The sunshine lay hot upon the sand in the negro settlement called Dirty-Six when Dainty Blackum arose from her bed, dressed, and walked out into the yard. In the rear of Ginny Babe Chew’s house was a large number of fig and pecan-trees, and under the shade of one of these trees, patiently waiting and smoking a cigarette, was Skeeter Butts.
For a moment Dainty was surprised; then she reflected that she had expected some man to be there that morning, as some man had been thereevery morning, and she would have been disappointed if she had not found one.
But Skeeter Butts had never been there before. She had heard that he was very susceptible to the charms of women, but up to this time she had received the devoted attention of only two men—Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg.
She came over and sat down beside Skeeter.
“Yistiddy wus a busy day fer me, Skeeter,” she began. “Two men tole me dey loved me an’ axed me to marry ’em. Dat’s a pretty good starter.”
Skeeter had entertained no idea of making love to Dainty when he called to see her, having had an entirely different purpose. But as he did not know exactly how to approach the subject which he wished to discuss, he decided to follow her line of conversation, hoping to direct it at a later time.
“Yes’m, dat’s so,” Skeeter remarked without enthusiasm. “De fack is, I wus so busy dat I looked over de chance to ax you to marry me yistiddy, so I comed early dis mawnin’ to git in a word ’bout dat——”
“I tole de two yuther men dey wus losin’ time, an’ I tells you dat same word in eggsvance.”
“Of co’se, I don’t expeck you to fall right in wid dat suggestion,” Skeeter hastened to say. “But I wants you to know whut way I is leanin’.”
“You done took a notion to lean mighty sudden,” Dainty snapped. “You better lean de yuther way. You ain’t able to suppote no wife.”
“Whut’s de use of gittin’ able to suppote somepinyou ain’t got?” Skeeter asked absently. “Us owns a hoss befo’ us buys any hoss-feed.”
The girl made no reply.
After a while Skeeter added another remark in an absent-minded way:
“Sometimes niggers buys a hoss an’ depen’s on stealin’ de hoss-feed. Dey always gits in trouble wid de white folks, too, when dey does dat.”
Instantly the girl’s manner changed completely. She bit her lips and her hands began to tremble. She looked as if dizziness and weakness were about to overcome her.
“When a nigger gits in trouble wid de white folks, it’s all off wid him,” Skeeter blundered on, his mind upon Hitch Diamond, and all unconscious of the impression he was making upon the girl beside him. “Sometimes luck is wid him an’ he kin run off, but most often he——”
Suddenly Skeeter broke off and looked at Dainty with popping eyes. For the moment he had forgotten the tragedy in the girl’s life, and now he was struck speechless, and merely sat there and stared and gasped. At last he murmured:
“I done slopped de wrong pig!”
“Dat’s right, Skeeter,” the girl said in a bitter tone. “De best thing you kin do is to ramble outen dis yard an’ don’t come back no more.”
“I didn’t mean nothin’, Dainty,” Skeeter said humbly. “I’s done had a heap of trouble, an’ it ’pears like I ain’t got my real good sense.”
“Dat’s a fack,” Dainty said.
“I won’t never do it no mo’,” Skeeter pleaded.
“Dat’s a fack,” Dainty announced. She arose and walked into the house.
Skeeter remained seated upon the bench, trying to think up some way to square himself with the girl, but his mind would not work with its usual facility.
Then in the yard on the other side of the house there was a loud, angry squall, followed by the wild, frightened squawking of a hen, and Ginny Babe Chew waddled around to where Skeeter was sitting.
At the corner of the house there was a barrel of rain-water setting under a gutter-spout, and into this water Ginny Babe ducked the hen viciously a number of times.
She tossed the hen on the ground, where it lay gasping for air and half drowned.
Skeeter sat and cackled like another hen.
“Shut up, you little devil!” Ginny Babe squalled. “I’ll ketch you an’ do you de same way!”
“Whut ails de hen, Ginny?” Skeeter laughed.
“She wants to sot, an’ I ain’t got no eggs to put under her,” Ginny whooped. “I locked her up in de wood-house an’ she foun’ a ole china door-knob an’ sot on dat. I put her in de corn-crib an’ she sot down on a lot of corn-cobs an’ tried to hatch ’em out. I’s ducked her in dat barrel of water ’bout fo’teen times, an’ it ain’t done no good whatsumever. I neverdidsee such a fool!”
“Why don’t you try on somepin else?” Skeeter giggled.
“Whut’s dat?” Ginny whooped.
“Pour a leetle coal-ile on her tail an’ sot it on fire,” Skeeter snickered. “I figger she won’t sot no more atter dat.”
“By gosh, I’ll do it!” Ginny Babe howled.
She walked over and pushed the hen with her foot.
“You don’t git no coal-ile on yo’ tail yit!” she bellowed. “But as soon as dem feathers gits dry, I got a good mind to try it!”
Skeeter looked at Ginny Babe Chew, and a cold chill ran down his spine. She was the one woman in Tickfall of whom every negro was afraid. She was a wicked, vicious, horrible old woman, whose little, green pig eyes glowed poisonously through the rolls of facial flesh. She possessed an ugly and venomous laugh, and generally ended her profane and vicious remarks with an irritating chuckle.
Ginny knew the history of all the people in Tickfall parish, both white and black, and most of her conversation on ordinary occasions was a discussion of their characters. She especially loved to drive nails in the coffins of moribund reputations.
Now she sat down heavily and began a conversation upon her favorite theme.
