forest, and instantly that six-foot alligator was a snarling fury as it entered into combat with its bonds. For ten minutes the two frightened boys beheld the most terrifying spectacle they had ever imagined. Org scuttled down from the treetrunk and took refuge with Little Bit upon the back of the mule, making ready for instant flight.

Within a radius of that rope the alligator beat down the marsh-grass as flat as if a road-rolling machine had passed over it. He got into the low underbrush and pounded it down, making a noise like an express train with his powerful clawing feet and his slapping tail. He roared and raised himself almost upright on his tail, and clawed at the rope with his front feet as a man would fight with his hands, and snapped his great jaws together like the slapping of two clapboards.

But he could never succeed in getting the rope between his teeth, for the reason that he could not turn his head or lower his chin. Finally, in an awful burst of fury, he threw himself backward, rolled over and over, slapping, thrashing, clawing, snarling, uttering awful coughlike barks to which a thousand echoes in the forest responded in kind. The boys wondered at the creature’s catlike agility, shuddered at the concentrated venomous fury of the battle, quivered with awe at the agonizing, snarling vociferation emitted from between those terrible, gnashing, snapping teeth.

Yet the very configuration of the woods fought for the boys. The rope was constantly taut, for the reason that it could hardly be moved without becoming entangled with roots and cypress knees and the tough underbrush and the clinging, almost unbreakable vines called bamboo. The struggle against these obstacles slowly exhausted the alligator’s strength.

At last he sank down and remained quiet.

After a while the boys mustered their courage and crept forward to see. They found their captive had twisted the rope around the cypress knees and projecting roots until he was tied to the ground and helpless. His eyes were not sleepy now. They glowed with baleful flames, ugly, piglike, with glints of green in their fires of fury. The big mouth gaped wide when he saw the boys, and the jaws snapped with frightful force.

After a consultation, the two boys ran across the clearing to a switch-cane jungle and cut two long cane poles. Returning with these, they began to prod and torment the alligator, thrusting the poles into his mouth when he opened it; and when he no longer would let them look at his tongue, they still pursued their medical examination by punching him in every place where they thought he might have a particularly tender spot.

This roused him to another performance, a fury of struggle in which he fought and roared and barked and clawed at the rope, and thrashed with his tail, and chased the two boys up a tree until his activities abated.

All day long they tormented the alligator, exhausting every resource in their efforts to get him, as they expressed it, “to cut up some more.” But after five or six hours there was no more fight in him.

When the alligator showed plainly that he had made positively his last appearance as an entertainer, the boys decided it was time to start for home.

“How we gwine git our rope back?” Little Bit asked.

“Let that old sucker keep his old rope. I don’t want it,” Org said, wiping the sweat from his face on the sleeve of his shirt and sitting down in utter weariness.

“Marse Tom will bust us ef we leaves dat rope out in dese here woods,” Little Bit warned him. “Ropes comes high in de store ef you got to pay fer ’em.”

“I’ll tell Uncle Tom where it is, and let him come after it when he wants it,” Org replied.

“You better not let dat white man know we been out here monkeyin’ wid a alligator,” Little Bit said. “He’ll sell our mule an’ put me in jail an’ flay de hide offen you.”

“That’s so,” Org agreed. “Well, the old alligator is nearly dead. Let’s tie our end of the rope to the saddle and make old Jinx drag the alligator up to the house. Then when he dies we can get the rope off him.”

Little Bit agreed to this, and it was not hard to do. They had whipped the alligator until there was no more fight in him, and wearied him until there was not more strength to fight. Their hardest work was untwisting the rope, for as they got nearer to the alligator they had to pry the rope from around the roots and snags with a pole. They never got the courage to get close to those jaws which had snapped at them so terribly.

Jinx did not object to a little light hauling when a white boy walked on one side and a black boy on the other, acting as escort of honor. The alligator was easily dragged over the marsh-grass and along the animal trails toward the town. Although dragged for over three miles, he at no time showed resistance or attempted to “cut up.”

In the rear of the Gaitskill stables there was a large pig-pen, to which admittance was gained by a gate. Org led the mule in such a way that the alligator faced the gate. Then he led the mule around to the other side of the pen, led him forward, and thus dragged the alligator through the open gate.

Then the boys took a rake, hung one of the teeth through the loop in the rope, and by considerable juggling they managed to make the loop loose and large.

“Now, if he kicks around any before he dies, he’ll walk out of that rope,” Org announced. “Then we won’t have to say anything about it.”

“Dat big old animile ain’t gwine die,” Little Bit chuckled. “Us ain’t hurt him none, an’ by dis time to-morrer he’ll be ready to fix fer anodder fight.”

“I’m through fighting alligators,” Org said wearily. “I never was as hungry and tired in my life. But we’ll keep this old sucker in his pen and make him our pet alligator.”

