“Glory! Glory! Halleluiah!Our God is marching on!”
“Glory! Glory! Halleluiah!Our God is marching on!”
At midnight the marching column of singing negroes disbanded.
“Vinegar,” Skeeter said, “me an’ Figger an’ Hitch is decided to go to Kerlerac in de automobile an’ git in on de nigger dance at dat place.”
“I ain’t gwine!” Vinegar answered. “’Tain’t fitten fer a nigger preacher to dance. Excusin’ dat, I’s too fat an’ de women folks step on my foots.”
“You got to go!” Skeeter wailed. “You got to he’p Hitch Diamond push de auto through de sand!”
“Dat’s right,” Vinegar acceded. “You can’t trabbel nowhere widout my muscle. I’ll tag along wid you-alls!”
When they got to the automobile Vinegar found certain mysterious bundles piled up in the machine.
“Whut is dis?” he demanded.
“Fire-works!” Skeeter snickered. “We raked off a few so we could go to Kerlerac an’ surprise dem niggers!”
“I’s glad I’s gwine!” Vinegar chuckled. “I bet us will hab plenty big doin’s!”
Three hours later Skeeter stopped his machineat the foot of the Mississippi protection levee at Kerlerac. The town was asleep. There were no electric lights and the river fog concealed the stars, making total darkness.
“Vinegar,” Skeeter said, “does you still mourn de loss of dat stove-pipe preachin’ hat whut you drapped in de river to-day?”
“I suttinly do!” Vinegar growled.
“Would you wish to earn another good silk hat by a little wuck?” Skeeter inquired next.
“Shorely.”
“I’ll make you a present of a ten-dollar silk hat, white silk linin’ on de inside an’ slick, shiny fur on de outside wid a red silk handkercher to slick it up wid, ef you’ll take my auto back to Tickfall to-night an’ meet me at de Tickfall landin’ on de river to-morrow mawnin’,” Skeeter Butts said.
“Whut—whut——”
“Don’t ax no ’terrogations!” Skeeter snapped.
“I’ll do it!” Vinegar howled.
Hitch Diamond lifted out the bundles, and Vinegar sat down at the wheel, turned the machine, and roared his farewell to the men.
Picking up the bundles, Skeeter led his friends down the levee for a short distance, stopping when he saw a black shape on the water.
Taking an electric flashlight from his pocket, Skeeter sent the glare across to the bulky object looming in the darkness.
“Look at dat!” Hitch Diamond growled. “Dar’s our boat! Dat’s shore deMud Hen.”
Skeeter reflected the light upon the water beside the boat until it rested upon a canoe.
“Pipe Smash is on dat boat now!” Figger Bush whispered. “I bet he got drunk at de nigger dance an’ is sound asleep!”
“Now, fellers,” Skeeter began, “you listen to me——”
Skeeter talked like a grape-juice orator for five minutes, and his audience of two listened with breathless attention.
After that Skeeter went aboard the boat, climbing the rope hand over hand, and paddled the canoe back for his bundles and his friends.
Pipe Smash lay in a drunken slumber on the deck with his head toward the warm furnace of the engine.
Skeeter untied the boat from a stump, paddled to theMud Hen, climbed aboard, and let the steamboat drift slowly out into the current.
When they had floated about two miles below Kerlerac, where the heavy woods lay upon each side of the river, Skeeter crawled upon his hands and knees, and from the keg which he had stolen from Gaitskill laid a heavy trail of calcium powder all around the boat.
Hitch opened the furnace door and laid twenty-four large sky-rockets on the hot ashes, and left the door open.
Figger Bush opened a package of roman-candles, scooped up a shovel of live coals from the furnace, and laid it beside the package.
Skeeter lighted the fuses of half a dozen immensecannon-crackers and dropped them carelessly near the sleeping form of Pipe Smash.
Then the three hid themselves where they could see without being seen.
The cannon-crackers exploded with a detonation which reverberated from the immense woods, shook every piece of wood in the fragile boat, and sounded like a little war.
Pipe Smash awoke from his deep dream of peace with a loud yelp. He sat up and rubbed his eyes, wondering what had happened.
Instantly a trail of red fire, started by Skeeter Butts, changing to blue, yellow, green, and white, spun like a flaming snake around the deck of the boat, and Pipe Smash lay back on the deck, whirling over and over like a worm on a hot griddle, whooping like a siren.
From out of the furnace door twenty-four skyrockets roared, shot out over Pipe’s head, struck the deck with a hiss changing to a loud screech, ricochetted around the boat, and burst into ten thousand stars against the puny smoke-stack and the fragile roof.
In a split second Pipe Smash was as crazy as a bug with fright.
He spun around that boat-deck like a cat in a fit, squalled and spat and screeched and scratched, rolled and tumbled, jumped to his feet and kicked, fell flat on his back, rolled over, crawled on all fours, and performed every stunt within the range of physical activity.