“I done wucked in de house of eve’y white man in dis parish whut is able to hire he’p,” she bawled. “I knows all de fambly secrets, an’ I done got my little, bullet eye on all de fambly skelingtons. I’s made acquaintance wid all de niggers in dis parish, too, an’ I tells you dis—some niggers is bad, an’ yuther niggers is wusser; but dar ain’t no goodniggers, livin’ or dead! I knows ’em! So I spends my happy old age findin’ out all de bad I kin about ’em!”
“Yes’m,” Skeeter gasped, looking at her with frightened eyes.
“All you niggers in Tickfall—whoof!” the old woman exploded.
“I hopes we is as good as most niggers,” Skeeter said timidly.
“Whoof!” the old woman exploded again. “Does you want me to tell you whut I knows aboutyou, Skeeter Butts?”
“Fer Gawd’s sake, no’m!” Skeeter quavered. “My memory is powerful good.”
The woman’s fat body shook with silent laughter and her little pig eyes glowed like emeralds. She laid a heavy, fat hand on Skeeter’s knee.
“I’s got a hoodoo face, Skeeter!” she bawled. “When a nigger looks at my fat mug, all de meanness in him comes right out on his face so I kin read it like de white folks reads a book. Yes, suh, I got a hoodoo face!”
While Skeeter Butts sat beside her and trembled, wondering what to say, and very much wishing himself somewhere else, Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg came around to the side of the house where they were sitting.
“You want me to cornfess yo’ sins fer you, Dinner Gaze?” Ginny Babe howled, turning her green eyes upon him.
“You don’t know nothin’.” Dinner asserted, gazing at her with his beady eyes without a traceof fear, his black, dough-like face as expressionless as when Hitch Diamond had first seen it.
“Whoof!” the old woman exploded the third time. Shifting her mountainous fat to her feet and standing up, she glared at Dinner Gaze in a perfect fury; then, to Skeeter’s surprise, her voice changed completely from its bellowing tone to an intonation as soft as Dinner’s own. She muttered aloud, looking at Dinner with intent gaze as if she were seeing him for the first time:
“Naw, suh, I don’t know nothin’ agin you!”
“I gambles fer a livin’,” Dinner grinned. “Dat ain’t no highbrow job. I follers de races an’ hangs aroun’ prize-fighters, an’ drinks a little booze an’ plays a little craps an’ coon-can, but I ain’t got nothin’ to hide from nobody.”
“Dar now!” Ginny whooped in a triumphant voice. “Didn’t I jes’ tole you dat I had a hoodoo face? Nobody kin look at me an’ hide deir sins!”
“I ain’t allowin’ nobody to low-rate me, neither,” Tucky Sugg proclaimed. “You wanter cornfess my sins, Sister Ginny?”
Ginny broke out into a loud, whooping laugh. “You ain’t got no sins, Tucky,” she guffawed. “You ain’t nothin’ but a idjut—an’ no limb didn’t fall on you, neither. You was nachel-bawned dat way. Idjuts ain’t responsible!”
Chuckling to herself, she picked up her fast-reviving hen, carried it back to a large hen-house on the other side of her home, and threw it inside the door. Closing the door she waddled back, and waved a fat hand at the three men. “Don’tfergit dat Ginny’s got a hoodoo face, niggers!” she bawled.
“Huh!” Dinner Gaze grunted. “Listen to dat ole fat fool!”
“Come on, niggers,” Tucky Sugg said in a disgusted tone. “Less git away from dis place.”
As the three men walked down the street, Skeeter said: “Dinner, is you ever had any expe’unce ’tendin’ bar?”
“Yes, suh.”
“Would you wish to he’p Pap Curtain take keer of my saloom fer de nex’ ten days?” he asked next.
“It’ll suit me fine,” Dinner told him.
They discussed the business for a little while, then Skeeter left them at the next corner.
“I leaves it wid you an’ Pap, Dinner,” Skeeter said. “I needs a leetle rest an’ I’s gwine to trabbel some.”
For the next four days Pap Curtain and Dinner Gaze tended bar in the Hen-Scratch saloon for Skeeter Butts.
Vinegar Atts and Tucky Sugg started a protracted meeting in the old Shoofly Church which was attended by throngs who listened with bated breath to Vinegar’s bawling exhortations to righteousness based upon the horrible example of HitchDiamond, who found himself in a predicament where there was “no hope.”
Meanwhile Skeeter went to New Orleans, and to Sawtown. He tracked Hitch Diamond from the moment he left Tickfall to go to the prize-fight until he returned to Tickfall, bareheaded, barefooted, with his hands manacled behind him, and under the escort of the officers of the law.
In both places he dodged Sheriff John Flournoy, who was also conducting an investigation. Both were on the same mission, and Skeeter saw Flournoy a dozen times at different places.
Skeeter and Flournoy returned to Tickfall, crushed and hopeless, appalled at the array of evidence which Hitch Diamond had to confront at his coming trial. It was not a pretense, but a fact, that Hitch Diamond had no hope.
It was almost dark when Skeeter climbed wearily off the train at Tickfall and started up the street toward Dirty-Six. He overtook Sheriff John Flournoy walking slowly up the street.
“Whut is Hitch’s chances now, Marse John?” he asked.
“He has none,” Flournoy replied. “There is no longer a shadow of doubt in my mind that Hitch Diamond committed the crime with which he is charged.”