XV

BLASTING POWDER

Org and Little Bit loved to play in an old storehouse situated in the corner of the yard in the rear of Gaitskill’s home. There was a reason. Both loved sweets, and in that house was where Colonel Gaitskill stored his famous ribbon-cane sirup.

This sweet, so famous in the State, is not marketable. When once it is put in a barrel or other container, it cannot be moved or it will turn to sugar. Even with the greatest care, it is pretty sure to turn sugary before it is all used up. The sugar forms first a hard crust around the inside of the barrel and around the spigot from which it is drawn. Sometimes you can turn that spigot on full and the stream will be a tiny thread of liquid sweetness which flows with exasperating slowness. A moment later the sugary obstruction may break from around the spigot, and after that, the flood!

Doubtless Shakespeare had such a catastrophe in mind when he wrote of

The taste of sweetness, whereof a little More than a little is by much too much.

Half a dozen times a day Org and Little Bit slipped into this storeroom, turned on the spigot of the sirup barrel, caught the tiny stream of sweetness in the palms of their hands, and lapped it out with their tongues.

They were at that enjoyable diversion now.

Suddenly there was a loud whoop of fright from the direction of the orchard where Mustard Prophet had gone to gather some figs for lunch. The boys ran to the door and looked out. They saw Mustard climb down from a rickety step-ladder, fold that ladder together and hurl it in the direction of some object. Then he came out of that orchard, stepping high like a turkey wading through mud, looking constantly behind him, and making as many different noises with his mouth as a whole brass band.

Hopey, thinking he had been bitten by a snake, met him half-way to the house.

“Whut ails you, Mustard?” she asked.

“My Gawd, Hopey!” he panted. “Dar’s a alligator out in dat orchard fawty feet long! I seen it!”

The noise Mustard made had brought all the members of the family out to see what the trouble was. When he told them of seeing the alligator, Org said nothing, and the others of the household were skeptical and laughed at him.

“How do you know you saw an alligator?” Colonel Gaitskill asked.

“I throwed a step-ladder at it, Marse Tom,” Mustard wailed. “It wus longer dan de ladder.”

“Come back to the orchard and show me,” Gaitskill ordered.

“Naw, suh!” Mustard whooped. “Go look fer yo’se’f, boss. Dis nigger is done seen aplenty!”

“Whut wus he doin’ in dat orchard?” Hopey howled.

“He wus aimin’ to climb dat step-ladder an’ bite my leg off when I seen him,” Mustard shuddered. “I gib him de ladder an’ tole him he could take my place!”

“Don’t make so much noise, Mustard,” Gaitskill commanded, as he turned away and entered the house. Nobody credited Mustard’s story, except Org and Little Bit, and they slipped away as soon as they could to see if their alligator was still in captivity.

They found that he had escaped, and a broad trail led across the dust of the pig-lot toward the orchard. The alligator had crawled through a hole. The boys promptly decided not to enter the orchard for any purpose whatsoever. Thinking further, they decided they had better absent themselves from home for the day, for that alligator might do all sorts of sensational stunts, and they had seen enough of his performances the day before.

Besides, Colonel Gaitskill might want to know how the creature got on the premises, and Org had found that the best way to avoid answering questions was to be where questions could not be addressed to him.

At that moment there came to the ears of the two boys a dull explosion. They turned their faces in the direction of the sound and left home.

It is a pity that they did not first return to the storehouse and turn off the spigot of the molasses barrel. But they did not. That sirup ran two days and one night!

One of the annoyances of agriculture in Louisiana is stumps. Whenever a farmer undertakes to blast the stumps out of the ground with dynamite or powder, he is sure to have a crowd of small boys to watch him. Org had been on the trail of the dynamiters for a number of days. Whenever they heard an explosion, they knew that some farmer was having a celebration of fireworks and profanity, and they hurried to the spot, guided by the explosive noises.

By being around, they had surreptitiously acquired a number of dynamite caps, also several yards of fuse in various lengths. The sound they had heard a few minutes before was over in the direction of the Cooley bayou, and they went.

What they saw when they got there, put the fear of dynamite in their souls forever.

There was a man who lived on the Cooley bayou who walked on a wooden peg. He had attempted to dynamite a fish-hole. He lighted the fuse of the dynamite stick and walked toward the pool to toss the stick into the water. His wooden peg found a soft place in the earth, and he sank into the mire up to his knees. He pitched forward on his face, the stick of dynamite fell from his hand and rolled just a few feet out of reach. The peg leg was twisted under the sod and marsh-grass in such a way that the unfortunate man could not tear himself loose and escape from the stick of dynamite.

The explosion tore a hole in the ground in which a large automobile might have been easily concealed, and friends of the cripple found scraps of him hanging in the trees a hundred yards away.