To his terrified vision, theMud Henwas aglowwith fire, the dense woods along the river were ablaze, the water was a glowing coal-ember, and the river fog twisted and turned and folded back upon itself and became great glowing blankets of flame. Earth and sky and water were wrapped in one horrible red conflagration, while from every part of the boat the tongues of flame leaped out, licking at his cringing flesh!
Pipe Smash shrieked and went over the side.
Keeping carefully concealed, Skeeter, Hitch, and Figger seized their roman-candles, lighted them by thrusting them in the hot embers in the shovel, and peppered the water around the struggling, shrieking, diving, choking, swimming negro as far as they could see him.
Then Skeeter dropped a live coal into the keg of calcium powder, and the boat was enveloped in a red glow of smoke and fire.
Running through the deep woods on the bank of the river, Pipe Smash glanced behind him and saw his steamboat blazing to the heavens, and bade it good-by forever.
Then followed darkness and great silence while theMud Hendrifted on the current.
Early that morning, as theMud Hen, in the proud possession of her rightful owners, clucked noisily up to the Tickfall landing, the reverent Vinegar Atts climbed out of the automobile, stood up on the levee, belled his gorilla-like hands around his mouth, and in true orthodox, camp-meeting tones, gave the negro’s universal shout of happiness and victory:
“Bless Gawd!”
Mustard Prophet, overseer of the Nigger-Heel plantation, sat on a box under a horse-shed in the rear of the Gaitskill store.
The gathering dusk of the October evening lent beauty to his sordid surroundings, and Mustard sweetened the scene by music. His thick lips caressed the silver mouthpiece of a cornet, and his bellows-like lungs sent forth strains which made all Tickfall listen:
“All de worl’ am sad an’ dreary, eb’rywhar I roam—”
Wherever music is there the negroes are gathered together. In a moment Pap Curtain entered the lot.
He was welcome because he carried a trombone.
“How come you toot sich sad toons, Mustard?” Pap inquired as he took his own musical instrument out of a dirty green bag.
“Ain’t us all sons of sorrer, Pap?” Mustard demanded in an argumentative tone. “Fo’ hundred bales of cotton raised on de Nigger-Heelplantation by me—an’ how much does me an’ Marse Tom git fer it? Jes’ perzackly nothin’ an’ not no more.”
“De white folks is argufyin’ ’bout a buy-a-bale move,” Pap began.
“Huh,” Mustard snorted. “Me an’ Marse Tom is argufyin’ ’bout a sell-a-bale move. I come to town to cornverse him ’bout dat.”
Pap’s trombone was ready, and the conversation ended with the lively strains of a duet, the refrain of which was: “De nigger hoes de cotton an’ cawn, but de white man gits de money.”
At the far end of the town a black saddle-horse emerged from the shadows of the swamp road and sailed up the sandy street with a motion as steady and rhythmical as the flight of a bird.
Balanced on the pommel of his saddle, the rider held a heavy canvas bag filled with gold and silver coins, but so easy was the gait of that superb horse that not a coin rattled. From long habit the animal stopped in front of the Tickfall bank.
The rider dismounted and walked to the door, feeling in his pocket for his keys.
Failing to find his keys, he set the bag of money on the steps and began a search of his clothes, but without success. After a moment’s thought he remounted his horse and rode down the street to his store.
The closing hour was six o’clock, and as it was nearly an hour later than that, he found the store also locked. But he stopped at the home of one of his clerks and secured a key.
Entering the building, he opened a small iron safe in the office situated in the middle of the store, placed the bag of money within, and gave the combination-knob a few quick turns.
Then hearing the lively duet in the rear of the store, he passed out into the lot. The duet came to a quick close.
“Howdy, Marse Tom?” the negroes exclaimed in concert. Then Mustard Prophet added, “I been waitin’ fer you all dis Saddy atternoon.”
“I knew it was you, Mustard,” Gaitskill grinned. “I’ve been hearing the sound of that old cornet twenty years, and I’d recognize it in China. What’s aching now?”
“Marse Tom, ain’t dese here hard times? Ain’t money skeercer dan snow in a hot biscuit-pan?”
“Just so,” Gaitskill said. “I’ve been out collecting to-day, and I know.”
“I reckin you an’ me will hab to keep on trustin’ de Lawd, Marse Tom—yes, suh, as de old Injun useter say, trus’ de good Lawd an’ keep our cotton dry.”
“What did you want to see me about?” Gaitskill asked.
“Look at dese clothes, Marse Tom!” Mustard answered earnestly. “Look at dese here empty pockets! Ain’t dey no way to sell our cotton? Don’t I git no loose change fer my year’s hard wuck?”