“Yes, suh, dat’s de way it looks,” Skeeter agreed sadly. He dropped behind, stopped, and let the sheriff go on alone. He stood leaning against a fence for a while, wondering what to do next. Finally he said to himself:
“I’s gwine to Ginny Babe Chew’s cabin an’ narrate her all I is found out. Mebbe dat ole hoodoo face kin see mo’ hope dan I kin.”
He passed the Hen-Scratch saloon and peeped into the window, where he saw Pap and Dinner Gaze playing cards at a small table. He passed the Shoofly Church, where he heard the voice of Vinegar Atts bellowing like a lost cow. On the edge of the settlement he entered the yard of Ginny Babe Chew’s home, and found Dainty sitting alone upon the porch.
Ginny Babe was in the hen-house rendering profane ministrations to the same old hen which was still of a mind to brood, whether there was anything to hatch or not.
That hen had entertained Ginny Babe for a week. She had exhausted every known method to break up the fowl’s desire to “set,” dousing it in water, ducking it in ashes, tying a long red trailer of wool to its feet, and other things of that general nature. Now she stood growling profanity, wondering what else she could do to the obstinate old biddy.
Suddenly she thought of the suggestion made by Skeeter Butts: “Pour coal-ile on her tail an’ sot her on fire!”
She picked up an old rag lying in the yard, wrapped it around the squawking hen’s tail, carried the fowl to the back porch, where she found an oil-can, and saturated the rag well with the petroleum.
Then she struck a match and set the rag afire.
The startled hen fluttered out of her arms, ran straight into the hen-house, shed the oil-soaked, blazing rag with most of her tail feathers, and ran out of the hen-house into the high weeds.
But the burning rag left in the hen-house got busy with the loose straw and the other dry trash, and in a moment the whole house was in a blaze!
Ginny was famous for the noise she could make with her throat. Her very name was a perversion of the word for that noisy hen the guinea, and from her earliest childhood this word had been indicative of her chief faculty. But on this occasion she broke all previous records for racket.
“Fire! Fire! Fire!” she began.
What she said after that and the noises she made cannot enter into this narrative because they cannot be reproduced in print.
The dry grass, the straw, the inflammable trash, the dusty accumulations of years, due to Ginny’s idea that the way to clean up her yard was to sweep everything inside the hen-house—all was afire and blazing merrily.
Skeeter and Dainty heard her wails and ran around the house. Then Skeeter grabbed a tree with both hands, spread his alligator mouth to its utmost limit, and laughed himself into hysterics.
The portion of Tickfall occupied by the whites had water-works, and adequate fire protection. The negro settlement known as Dirty-Six had no water, but was protected from fire by a chemical engine. There was a fire-engine house, a polebeside it with a bell on top, and a rope suspended from the bell within reach of the hand.
When the engine-house was first erected four years before, the negroes had waited rather impatiently for some one’s house to catch on fire. They wanted to see their new engine in operation. Nothing caught fire, not even a chicken-coop. For four years the bell at the engine-house had not been rung.
Then, on some occasion which called for a celebration on the part of the negroes, they had asked and had been given permission to take the chemical wagon out, attach the hose, and sprinkle the street, merely to show that the hose would actually squirt water and the engine pump it.
After the celebration the apparatus was dragged back and placed in the engine-house, and the inhabitants of Dirty-Six resumed their watchful waiting.
Now the cry of “Fire!” echoed through the settlement.
It was caught up on every corner. Negroes seized their shotguns and pistols and ran down the street, firing them into the air—the fire-signal in all Southern villages.
Vinegar Atts, standing in the pulpit of the Shoofly Church, paused in the midst of a fiery exhortation, listened to the cry of “Fire!” ringing through the settlement.
“Fire!” Vinegar bellowed, and started in a lope for the street, leading all the congregation in the race. They, with the other inhabitants ofDirty-Six, gladly assembled, not at the scene of the fire, but at the engine-house!
“Ring de bell!” a hundred voices bawled.
The bell-rope was gone. Some little piccaninny had needed a rope to tie his dog and had helped himself.
Two or three boys tried to climb the post and ring the bell, but they could not reach it.
“Open de door an’ fotch out de engyne!” the crowd whooped.
Forty men ran their hands into their pockets and brought them out empty. They did not have the key to the door. They had never had the key. The action was mechanical and unconscious.
Who had the key? No one knew. It had been two years since any one had entered the building. The door was locked and the key was lost.
“Bust de door down!” was the next call from the crowd.
Strong shoulders were pressed against the fragile door, and the crash of its timbers was answered by the shouts of the people and the onrush of the crowd. They laid hold upon the rope and pulled the machine to the scene of the fire.
Down the alley by the side of the house they ran, broke down the fence and pulled the machine into the yard. With many shouts they unwound the hose, attached it to the engine, turned the faucets and began to pump.
From the hose came a long whistling sound of air:
“Whee-ee-ee-e!”
Not a drop of chemical water. The celebration two years before had exhausted the chemical, and the engine had never been recharged. The hen-house burned without interruption.
Ginny Babe Chew turned toward that crowd of heroic negro firemen, and the pumps of her profanity worked without a hitch as she poured out a stream of sulphurous and vitriolic language upon their luckless heads. Skeeter Butts still hung to the tree with both hands, laughing with whoops like a yelling Comanche.
The firemen laid hold upon their chemical machine and dragged it out of the yard.
Suddenly Skeeter’s laughter ended with a gurgle of choked surprise. With his mouth still open wide, he gazed upward at a little dormer window which looked out of the attic of Ginny Babe Chew’s home. Slowly his hair rose up on his head, and cold chills ran down his spine.
The light reflected from the burning hen-house clearly revealed a male human face at the dormer window!
The man was looking down into the yard, watching the crowd, watching the fire, and at times grinning at something he saw. Skeeter watched that face for two or three minutes; its clear outlines were stamped indelibly upon his mind. He had never seen the negro before!
Then he sprang to the side of Vinegar Atts and squalled:
“Come on up-stairs wid me, Vinegar—quick!”
The two ran into the house. Skeeter took hisautomatic pistol from his pocket, and leading the way, ran up the little, narrow stairs which led to the attic. They pushed open the door of the room and entered.
The room was empty!
Skeeter ran to the window and looked out, just as he had seen the strange negro do. Instantly the fat face of Ginny Babe Chew was raised to the window, her green pig eyes glowed malevolently, and her fat fists were clenched and raised in malediction.
“Come out of dat attic, you little yellow-faced debbil!” she whooped. “I’ll bust yo’ neck!”
On the first Tuesday in September the open spaces in front and on the sides of the Tickfall courthouse filled up early with a crowd of negroes. It was the occasion of the opening of the criminal term of the district court, and all witnesses and talesmen were called to court for the trial of Hitch Diamond, charged with murder, against the peace and dignity of the commonwealth of Louisiana and the statutes made and provided.
The witnesses and talesmen already sat in the court-room, along with as many other people, mostly colored, as could squeeze in there. Even now, at nine o’clock in the morning, the heat of that ill-ventilated room was stifling, the odor wasoverpowering. Men sat on the bench seats, on the back of the benches, on the ledges of the windows; they stood in the aisles, in the corridors, on the stairways, and were ranged in rows along the soiled and dusty walls.
Inside the low railing which divided the room, and nearest to the chairs which the jurors were to occupy, Hitch Diamond sat at a long table with Goldie Curtain by his side. In that crowd of people, either white or black, Goldie was the one splotch of vivid coloring—her face and hands and neck a beautiful orange in color, and her half-caste beauty most striking and attractive. Hitch sat beside the table as stolid and indifferent as a wooden man, but Goldie trembled, her nervous fingers plaited in and out of each other like squirming snakes; she was scared and shrinking, pitiable and lonely.
Just outside the low railing sat Ginny Babe Chew and Dinner Gaze, directly behind the broad back of Hitch Diamond. Ginny slowly slapped at her fat face with a turkey-wing fan. Her big mouth was clamped shut like a steel trap, and her little green, greedy, pig eyes glared through the rolls of facial fat with baleful, condemning gaze upon everything and everybody around her.
A little farther away from Hitch, but on the same front seat with Ginny Chew and Dinner Gaze, sat the Reverend Vinegar Atts and Tucky Sugg.
There was a window behind the jury-box, so that the light falling over the heads of the jurorswould fall full upon the faces of the witnesses as they sat in the chair, and would illumine every line in the faces of the lawyers as they presented their sides to the jury.
On the opposite side of the room there was another window, and within this window, sitting precariously on the ledge, was Pap Curtain. He had asked and obtained permission from Sheriff Flournoy to sit within the bar on the ground that it was his son-in-law who was being tried for his life.
Across from Hitch Diamond the district attorney sat at another long table to represent the cause of the State. Tall, urbane, white-haired, with the reputation of being a pitiless prosecutor of criminals, Dan Davazec was confident and jaunty. He fussed about busily, arranging and rearranging the table in front of him, shoving aside the water-pitcher, the ink-bottle, a pile of law-books with freckled-leather covers, as a battleship strips her decks for action.
“It’s a cinch, Sam,” he chuckled to the editor of the TickfallWhoop. “Dead open-and-shut!”
Davazec had tried in vain to find a wife, or mother, or sisters of the night-watchman for whose murder Hitch Diamond was to be tried. He wanted somebody to lend force and eloquence to his plea by sitting before the jury dressed in black and wearing a long, thick mourning veil. But the murdered man apparently had no kinsmen, so Davazec lacked these eloquent figures of desolation and sorrow.
But the two owners of the Sawtown mill sat at the table beside Davazec, and the room in the rear of the judge’s bench was crowded with witnesses. Davazec felt the importance of his place and the certain triumph of his cause, and he swelled and expanded in his clothes at the thought of how helpful this day’s proceedings would be to him when he announced himself for reëlection.
From his office in the rear the judge entered the court-room, followed by a clerk bearing a few law-books and some sheets of paper and a large palm-leaf fan. Judge Haddan was a pale, sickly looking man with a weak voice, trembling hands, and stooped shoulders. But his head was massive and Websterian, and his eyes glowed like the eyes of some jungle beast. No man within the borders of the State commanded more respect as a lawyer and a jurist.
Hitch Diamond raised his massive head and eyed the judge with the stolid gaze of a stupid horse. Goldie gasped, and laced and interlaced her nervous fingers in her lap.
The opening ceremonies of the court were soon over. No one paid any attention to the few formalities, for they were all hastening to get at the thing of big interest.
The clerk called the case of the CommonwealthversusHitch Diamond.
“We are ready, your honor,” Dan Davazec said in his clear voice.
“Where is your counsel, Hitch Diamond?” Judge Haddan asked.
“I ain’t got none, boss,” Hitch answered.
“Do you wish me to assign you counsel?” Haddan inquired.
Hitch stood up and scratched his woolly head.