“Trust the good Lord!” Gaitskill grinned mockingly.
“I’m is trus’ de good Lawd, Marse Tom, but dat ain’t git me nothin’. An’ I’m jes’ ’bleeged to tell you, Marse Tom, dat while I still trus’ de Lawd I’s lookin’ toyoufer some good clothes an’ some money.”
“Put not your trust in princes,” Gaitskill said with solemn mockery. “Trust the Lord!”
The negro fumbled at the keys of his cornet and sighed.
Gaitskill watched him with twinkling eyes. He was the best plow hand, the best hoe hand, the best negro overseer in Louisiana, and for twenty years had been in charge of Gaitskill’s famous Nigger-Heel plantation.
Simple, confiding, good-natured, trustworthy, industrious, Gaitskill was very fond of him and would do anything in reason for him. He loved to point him out to his friends as the negro whose hard work had made the Nigger-Heel one of the show-places among the plantations of the state.
“We’ll talk about it to-morrow, Mustard,” Gaitskill proposed. “What are you going to do to-night?”
“Hopey’s lookin’ fer me up to yo’ house, Marse Tom,” Mustard declared, all his gloom gone. “I ain’t saw dat wife of mine sence all dis here war trouble come on me.”
“I want you to sleep in this store to-night,” Gaitskill said. “Pile up some of the empty oat-sacks in the rear of the store and make a bed.”
“Yes, suh. I’ll take keer of eve’ything. You knows me, Marse Tom. Gimme de key!”
Gaitskill passed over the door-key and the negro followed him through the store to his horse.
“Marse Tom,” he said, as Gaitskill was mounting his horse, “’bout dis here war in Yurope; I don’t see no signs of no war in Yurope. Now, I figgers it out dis way: de Yanks up Nawf is done bought up all de newspapers an’ dey’s skeerin’ us wid all dis war-talk so dey kin run de price of cotton down an’ all us pore niggers——”
“Aw, shut up!” Gaitskill said.
Mustard watched the horseman until the dust and dark swallowed him up far down the street. Then he turned back into the store with a grin:
“Dat white man ain’t onsottlin’ his mind ’bout no war. He owns a bank!”
Mustard locked the front door, shutting himself in, then passed through the rear door into the lot where Pap Curtain was still waiting for him.
“Pap,” Mustard began, “does you know how come a nigger wucks wid his hands, while the white man figgers and counts his money?”
“Naw.”
“Well, suh, hit happened this way: A nigger, a Injun, an’ a white man wus playin’ seben-up under de shade of a tree. De good Lawd dropped down a box of tools right close to whar dey wus settin’, an’ all of ’em hopped up to git whut wus comin’ to ’em. De nigger wus hoggish an’ he grabbed de bigges’ things, an’ he got a shovel, a hoe, an’ a spade. De Injun, he had to hab his’n, so he grabbed de bow ’n’ arrer. Dar warn’t nothin’ lef’ fer de white man but a pen, so de white man, he figgers!”
“Yes, suh, dat’s whut de good Book say. But I’s heerd tell it diffunt.”
“How’s dat?” Mustard asked.
“De good Lawd made a nigger, a white man, an’ a Injun outen good clean mud. Atter de dirt had dried real good, He fotch ’em befo’ de big white jedgment seat.
“He say to de white man: ’Whut you gwine do?’ De white man specify: ‘I’s gwine be a merchant.’ Den He say to de Injun: ‘Whut you gwine do?’ De Injun spoke Him back: ‘I’se gwine hunt and fish.’
“Den He say to de nigger: ‘What you gwine do, cullud pusson?’ De nigger, he claw his head an’ ’spon’: ‘Dunno, boss. I reckin I’ll jes’ foller atter de boys. Mebbe dar’ll be cold vittles lef’ over fer me!’”
“Dat’s shore a true sayin’, Pap,” Mustard grinned. “An’ dat reminds my mind. Marse Tom didn’t say nothin’ ’bout me gittin’ my supper nowhar.”
“White folks cain’t turn a dog in a meat-house or a nigger in a sto’-house an’ especk him to starve to death,” Pap suggested.
“An’ of co’se, white folks cain’t be mad ef de dog or de nigger gives a invite to his frien’,” Mustard grinned. “Come in, Pap, less git somepin to eat!”
In the rear of the store they switched on an electric light, set out an empty box to serve for a table, and began a search for food. There was plenty of it, and they helped themselves and each other with extravagant liberality.
For a long time utterance was impeded by food, but at last Pap Curtain managed to articulate a query:
“Mustard, wid all dis grub in dis ration-house, how come ole Miss Mildred Gaitskill is so skinny an’ Marse Tom ain’t no fatter dan he wus when we fust knowed him fawty year ago?”
“Fattenin’ hogs ain’t in luck,” Mustard told him philosophically. “When you gits all you wants to eat, look out for de butcher! Escusin’ dat, white folks ain’t studyin’ ’bout somepin to eat. Dey studies money.”
“Huh,” Pap sighed, as he rubbed his stomach, then rose and walked around the store to make room for more food. “I wouldn’t mind a invite to hold dis fer aconstantjob—plenty of steady sleep an’ reg’lar rations.”
“I’s got to whar I kin still chaw, but I cain’t swaller much mo’,” Mustard lamented. “Less hunt somepin kinder loose an’ little to eat, so it’ll fill up de cracks inside us!”
The hours passed.
At last Mustard leaned back in his chair. His stomach was gorged, his head blood-flushed until his temples throbbed like drums. He kicked over the box which had served as a table, thus dumping the cans and bottles and other empty receptacles into a corner of the store and rose to his feet.
“Whar is de seegaws in dis sto’?” Pap inquired sleepily.
“I’ll git ’em,” Mustard said.
Selecting the largest cigars in stock, he wanderedsleepily back to Pap Curtain. The clock in the court-house steeple tolled the hour. Mustard counted.
“Twelve!” he exclaimed. “Here we been eatin’ five hours an’ to-morrer is de secont day! Git outen dis sto’, Pap Curtain!”
Pap rose, and Mustard followed him to the rear door and shut him out.
Then, tossing his cigar aside, Mustard piled an armload of sacks in the corner, snapped off the electric light, and sprawled down upon his pallet, sinking instantly into a slumber like the lethargy of the gorged boa constrictor, or the inertia of the hibernating bear.
He was a sound sleeper.
Slatey the Skull was a gentleman of leisure and perverted education; he was also a nitroglycerin expert, making a specialty of the application of this sovereign explosive to burglar-proof safes.
He was a child of the congested cities, loving the noise and clatter of their streets, the whir of machinery, the hum and hustle of their myriad life. But tuberculosis clutched at his panting, crumbling lungs with the pitiless fingers of death, and the ravages of the disease had changed a naturally ruddy countenance into the emaciated, soapstone-coloredface which gave him the name among his fellows.
Under sentence of death, imposed, not by the law of the land which he defied, but by the law of life which defied him, he had wandered from the city to the deep woods and sparsely populated villages of the South as a wild goat leaves its fellows and crawls into some desolate mountain cave to languish and die alone.
Despairing of his own life, indifferent to the lives of others, he was a lone wolf, perilous, predaceous, as quick to strike and as deadly as a viper. His admiring fellows said of him that he could “smell money.”
Slipping like a shadow from the log-train which stopped for water at Tickfall shortly after midnight, he wandered up the crooked, silent, deserted streets toward the business portion of the village.
Pausing before the door of the Gaitskill store, his thin, flexible nostrils quivered like a rabbit’s nose. Flattening himself against the door like the wraith of a man, his keen eyes searched the streets, his acutely sensitive ears listened intently.
Then he turned, and with an ease like the magic of a sleight-of-hand performer, he opened the door and entered the store.
“I smell a nigger,” he muttered with a curse, as the stale odor of cigar smoke racked his frail body with noiseless coughing.
Leaving the front door unlocked, he walked noiselessly down the avenue between the countersto open the door in the rear. There he found Mustard Prophet sleeping on a pile of sacks, invisible to the eye, but easily vizualized by the trained mind of the Skull as he listened to Mustard’s stertorous breathing.
“A nigger,” he racked with his noiseless cough, “stuffed like a fat woman’s stocking, sleeping like a stiff!”
He walked back to the little office partitioned off in the middle of the store. His frail fingers fumbled with the combination knob of the safe for a moment, then caressed its top and sides.
“Forty years old,” he sighed, “and made of pot-metal. If I was not so weak, I’d turn it over and kick a hole in the bottom of it with my sore toe. As it is, I’ll have to work with this soup and cough like an alligator for a week with its fumes in my lungs.”
Ten minutes later the door of the safe swung crazily open, hanging upon a half-broken hinge.
The bony arm and hand of the Skull explored the contents. His fingers grasped the top of the coarse bag which Colonel Gaitskill had placed there a few hours before, and he lifted it out.
“No further seek its contents to disclose or draw its dollars from their frail abode,” the Skull parodied. “The simp put it all in one sack for me and tied the top with a rawhide string.”
His fingers fumbled the contents of the sack through the thick cloth.
“Gosh!” he sighed. “Gold and silver and a little dirty paper money—heavy as pig-iron—andI’m too weak to carry an empty pill-box across the street to a homeopathic doctor.”
Nevertheless, he took the bag with him as he started to leave. At the rear door, he paused at the pallet where Mustard lay sprawled out and a sardonic smile distorted his skull-like face.