“Boss,” he said, in a sad tone, “one time when yo’ leetle gal got sick an’ you lived out on yo’ plantation in de country, I done you a leetle favor. Does you remember, boss?”
Haddan looked straight at Hitch Diamond while his nervous fingers drummed upon the arms of his chair. He seemed not to have heard what Hitch had said.
“Do you wish me to assign you counsel?” he asked again.
“Boss,” Hitch continued, “when yo’ little gal got sick, de water had done riz up an’ de Dorfoche Bayou wus seben miles wide—an’ you axed me to go atter de dorctor. I waded an’ swum dat bayou—I got acrost dat seben mile of water—I fotch de dorctor—an’ yo’ little gal got well. Boss, you tole me den, dat ef I ever needed any he’p, you would he’p me at any cost—an’ boss, befo’ Gawd, now is yo time!”
Hitch Diamond sat down at the table.
Involuntarily Judge Haddan looked at the State’s attorney; their eyes met, and Davazec murmured, “Don’t that nigger beat hell!”
“Do you wish me to assign counsel for you, Hitch?” Judge Haddan asked for the third time.
“Naw, suh, boss!” Hitch said. “I think you an’ me had better law dis case togedder!”
“Do you plead guilty or not guilty?” Haddan asked.
Hitch grinned.
“Ain’t dat jes’ whut we is come to try, boss?” he asked.
“The defendant pleads not guilty!” Judge Haddan announced with an amused grimace at the State’s attorney.
Then the clerk called the name of a talesman.
In an hour the jury was complete. Hitch Diamond left that work entirely in the hands of Dan Davazec and Judge Haddan. Whenever the judge excused a talesman from service, Hitch smiled, and felt that the judge was certainly winning the case for him!
Then for two hours the crowded court-room of people sat in breathless silence, while District Attorney Davazec drove nail after nail into the gallows which should hang Hitch Diamond. It was a savage and pitiless prosecution, not because of the efforts of Davazec, but because of the force of the testimony, developing a chain of evidence without a weak or missing link. The jurors, grim, silent, attentive, fixed their eyes upon each witness, and when the witness-chair was empty, they looked down at the floor.
Not one of them glanced at Hitch Diamond. Jurymen don’t like to watch a man whom they are making up their minds to condemn to death.
Hitch listened to the evidence without a word or question to a single witness. If Judge Haddan asked a question, Hitch grinned. He seemednever to comprehend the effect of the statements that were being made.
Dan Davazec arose and announced with dramatic emphasis:
“Your honor, the State closes!”
The crowd in the court-room drew a long breath; a humming murmur like a breeze in the tree-tops swept over the heads of the people.
Hitch Diamond arose.
“Boss,” he announced to the judge, “Mister Danny Davazec is shore done hisse’f proud, an’ all dem white men is tole de truth—as fur as dey knows it. I closes up de State’s case, too!”
A snicker sounded from the rear benches, where an assortment of white toughs and loafers had congregated for gratuitous entertainment.
The jury stared at the floor.
“Have you any witnesses, Hitch?” Judge Haddan inquired, nervously mopping at his temples with a handkerchief.
“Yes, suh. I wants to ’terrogate Skeeter Butts, please, suh.”
There was a slight movement in the crowd in the rear of the court-room, and Skeeter came forward and pushed open the little gate in the low railing, which, like a river levee, held back an overflow of black people.
He had moved slowly through the crowd, proud of being called as a witness, ostentatiously speaking to every colored person he knew, and bowing with fine courtesy to every white face.
Respectably dressed, and extremely respectful in his manner, Skeeter came to the witness stand with the air of a man who knew exactly how to act in the company of white folks.
The jurors straightened up in their seats, looking at Skeeter with interest, wondering what light he could bring to brighten the black cloud which hung over the defendant. Skeeter noted the movement and bowed.
“Mawnin’, gen’lemens!” he murmured.
At the admonition of the judge, Skeeter held up his right hand, a clerk rattled off a string of words which Skeeter could not understand, and Skeeter dropped his hand.
“Thank ’e, suh!” he said.
Then, for the first time during the trial, Hitch Diamond came to life.
He rose to his feet, picked up the heavy table against which he had been leaning, and set it entirely out of his way by placing it so close to the witness stand that Skeeter Butts could have reached out his foot from the chair and stepped on it.
A heavy iron cuspidor stood in the middle of the space which Hitch was clearing for himself, so he set it out of his way. After that he moved two heavy chairs.
Suddenly Sheriff John Flournoy woke up!
It looked to him like Hitch Diamond hadcleared a space for himself clear across the court-room in front of the judge to the open window where Pap Curtain, Hitch’s father-in-law, was sitting. He noticed that Pap Curtain had slipped off the window ledge and was standing with his back to the window, one hand stretched out on either side.
Hitch was getting ready to run!
As quietly as possible, Sheriff Flournoy slipped across the platform behind the judge’s seat and stationed himself near the window where Pap Curtain stood.
Pap smiled and nodded knowingly.
“Dat’s right, Marse John,” he grinned, as he waved his hand toward Hitch Diamond. “Git a good ready! Dat Tickfall Tiger is gwine scratch somebody’s back!”
Having completed his preparations, Hitch Diamond turned to his star witness.
“Whut am yo’ name, Skeeter Butts?” he bellowed.
Skeeter got mad and began to swell up.
“You done called me by my name!” he snapped.
“Tell de white folks whut is yo’ name, Skeeter!” Hitch growled. “Mebbe dey is seed yo’ favor but disremember de name of yo’ face!”