“Behold the guardian of this gold!” he muttered. “Strange the South has been the fall guy for this sort of servant ever since the South began. Well, Cæsar had his Brutus, and every colonel has his coon!”
Then he stepped out into the lot and closed the door behind him.
There was the crack of a pistol, and a bullet plugged into the door-jamb.
“You missed, friend!” the Skull called tauntingly. “I had my sharp edge turned toward you!”
The night prowler in the Southern village seeking spoils is exposed to no danger by the night watchman sleeping sweetly on a soft stone step. The yeggman dreads the fox-hunters.
They leave town at sundown accompanied by friends, followed by dogs, comforted by the contents of sundry jugs. They are kept keyed up to alert wakefulness by the excitement of the chase and return only when the jugs are empty.
It was a party of fox-hunters, headed by Sheriff Flournoy, with whom Slatey the Skull had now to deal. Passing through the town on their return from the hunt they had heard the dull explosion in the store and had made an investigation. Theywere now in ambush, waiting for the appearance of the safe-blower.
It was Flournoy’s pistol which had roused the Skull to his danger.
But the Skull was not disturbed. Shifting his bag of money so that he carried it on his left arm as a woman carries a bundle, he slipped his automatic from his pocket.
Crouching low in the darkness and walking with the noiseless tread of a cat within ten feet of Flournoy, he passed unobserved by the sheriff out of the lot into the alley and on to the front of the store. The bullets zipped around him as he ran out of the alley toward the middle of the street, but the Skull’s first shot was upward at the electric street light which went out, leaving him sheltered by almost total darkness.
Running down the alley, Flournoy fired into that circle of darkness at a venture.
The answer of the Skull’s gun was instantaneous. The sheriff felt a jar which almost paralyzed his right arm. Making an investigation he uttered a low exclamation of wonder and admiration: The Skull’s bullet had struck and destroyed the sheriff’s weapon.
In the mean time the rest of the fox-hunters had been spreading out, trailing along the street in front of the store. In a moment half a dozen pistols began to shoot and the Skull was engaged in the battle of his life.
In the Louisiana villages promiscuous shooting upon the street at night is a fire-alarm. Rousedby such shooting, men quickly slip on their clothes, seize their own firearms, and run down the street toward the first alarm, firing into the air as they run, thus rousing the whole town.
All over Tickfall, men heard what they thought was a fire-signal from the business section of the village. Fearful of losing their stores and offices, they ran toward the fray, shouting and shooting, until Tickfall sounded like a battle with a thousand men engaged.
“The beggars are coming to town,” Slatey the Skull quoted with a skinny smile. “I’ll wait until the mob arrives, then slip through the crowd in the dark.”
But alas, the Skull was not acquainted with Sheriff Flournoy.
Adopting the old Indian trick of lying flat on the ground, thus throwing the object he was approaching against the sky so that he could see it, the sheriff with bones like an ox and a mouth as grim and cruel as a bear-trap was slowly crawling toward the sardonic creature of skin and bones, as frail and delicate as a girl, who sat sedately beside the stolen money-bag.
Suddenly Slatey screamed like a wildcat and sprang to his feet.
Wrestling with his feeble strength, shooting wildly, biting, clawing, he struggled in the bear-like hug of the giant sheriff. Then something snapped inside the Skull’s body and with a frightened “Ah!” he sank limply into the hands of his captor.
At that moment the street was filled with armedmen, white and black, looking for the conflagration. Explanations flew from lip to lip. Some one entered the Gaitskill store and turned on the lights.
Then Sheriff Flournoy entered carrying Slatey the Skull.
“Is he dead?” the crowd asked in one breath.
“I think not,” the sheriff said. “I did not shoot.”
“Gib him a leetle dram, Mister Johnnie,” Pap Curtain spoke up.
“Go over to my office and get my flask, Pap,” the sheriff commanded, as he tossed Curtain his office keys, “You’ll find it on my desk.”
Pap Curtain started after that flask at full speed. In the middle of the street, under the broken electric light, his foot struck a coarse canvas bag, he stumbled, fell headlong, butted a hitching post with a resounding whack and stayed right there.
Ten minutes later the crowd found him, unconscious, clutching the office keys in his cold hand.
One negro, a belated arrival, saw Pap Curtain fall.
He ran to Pap’s rescue, but never arrived. His foot also struck that bag. Stooping, he picked it up, felt of its contents, recognized the familiar rattle of coins, and promptly departed, taking that bag with him lest some other person fall over it and get hurt.
The sheriff had no sooner sent Pap Curtain after a flask than several were produced and tendered. The liquor, poured down the throat of Slatey,started a shudderlike cough and a bloody spume issued from the wounded man’s mouth. Then he spoke splutteringly:
“You broke a rib and caved it through the only good lung I have, Mr. Officer. I guess you win.”