“Skeeter Butts!” the witness replied grumpily.
“Does you know who kilt dat night-watchman down at Sawtown?” Hitch asked.
“Suttinly.”
“Was you dar when it happened?” Hitch inquired.
“Naw, suh.”
“Was it me whut done it?” Hitch bellowed.
“Naw, suh,” Skeeter answered positively.
“Who done it?” Hitch Diamond howled.
Skeeter hitched himself forward until he sat upon the extreme edge of the witness chair. He hung his brown derby hat upon the first finger of his left hand and turned it round and round with the finger and thumb of his right hand. He stared at the table which Hitch had lifted and placed before him.
The members of the jury suddenly sat up and took notice.
They had known negroes all their lives; they had had negro playmates when they were boys; and now they “read sign” on Skeeter. They knew Skeeter was going to explode something. Their backbones stiffened in their chairs as if the marrow had suddenly turned to rigid steel.
“Who—done—it?” Hitch Diamond bellowed.
Skeeter pushed himself back in his chair. His little brown derby hat fell from his finger, rattled and bounced in a ridiculous fashion across the table before him, fell to the floor and rocked to and fro on the curved crown.
Skeeter stretched out his hand with two middle fingers and the thumb flexed, and the first finger and the little finger extended in such a way that he pointed at the same time with one gesture to two men sitting in different parts of the court-room. Then he answered:
“Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg!”
Judge Haddan slumped forward in his chair, his delicate, fragile hands gripping the edge of the desk before him. The district attorney, a man who generally possessed perfect poise and self-possession, was jerked to his feet by this announcement and stood in absolute silence waving his hands to and fro like an embarrassed schoolboy who had suddenly forgotten how to “speak his piece.” The jury sank back in their chairs with a low sigh of gratification. They had tuned their ears for the sound of an explosion, and the effect had produced a pleasant shock.
Silence in the court-room, a silence appalling.
Hitch Diamond, who had been standing like a statue carved from ebony, slowly turned and faced the crowd of black men sitting behind him.
Then a voice cracked the silence like a starter’s pistol shot over the backs of two men straining for a race; it was the voice of Ginny Babe Chew:
“Dar—now!”
In the twenty seconds which had elapsed since Skeeter made his astounding statement, Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg had both considered the chances and the avenues of escape, as well as the possibility of remaining in their places and protesting innocence of the charge. Ginny Babe Chew’s triumphant exclamation decided the issue.
The low railing around the bar was directly before them. They sprang forward to clear it, and lo! Vinegar Atts was swinging to Tucky Sugg’s coat-tail, and Ginny Babe Chew was hanging to the coat-tail of Dinner Gaze!
In an instant each man had slipped his arms out of his coat and was free. They leaped the railing, standing in the open space which Hitch Diamond had so ostentatiously cleared.
Under their coats, the two men carried pistol holsters, and now they stood with their backs against the wall beside the judge’s bench, at bay, each with a pistol in his hand.
There was confusion for about ten seconds while the court-room cleared of its occupants. It took just that long for all to get out who wanted to go. That was sufficient time for some eager ones to pass the post-office two blocks away!
Suddenly Dinner Gaze’s dangerous, desperate voice rang out clearly, with an intonation which pierced like a sword:
“Don’t come dis way, white folks! Ef you do, you better come a-shootin’ an’ pick out yo’ grave befo’ you starts!”
By terrible and evil ways, the reckless feet of Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg had come to that cleared space in the Tickfall court-room. In the next few minutes, they were going to make Tickfall history.
No man knew this better than the sheriff, the district attorney, the judge of the district court, and the jurors, as each man stood in his placeand planned his part in the coming battle. The negro is the deadliest fighter on earth—when he makes up his mind to fight.
Sheriff Flournoy raised his gun—and the fight was on. With a motion as easy and as mechanical as the gesture of a man flecking a speck of dust from his cuff, Dinner Gaze turned his hand and shot back. The two guns spoke simultaneously.
With an oath, Sheriff Flournoy dropped his useless gun at his feet—the bullet from Dinner Gaze’s pistol had struck it and put it permanently out of business.
Hitch Diamond snarled like an angry beast. By a thrust of his foot, he turned over the table before which Skeeter Butts sat, making a barrier for himself. At the same instant of time, he hurled a heavy chair straight at Dinner Gaze, who stood grinning, leering at Sheriff Flournoy, who was now weaponless.
Hitch dropped down behind the table as a bullet splashed through the wood two inches above him, and also splashed every juryman out of the box like a big flat rock falling in a puddle of mud!
Skeeter Butts jerked a pistol from his coat pocket and tossed it to Hitch Diamond. Lifting with his powerful left arm, Hitch held up that heavy table as a shield between him and his enemies, and crashed forward toward Gaze and Sugg, shooting as he went. Falling, he shot again; sprawling upon the floor, he raised himself above the table and shot still again.
Once more Hitch Diamond charged forward,drawing closer to the fighting pair, staggering with his heavy table as a shield, economical with his gun-fire, waiting for a chance to kill, blazing, terrible, alone, moving toward the flash and smoke and rattle of the two guns barking from the hands of the two men who stood with their backs against the wall with leering grins upon their faces.
The unarmed men in the court-room dodged behind the furniture and crawled under the seats, shuddering at the fury of battle, as the bullets tore the plastering from the ceiling and the walls, splintered the furniture, ricocheted around the room, smashing windows and the glass globes of the electric lights.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Hitch’s last bullet was fired and he snapped his empty gun into the faces of his enemies. At nearly the same moment Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg threw aside their own empty and useless weapons.