“Where’s the money?” Flournoy demanded.
“I—ah—” A shuddering, racking cough stopped all speech and the pitiful creature struggled as if he were never to breathe again. At last he spoke:
“I’m suffering very much. Get a doctor—”
“Where’s the money?” several men asked in a chorus.
“That’s for you to find out,” the Skull answered, with a momentary flash of his old lawless spirit. Then weakly: “Get a doctor!”
“Where’s the money?” Colonel Gaitskill asked, bending over Slatey.
“Where’s the sawbones, Santa Claus?” Slatey mocked, coughing little flecks of blood off his lips.
“Get a doctor!” Gaitskill commanded sharply, glaring at the crowd.
Dr. Shuttle stepped forth, producing, with an important air, a pocket medical case containing a hypodermic needle and several vials of medicine.
Dr. Shuttle was young and very ambitious. He quickly made a hypodermic injection into the Skull’s side. It eased the criminal’s pain. In fact he has never suffered since. In short, he died.
“Where’s the money?” the sheriff demanded again, shaking the lifeless form.
The Skull’s mouth drooped open in a grotesqueimitation of a laugh. Slatey had nothing more to say.
“Thunderation!” the sheriff exclaimed in a mighty voice. “Hunt around for that money-bag. This fellow did not get away with it.”
Oil lanterns were quickly procured and the crowd searched the street, the alley, the lot in the rear and the neighboring places. They discovered nothing but the limp form of Pap Curtain.
While the crowd was gathering around Curtain, from inside the store a mighty shout arose:
“Here’s the other one, Flournoy!”
The crowd plunged into the store, surged to the rear and gathered in a tight circle around the prostrate form of Mustard Prophet.
He was still asleep!
A number of eager feet kicked Mustard Prophet into wakefulness.
As many willing hands assisted him to his feet. He stood among them, glaring owlishly, blinded by the light, confused by the noise, frightened by the unaccountable presence of most of the male inhabitants of Tickfall.
“’Scuse me, white folks,” he began. “I shore is befuddled-up by all dis here gwines-on. Marse Tom say fer me not to let nobody in dis here sto’-house.”
“Where’s that money?” a voice demanded.
“Which?” Mustard asked.
“Where’s that money you and the white man got?”
“I ain’t got no money, white folks,” Mustard declared. “You-all ax Marse Tom! An’ Marse Tom say me not to let nobody in dis sto’—”
“Aw, come off!” another voice exclaimed. “You ain’t been sleeping through all this racket. Tell us where the bag of money is!”
“Befo’ Gawd, white folks!” Mustard replied. “I ain’t got no bag of nothin’.”
Then Mustard saw Colonel Gaitskill. “Bless gracious, Marse Tom!” he pleaded. “Come here and fotch me away from dese pesticatin’ white gemmans. Dey examinates me ’bout money like I done sold all de Nigger-Heel cotton ’thout turnin’ in de tickets—”
Colonel Gaitskill whispered to Flournoy.
“Put him in jail, John, and after the crowd disperses, we’ll slip around there and talk to him.”
Flournoy promptly acted upon this suggestion, and on the way picked up Pap Curtain, now restored to consciousness—Dr. Shuttle had had better luck with Pap—and incarcerated them both.
The crowd followed and watched the sheriff until he locked the two negroes behind the bars.
“Nothing more doing to-night, friends,” he announced in his drawly voice. “We’ll all go to bed and discuss the matter to-morrow. Good-night.”
He walked down the street toward his home.The crowd gathered in little groups, talked for a few minutes and dissolved.
Colonel Gaitskill returned to the store, issued orders to his clerks concerning the disposition of the Skull’s body, and went home.
Just at daybreak Sunday morning, Gaitskill and Flournoy, after another fruitless search for the lost money, entered the jail.
They found Mustard and Pap Curtain sitting side by side, steeped in deepest gloom. Gaitskill became the spokesman:
“Where were you all last night, Mustard?”
“I wus in de sto’-house, Marse Tom. I didn’t leave dat place a minute till de white folks tuck me to jail.”
“What did you do after I left?”
“At de fust offstartin’, I et.”
“What did you eat?” Gaitskill asked, wondering what food could produce slumber as profound as Mustard seemed to have experienced.
“I et two cans of sawdines, an’ a can of devilish ham, an’ a hunk of cheese.”
“What else?”
“I et some crackers an’ some beelony sausage, an’ two awanges, an’ fo’ bananers, an’ a box of candy.”
“What else?”
“Nothin’ else, Marse Tom. Of co’se, I kinder nibbled aroun’ a little. I foun’ some raisins an’ a diffunt kind of cheese whut smelt like somepin dead to me, an’ some cakes wid white icin’ on de top, an’ a can of oystyers.”
“Did you get enough to satisfy your appetite?”
“Satisfy—oh, yes, suh, I felt powerful well fed.”
The sheriff broke into a loud laugh.
“No use to cackle, Mister Johnnie. I’s tellin’ de trufe. I shore had a plenty.”
“What did you do next?” Gaitskill inquired.
“I fotch out one of dem long Perique seegaws an’ lit up.”
Both white men had begun to laugh. Mustard knew there was no harm coming to a negro from white men with the giggles. So he dismissed his fears and became expansive in his remarks:
“Dem Perique seegaw stogies ain’t as good as dey looks, Marse Tom. No man ain’t got a sucker in his mouf strong enough to make ’em draw, an’ when dey does draw, no man ain’t got no cornstitution powerful enough to stan’ de smoke.”
“What did you do next, Mustard?”
“I laid down on dem oat-sacks an’ went to sleep.”
Gaitskill had known Mustard so long that he could read the negro’s mind like a book. Although no question had been asked about the robbery, he was sure that Mustard had nothing to do with it. Then he began to explain to Mustard:
“Somebody robbed my store last night, Mustard.”
“Lawdymussy, Marse Tom! Bad luck is shore kotch you by de forelock. I’s powerful sorry to hear dem bad news.”
“The man who blew open the safe was killed in a fight, but we can’t find the bag of money,” Gaitskill continued.
“Dar now!” Mustard declared with unction. “Mo’ bad luck! It ’pears like it’s jes’ sorrer piled on top of sorrer in dis here grief-strucken-down worl’. I’s shore sorry, Marse Tom—”
“The reason I wanted you to sleep in that store was to guard that safe.”
“Hol’ on dar, Marse Tom,” Mustard said, coming quickly to his own defense. “You didn’t say me no words ’bout dat safe. All you said wus: ‘I want you to sleep in dis sto’ to-night.’ Ain’t dat so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, suh, I done it. I done it fur a fack. I done jes’ whut you tole me. I sleeped in de sto’.”
“That’s a fact,” Flournoy chuckled, imitating the negro’s mode of speech: “Dat’s whut he done!”
“I’se sorry, Marse Tom,” Mustard said, “but I ain’t to blame.”
Sheriff Flournoy looked at his watch.
“Look here, Tom,” he said. “If we are going to find the money, we’d better let this sorry son of sorrow skedaddle. He ain’t got it.”
Mustard showed that he favored the sheriff’s suggestion by rising to his feet with alacrity.
“Mister Sheriff Johnnie—” Pap Curtain, who had been a silent listener, began plaintively.
“Shut up, Pap,” the sheriff interrupted. “Youcan come, too. I can’t keep a nigger in jail for falling down and bumping his head.”
The four walked out of the jail door together. At the door Mustard asked:
“Marse Tom, please, suh, dem white gemmans pestered me so stout las’ night dat I couldn’t git my hat an’ my cawnet-hawn befo’ dey tuck me to jail. Will you open de sto’ so I kin git ’em?”
Consenting to this request, Gaitskill opened the door, and said:
“Go in and get them, Mustard.”
A minute later, within the store, there was a loud whoop and a wailing cry:
“Oo-oo-ee! Oh, my blessid gracious goodness! He’p, Marse Tom, fer Gawd’s sake!”
The two white men ran into the store and found Prophet down upon his knees, hiding the horror before him by shielding his eyes with his hands, which was the still form of Slatey the Skull outstretched upon a cooling-board in the office.
Mustard had found his hat near his pallet of oat-sacks, but his beloved cornet was on top of a desk in the office.
“Get up, Mustard,” Gaitskill commanded, striking him with his foot. “This is the man who blew open the safe.”
The big-hearted, giant-bodied sheriff gazed upon the criminal, then stepped over and felt the emaciated hands and arms.
“He was as frail as a girl, Tom,” he said, with a note of pity in his voice. “But he fought like a snake. I simply had to crush him.”
“Oh, lawdymussy, take me away from dis here terr’ble place!” Mustard bawled, kneeling before the broken office safe as before an altar.
Handing the negro his cornet, Gaitskill made him rise, and followed him to the door, where Pap Curtain stood pop-eyed and trembling.
“Marse Tom,” Mustard quavered, “I’s gwine leave dis land of sorrer. I ain’t never comin’ back no mo’ escusin’ you come atter me an’ fotch me back.”
“Me, too!” Pap Curtain piped.
The two white men watched the progress of the two negroes as they hastened down the street.
“Mustard didn’t have a thing to do with it,” Flournoy said.
Gaitskill nodded his assent.
“Marse Tom say I warn’t to blame and Sheriff Flournoy turned me loose. But dem white gemmans whut kicked me an’ blimblammed me in de sto’house las’ night ain’t saynothin’. Mebbe dey’s gwine hang me yit. I dunno. I ain’t gwine be aroun’ handy till dey gits deir minds sottled dat theyain’t,” Mustard Prophet declared.