With a loud bellow, Hitch Diamond tossed the table from him, breaking off the two legs on one side. He sprang around, and in and out, striking blows which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring all over the State. He struck and parried and struck again, pounding, pounding at the faces of the two shrieking men who fought at him with weapons mightier than their fists, for they were fighting with the legs of the table which Hitch had broken off when he tossed his improvised shield aside!
There was a rush of help coming to the aid of Hitch Diamond—Sheriff Flournoy, the districtattorney, the two mill owners, a court-clerk, twelve jurors, Skeeter Butts, and Vinegar Atts.
Then began a noise of shouting and tumult, oaths, curses; shrieking, horrible, blood-stained faces, snarling lips and gnashing teeth, and Hitch Diamond fought on, leading the hosts who stood for law and justice. Pain tore at his bruised and bleeding face, blood streamed from his hands and arms, his mighty, heaving chest left stains of red upon his white shirt bosom.
Men fell, and Hitch stepped on them. Hitch fell, and men stepped on him. All men slipped and slid in blood, crushed each other, dragged each other down, struck each other—and all heaved and cursed and shouted and hammered and tore at the shuddering tangle of human flesh and bone.
Standing on a chair close to the struggling men was a woman—a woman of wicked, half-caste beauty, her long Indian hair streaming down her back, her golden-colored hands weaving to and fro with clenched fists, her golden face blazing with hate and fury—fit mate for Hitch Diamond, whose wife she was.
Her voice rang like a trumpet:
“Kill ’em, Hitchie! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
Such a brutal, demoniacal struggle could not endure long. Vinegar Atts was senseless. Skeeter Butts lay flat on his back against the wall with the blood streaming from an ugly cut upon his head. Three of the jurors nursed broken arms,and several more had retired from the fray disabled by their injuries.
Sheriff Flournoy lay on the floor with the blood flowing from a wound on his neck. He crawled over and picked up the pistol which Skeeter Butts had given to Hitch Diamond and which Hitch had discarded. He extracted the cartridges from his own useless pistol and slipped them into Skeeter’s gun, for he had given that weapon to Skeeter and they were of the same calibre.
Just at that moment Tucky Sugg fought his way through the tangle of human arms and legs and sprang into the open window. Then he went screaming downward to his death as a bullet from the sheriff’s pistol went with him, pocketed in the murderer’s heart!
Then, as if the crack of the sheriff’s pistol was her cue to enter, another woman came up-stage and stood in the blazing light of battle. She weighed four hundred and ten pounds, and resembled a balloon divided in the middle by an apron string. She was conducted by Dainty Blackum and a strange young negro man, and her name was Ginny Babe Chew.
Inside the railing, she picked up a heavy iron cuspidor, and walked over to the table where, earlier in the morning, the district attorney had sat.
“He’p me up on dis here table, honey!” she grunted, hugging the heavy cuspidor in her arms.
The district attorney lay unconscious under the table on which Ginny stood.
Ginny announced her position by a loud bellow. She raised the large iron cuspidor above her head with her fat arms, and every pound of her monstrous weight was quivering with unspeakable hate.
“Git outen my way, Hitchie!” she whooped. “Gimme room accawdin’ to my fat, sonny! Let yo’ mammy put somepin acrost!”
For more than a minute Sheriff Flournoy had been fingering his pistol, waiting for a chance to shoot without killing Hitch Diamond. Ginny Babe Chew’s remarkable stunt gave him pause and caused him to lower his gun with astonishment.
Hitch reeled and stumbled backward. His eyes were glazing, his right arm hung broken and useless at his side, he was one bloody mass of wounds.
Dinner Gaze, his clothes torn from him until he was bare to the waist, his whole body screaming with pain from countless injuries, slowly followed Hitch in his retreat, chopping at him with weakening arms, still fighting with the broken table-leg.
“Look up, Dinner Gaze!” Ginny Babe Chew bawled. “Dis is yo’ la-ast time to see de hoodoo face!”
Unconsciously responding to the command, Dinner Gaze raised his pain-shot eyes upward, and looked into the fat face, through whose rolls of flesh two green pig eyes gleamed upon him with a serpent’s venom and deadly malignity.
The heavy iron cuspidor came down with a crash. It crushed the criminal’s head like an egg-shell. It bounced, fell on its rounded edge, and rolled slowly across the floor.
Dinner Gaze fell face downward, kicked the floor three times with the toes of his shoes, and died.
“Dar—now!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped.
Then she held out a fat hand to the slim young girl standing beside the table and said:
“Gimme yo’ hand an’ he’p me down offen dis table, honey! Dis here duck is too dang fat to be roostin’ so high!”
The panic and outflow of negroes from the trial chamber in the Tickfall courthouse started a riot-call in the town.
A clerk in the Gaitskill store across the street ran over and tolled the courthouse bell ten times. In response, every white man in Tickfall dropped his task, armed himself, and came with all possible haste to the court square.
When Tucky Sugg fell screaming from the open window, Colonel Tom Gaitskill started at the head of a band of armed men up the steps leading to the court-room. The band arrived too late to do more than constitute themselves into an ambulance corps, and render first aid to the injured.
Four physicians came panting up the steps, bumping their instrument cases against the wall as they ran, and their arrival converted the room into a hospital where the doctor became a wise and efficient judge.
Colonel Gaitskill appointed ten men as assistants and runners for the doctors, assigned to the rest of his band the task of standing on the square in heroic attitudes and guarding the courthouse, and then he cleared the room of all the curious and useless persons and closed the door.
An hour later all the wounded sat up and took notice, and some of them smiled.
Skeeter Butts arose from his place, sobbing with pain. He staggered across the blood-splashed floor toward a pitcher of water which sat on the floor by the judge’s bench. Weakness overcame him, and he sank down in the witness-chair, almost fainting.
Judge Henry Haddan, whose Websterian head was considerably larger now on account of certain bruised and swollen places, and a big wad of cotton applied to them, thrust a glass of water into Skeeter’s trembling hands.
“Skeeter,” he asked, “how did you know that Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg committed that crime in Sawtown?”
“I didn’t know, Marse Henry,” Skeeter answered in a weak voice. “I sot down in dis chair an’ I said jes’ whut Ginny Babe Chew tole me to say!”
Everybody in the court-room heard Skeeter’s answer. There was a general gasp of astonishment.
Judge Haddan walked wearily up to his bench and sat down. It appeared later that he was seriously hurt, and he spent many weeks in bed.But now he was sustained by the excitement of the moment.
The district attorney dragged himself across the floor and sat down at his table near to where Dinner Gaze lay face downward, his hand still grasping the table-leg.
Ginny Babe Chew walked to the middle of the room, rested a fat hand on each fat hip, and looked up into the face of Judge Haddan.
“Yes, suh, boss,” she said. “Ginny Babe Chew is to blame fer dis here noble fracas!” Then she smiled.
“How did you know, Ginny?” Judge Haddan asked, twisting his pain-shot face into an answering smile, and feeling of an extremely sore place on top of his head.
“Dude Blackum tole me!” she answered.
“Dude Blackum is dead—drowned in attempting to escape!” Judge Haddan snapped.
“Naw, suh. He warn’t drowned. He’s a settin’ right dar by Dainty Blackum now!”
As she pointed a young, respectful, nicely dressed negro stood up, bowed to the judge, and smiled, flashing a gold front tooth.
“Naw, suh, jedge,” he murmured in a deprecatory tone. “I ain’t dead!”
Then they listened while Dude told his story.
After leaving his cabin with the jug, he had taken several drinks and had crawled under the porch of the commissary store to sleep because he was afraid to go back home to listen to what Dainty was sure to say about his conduct. He had beenawakened by having something thrown over his face—and this afterward proved to be the coat and vest which Tucky Sugg had taken from Hitch Diamond. Dude heard two men talking, heard them call each other by name, heard them enter the store for robbery; then Dude had seized his jug and had run to the night-watchman and made a report.
The night-watchman, running to the store, had been killed.
Dude, dodging among the lumber piles, had been captured; the only man who could clear him of suspicion had just been killed; his captors would not listen to explanations, so Dude took a desperate chance by jumping into the river, and had escaped.
What the mob thought was Dude’s woolly head bobbing upon the surface of the water was really Dude’s derby hat. Expecting them to shoot at his hat, Dude waited until the right time, and artfully contributed a splash and a scream, and the mob thought he had got cramps and sunk.
Chucklingly, Dude told his auditors that he was beating his hat down the river about thirty yards, swimming like Jonah inside the whale.
He returned to his cabin that night, explained everything to Dainty, mounted a mustang, and rode to Ginny Babe Chew’s cabin, where she concealed him until the time of the trial. Skeeter had seen his face at the dormer window when the chicken-house burned down.
“I knowed dat Dinner Gaze an’ Tucky Sugg done it, Marse Henry,” Skeeter cackled. “I knowed it all de time—I had a hunch!”
“I knowed it, too,” Ginny Babe Chew rumbled. “I’s got a hoodoo face.”
“I knowed it,” Hitch Diamond growled. “Goldie told me.”
“I think we had better go home,” Judge Henry Haddan said, with a funny twisted smile. “My head hurts!”
“I beg your pardon, your honor,” the district attorney said, rising painfully to his feet and leaning weakly against the table. “Excuse me—but haven’t you forgotten something?”
Judge Haddan’s aching head was not working clearly, and he did not catch Davazec’s meaning at all. He thought he understood, and so he announced:
“Hitch Diamond, you are a brave negro. Your heroic fight in this court-room will be long remembered.” Haddan broke off, tried to smile, and continued: “Your masterly presentation of your defense disproves, in this instance, the aphorism that a lawyer who pleads his own case has a fool for a client.”
“Dat’s right, boss!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped. “Little Hitchie shore is brave an’ smart, ef I do say it myse’f, whut hadn’t oughter. Nobody in dis country don’t know it but me and Hitch—but I is Hitch’s mammy! He is kin to me by bornation on de Flournoy plantation fawty years ago——”
“Aw, hush!” Judge Haddan exclaimed. “I am feeling very badly, and I am going home——”
“I beg your pardon, your honor!” the district attorney repeated in a courteous but insistent tone. “Have you not forgotten something?”
Judge Haddan rested both hands upon his aching head and thought. Then he forgot his aching head and laughed. He straightened up and spoke:
“The indictments against defendant are dismissed, and defendant discharged—the jury is excused, and court adjourned! Hitch Diamond, you are free!”
“Dar now, boss,” Hitch bellowed, grinning into his honor’s face. “I wus plum’ shore you an’ me could win dis case ef we jes’ sot our minds to do it. Bless Gawd!”
THE END