“Ef dey finds out dat you and me wus bofe in dat house stuffin’ ourse’ves wid vittles, dey’ll take a notion dat deyam,” Pap Curtain asserted.
“I’s done heerd de call of de migrashun nigger, Pap,” Mustard said mournfully.
“Go wid me to my cabin an’ lemme git my trombone-hawn,” Pap replied. “Den I’ll mosey wid you.”
The two spent the day under the willows on the banks of the Dorfoche Bayou, lamenting their luck.
“Pap,” Mustard said, “de good Book say dat troubles is seasoning. Pussimmons ain’t good till dey’s fros’-bit. But it ’pears to me like I done had my sheer of sorrer.”
“Me, too,” Pap agreed. “Now I argufies dat de only fitten occupation for a sorrowful man is fishin’. Less go ketch some grasshoppers and see kin we land a few trouts.”
“All right,” Mustard said. “But I favors fishin’ to’rds de railroad bridge, because we’s gwine ketch de souf-boun’ freight.”
Just at dark, the whistle of the freight train screeched for the Dorfoche crossing. Mustard and Pap tossed their poles into the middle of the stream and ten minutes later were aboard an empty freight car, nursing their musical instruments in their laps, bound for an unknown destination.
The fact that the side door of the car which they had caught was open would have published to an experienced traveler that that particular car was not going very far.
When Mustard and Pap woke up, they thought at first that the train had stopped.
Then peeping out cautiously, they ascertainedthat the engine had sidetracked their car and gone on. Finding themselves in the middle of an immense sugar plantation, they climbed on top of the car to reconnoiter.
Their first familiar sight was a broad, muddy river.
“Dar now!” Pap exulted. “Dat’s ole Massasap. Home’s up de ribber.”
“I bet dis here plantation ain’t fur from some town,” Mustard reasoned. “Less hoof it up de river an’ see kin we find some place whut ain’t so lonesome.”
Picking up their musical instruments, they walked to the levee and turned upstream.
“I smells Tickfall,” Mustard muttered, sniffing the air. “’Tain’t no matter how fur it is, dis river goes past it.”
“I hopes Tickfall ain’t smellin’ us,” Pap declared. “I’s got it proned into me dat we made a good riddunce outen dat place.”
Two miles up the levee and around a bend in the river, they came to a little town squatting like a bullfrog under the protection levee, its gutters running constantly with the seepage water from the dike, its few houses clothed in river fog and standing on high foundations like stilts, the paint upon them cracking and their eaves dripping with moisture.
“Dis here town looks like a spindle-shanked crane,” Mustard declared in disgust. “Dem legs under dem houses is shore fixed fer wadin’.”
Then a prominent building came into view,and Pap Curtain stopped like a man turned to stone.
“I knows dis here town,” Pap declared. “Dey calls it Kerlerac.”
“How fur from Tickfall?” Mustard inquired.
“Thuty mile.”
“Come on, den. Less meet deir ’quaintance.”
“Naw,suh!” Pap protested. “You see dat high buildin’ over dar? Two nigger womans helt me up in front of dat Red El’phunt s’loon an’ robbed me of a dollar an’ fo’ bits. One of ’em helt a razor at my neck, an’ de yuther tuck my loose change.”
“Dat don’t make no diffunce,” argued Mustard. “Dey ain’t dar now.”
“I reckin not!” Pap said positively. “I kotch ’em when dey wusn’t lookin’ and helt ’em by deir hair and bumped deir heads togedder! An’ what you reckin dem womans done? Dey paid a white lawyer my own good money to git me in a lawsuit wid de cote-house, an’ dey put me in de chain-gang fer six mont’s.”
“Hear dat, now!” Mustard exclaimed. “Bad luck!”
“Shore wus. But I didn’t stay dar no time. I lef’ dat chain-gang in fo’ days. Dat’s how come I ain’t so glad to see dis town agin,” Pap said. Then after a moment’s thought, he suggested: “I tells you how to do, Mustard. You take yo’ cawnet-hawn an’ go out an’ pick de town.”
“Pick it?”
“Stop on all de cornders, play ’em a toon, den pass de hat,” Pap explained. “I’ll set down herean’ res’ my mind till you gits a little money, an’ in de nex’ town we goes to I’ll do de pickin’.”
So Mustard walked up the levee toward the town alone.
In the Red Elephant saloon, he said to the bartender:
“Mister, dese here white genmans need wakin’ up dis mawnin’. Lemme toot a toon or two?”
“Crack away, nigger.”
A few experimental strains issued from the cornet, followed by a high, piercing note; then Mustard started the music of a song everywhere dear to the heart of the Mississippi River negro: