“My wife’s strong-minded,She’s double-j’inded,She ain’t tame,Scan’lize my name——”
“My wife’s strong-minded,She’s double-j’inded,She ain’t tame,Scan’lize my name——”
The negro ceased singing, jerked off his big hat, and sprang to his feet.
“Hitch,” Gaitskill began, “Diada ran away last night. I want you to find her.”
“Yes, suh; Hopey narrate me about dat.”
“Go out into the swamp and find her!” Gaitskill commanded.
Hitch sat down and scratched his head; he plowed up the dirt with the toe of his ponderous boot; he slapped at the flies with his hat. He was trying to think up a plausible lie as an excuse for declining the proffered job.
“Naw, suh, Marse Tom,” he said slowly. “I’s powerful sorry, but I jes’ nachelly, can’t go—er—de lodge meets to-night——”
“You’ll be back before night,” Gaitskill assured him.
“Yes, suh, but I gotter hustle aroun’ an’ git some money to pay my dues——”
“I’ll pay your dues.”
“Yes, suh, but—er—I gotter had my lodge clothes cleaned an’ pressed, an’——”
“Get some nigger to do that for you. I’ll pay him.”
“Yes, suh——”
Hitch stopped. His resources were exhausted. He looked at Gaitskill with a face as expressionless as a glass-eyed doll. “Marse Tom is sho’ a quick ketcher,” he thought. Then he spoke aloud:
“Marse Tom, I jes’ nachelly don’t wanter go atter dat coon! Why don’t you an’ me jes’ let her ramble? Us kind of folks hadn’t oughter pay dat nigger no pertick’ler mind—she ain’t——”
Gaitskill turned and walked away.
He was too much in sympathy with Hitch’s argument to discuss the matter. He salved his conscience with the reflection that he had told Hitch to go, although he was pretty sure that Hitch would slip off down-town, stay hid all day, and return at night to report that he had failed to find Diada.
But contrary to Gaitskill’s expectations, Hitch did some heavy thinking, then sought out the Rev. Vinegar Atts, pastor of the Shoofly church.
“Elder,” he began, “does you b’lieve in cornvertin’ de heathen?”
“Suttinly,” Atts replied, scenting a contribution for foreign missions.
“Well, suh,” Hitch declared, “now is de choosen time to get right nex’ to a shore-’nuff she-heathen. Marse Tom is got her out to his house on a little visit, an’ las’ night de Revun Sentelle an’ all de miss’nary ladies of Marse Tom’s chu’ch was makin’ ’miration over dat coon, an’ I figgers dat us Mef’dis niggers oughter jub’late too.”
“Shorely, shorely!” Vinegar Atts boomed. “Whar is dis here she-heathen at?”
“Her’s gone out fer a walk in de Little MoccasinSwamp,” Hitch informed him. “Ef us walks out to’des de swamp, ’pears to me we mought meet up wid her an’ git real good acquainted.”
“Dat’s good argufyin’,” Vinegar responded, reaching for his hat. “Whut do she look like?”
“Her looks like us niggers—only ’bout fawty’leben times more!” Hitch told him.
“Kin she talk?”
“Yes, suh, but a feller cain’t ketch on to nothin’ she specifies. It’s a kind of jibber-jabber monkeytalk dat lubricates a whole lot, but it don’t show whar at!” Hitch informed him, wondering at the same time how she really did talk—for Hitch had never heard a sound from her throat.
“Ef she cain’t talk to us, an’ we cain’t talk to her, we shore ain’t gwine fuss an’ fall out!” Vinegar declared.
The big, fat, squat-legged preacher trotted along beside the giant prize-fighter toward the swamp, and by the time they turned off the main road on to the bridle-path which led to the Gaitskill hog-camp, Hitch had told the preacher as much about Diada as he thought Vinegar ought to know. Needless to say, he did not mention her ugliness, her size, her love for raw meat, nor his own overwhelming fear of her.
“Whut’s de matter wid dis swamp, Hitch?” Vinegar demanded, gazing at the trees and wiping the copious sweat from his face.
The swamp had suddenly become as hot as an anteroom to hell. The trees had lost their green sparkle, assuming the colors of decay—corpseyellowand livid green, shining with an oily, sickening glitter.
Hitch shuddered. It was easy for him to believe that Diada had conjured the swamp and had caused it to assume this aspect of menace.
“Less hump along to’des de hog-camp, Revun!” he exclaimed. “I’s skeart of dis place. I been talkin’ to hear my tongue rattle, but now I kin shet my mouf an’ hear my jaws rattle.”
Something scared the birds in the jungle and they flew shriekingly from tree to tree, all going in the same direction.
Submerged among the immense trees of the jungle the negroes could not tell what was happening in the heavens, but they noticed that the sun had changed, no longer spraying off of the tops of the trees like falling water, and the path at their feet had become almost invisible in the darkness.
A wind suddenly swept through the forest, cold as a breeze from the arctic icebergs. Every tree and shrub leaned away from that icy blast, and vines which trailed the ground for hundreds of feet slowly rose up and whirled and writhed in the air like long, slim snakes. In twenty seconds that one puff of wind had passed and there was no more, and the scalding heat rose from the ground like steam from the boiling caldrons of Tophet.
At any other time, Hitch Diamond would have known that a Southern rain-storm was coming and would have paid no attention to it except to seek a cleared spot in the forest, where the dead limbs falling from the trees could not impale him to the ground.
But now his fear was superstitious, and it became infectious to Vinegar Atts and the two raced before the storm like catboats on a wind-swept lake.
Then the rain fell—fell exactly as if some great Titan’s hands had lifted up the silver bowl of the Gulf of Mexico and emptied its contents on their heads. The first big drop felt like a bucketful and seemed to wet them all over.
From that moment they stumbled rather than ran, simply fell forward, caught themselves, and fell forward again—who could run under Niagara’s tumbling flood?
And thus they ran blindly into the august presence of Diada!
Just as another icy blast swept through the jungle, lasting for twenty seconds and stopping the rain, the two men looked up and beheld Diada, facing the breeze, standing in their path like a rooted tree. She still wore Mrs. Gaitskill’s light-blue, pink-flowered kimono, and that gaudy garment trailed out behind her and snapped in the breeze, resembling the variegated tail of some enormous tropic bird.
To the astounded men Diada looked as big as a skinned mule.
With a shriek Hitch Diamond dodged around her, leading Vinegar Atts in the flight by a nose, and the two men ran on toward the hog-camp—the falling rain thundering around them like the sound of a troop of cavalry crossing a wooden bridge.
As they plunged across the open clearing in front of the cabin Hitch looked back.
Diada was forty steps behind him, trotting easily,covering incredible space with each step, her horrible mouth twisted into a cannibal grin. But it did not look like a grin to Hitch—those immense, protruding teeth and the repulsively thick lips curled back above and beneath them reminded him of nothing so much as the mouth of an angry, biting jackass.
“Here she comes, Vinegar!” Hitch bawled. “Come in an’ shet de do’!”
But they were too late. Diada’s foot struck the bottom step of the little porch just as Hitch reached the top step. Diada grasped Hitch by the coattail and was towed into the house by that frightened giant who promptly shucked off his coat as he passed through the door and let Diada have it.
Vinegar Atts turned around and took a long look at Diada. He reeled back against the wall, covered his eyes with his hands, and in horror-stricken tones he bellowed:
“Come here, Hitch, an’ he’p me! Somepin’ is done happened to my eyesight—I ain’t seein’ right!”
Outside the wind and rain roared like a hurricane and great lumps of hail struck upon the solid roof of the cabin like brickbats, rolled off, and hit the ground with a loud click.
Large particles of hail, looking as if a number of lumps had met and merged in mid-air, fell down the large open chimney, and rolled out upon the floor.On any other occasion Hitch and Vinegar would have pounced upon them, but now neither moved to pick them up.
The three rain-drenched people stood in the middle of the floor, each in the center of a widening puddle; then they relieved the strain by changing their location and began to drip in a new puddle.
At last Vinegar’s legs sank under him, and he dropped upon a chair.
“Oo-ee!” he sighed. “De good Lawd sho’ is made a mistake when He fotch me into dis here tangle-up. He’s done got my tail caught in a cuttin’-box.”
“Talk to her, Revun!” Hitch begged in an agonized whisper.
“You cornverse her, Hitch,” Vinegar Atts pleaded. “I’ll set right here by you an’ pray constant.”
Diada walked to the fireplace, squatted down, picked up two splinters of wood and rubbed them together. A tiny blue flame curled around the fingers of the woman. Sheltering the flame with her hands, she added more fuel, and in a moment stepped back from a roaring fire.
“Look at dat!” Hitch Diamond exclaimed in tones of wonder and admiration. “Made a fire by rubbin’ two sticks ag’in’ each odder. I done tried dat a thousan’ times, but I didn’t make nothin’ but sweat!”
“Whut you reckin she done built dat fire fer, Hitch?” Vinegar inquired with chattering teeth.
“Mebbe she wants to dry out dem clothes she’s got on,” Hitch surmised.
“I dunno,” Vinegar responded in fearful tones.“It ’pears to me dat it’s mighty nigh dinner-time, an’ I’s done heerd tell dat sometimes dose here she-heathenseats folks.”
“Oh, hush, nigger!” Hitch mourned, sinking down upon a bench at the far end of the room. “Don’t start no news like dat! Please, suh, Revun Atts, git yo’ religium wuckin’ ag’in’ her right now!”
“I don’t know how!” Vinegar lamented. “I ain’t never had no expe’unce on dis kind of job.”
“Whut do de Bible say do?” Hitch demanded.
“It say, ‘Watch an’ pray,’” Vinegar told him.
“Dat ain’t gwine do no good in dis case,” Hitch declared with conviction. “You mought as well pour dem advices back into de jug. Leasewise I cain’t figger out how it kin do any good. But ef you wants to try it, you do de prayin’ an’ lemme watch.”
“I’s mos’ too close to dis fire, Hitch,” Vinegar remarked uneasily. “I prefers to pray in de kitchen.”
“I’ll go wid you,” Hitch declared eagerly.
The two men entered the only other room to the log cabin, each blocking the other in his eagerness to be the first to get through the door. Diada promptly followed them, and the two men backed against the wall, looking in vain for some way of escape for Diada was between them and the door.
Hanging from the rafters in the kitchen were half a dozen strings of smoked sausages in skins.
Diada reached up and clawed down one of the strings and proceeded to eat the sausage raw. Like a child chewing a thread, she began at one end and lapped up link after link of the sausage. When thathad been devoured, she snatched down another string and began on the end of that. Then she snapped off a link and offered it to Vinegar Atts.
“No’m; thank ’e, mum,” Vinegar said. “I likes to watch you chawin’ it. Fer Gawd’s sake, don’t nibble at dat sausage like dat—eat a plenty!”
Hitch Diamond pulled down two more strings of the sausage and handed them to her.
“Honey,” he said in wheedling tones, “don’t encourage no delicate appetite. Fill up—fill up! Wallop up dem sassages till you git whar you cain’t do nothin’ but chaw because yo’ swaller is full up to de top. Den, bless Gawd, dar won’t be no room in yo’ insides fer me!”
“Huh.” Vinegar Atts grunted, “I’d rather had a jackass chaw me dan dat baboon. Look at her toofs!”
At last Diada concluded her feast, tossed the undevoured links of sausage on the floor and started back toward the other room. The two men followed because there was nothing else to do. When they had seated themselves before the fire Vinegar said:
“Hitch, talk to her a little bit an’ git her feelin’ good, an’ mebbe her’ll let us go back to town.”
“I dunno how to begin,” Hitch complained. “Ef a cullud lady won’t talk, seems like I cain’t git no hand-holt to remark nothin’ to her.”
“Ax her inquirements!” Vinegar advised.
There was silence in the cabin while Hitch explored his brain for a suitable question to ask. Outside the raidn fell in a torrent and the jungle roared like thunder. Finally Hitch spoke:
“Diader, does you enjoy yo’ meals in dis country?”
Diada did not answer, but Vinegar Atts did.
“Git away from de subjeck of grub, Hitch. De sausages is done all been et mighty nigh, an’ whut is dis she-heathen got to eat fer supper butus?”
“I ain’t gwine be here fer supper!” Hitch informed him.
“Me neither—ef I makes no mistake,” Vinegar replied earnestly. “Go on wid dem inquirements!”
Hitch took a new start:
“Does you had a good time, Diader? Enj’y yo’se’f?”
“Mebbe dat ain’t no polite question to ax dis kind of coon,” Vinegar remarked when Diada made no answer. “Try somepin diffunt, Hitch!”
“How old is you, Diader?” Hitch asked desperately.
A discreet silence on the part of Diada.
“I knowed you pulled de stopper outen de wrong bottledattime!” Vinegar commented. “Ax her somepin ’bout her kinnery!”
“Wus yo’ maw an’ paw feelin’ tol’able when you seed ’em las’?” Hitch inquired timidly.
To all appearances Diada had not heard.
“Mebbe all her kinnery’s in jail,” Vinegar declared. “Anyway, she don’t wanter talk about ’em. Stop axin’ fool questions, Hitch! You put yo’ foot in it eve’y time you opens yo’ mouf!”
“Looky here, Revun!” Hitch retorted in irate tones. “I fotch you out here wid me to cornvert dis here heathen. You brag yo’ brags dat you could, now lemme see you git at it! You ain’t axed her nothin’since you come—jes’ been rubber-neckin’ at her like a goggle-eye perch. Now you git busy on dis dam’ ole baboon an’ ’suade her to be a Christian like us is!”
Thus admonished, Vinegar Atts took a big breath, stared timidly at Diada’s feet, and began:
“Diada, does you foller up de chu’ch?”
“Git pussonal, Revun, git pussonal!” Hitch advised, when Diada did not reply. “Stop beatin’ de bush aroun’ de debbil.”
“Diader, does you take up wid religion?” Vinegar inquired. But Diada made no reply.
“Ax her do sheexpe’uncereligion!” the prize-fighter prompted the preacher. “Ax her do she know dat she’s a chile of Gawd!”
“Diader,” Vinegar asked timidly, “is you got any shore an’ certain hopes of heaven?”
“Dat’s right! Git pussonal!” Hitch applauded.
But Diada steadfastly refused to make any confession of faith.
“Ax her is she committed any sins!” Hitch suggested. “Git pussonal!”
“Looky here, Hitch!” the preacher complained. “I don’t know how dis cullud pusson sets her table an’ I’s skeart I’ll fall in de soup. Whut’s de use axin’ pussonal inquirements when a feller don’t git no kind of respondunce nohow?”
He leaned back, his face overshadowed with gloom and fear. He thrust his hand into his pockets, and his face suddenly cleared.
“I got her now, Hitch! Look at dis!”
Vinegar held up a small round mirror with an advertisement on the back. He looked at himself,then passed it to Hitch, who examined his own features carefully, and who then passed the mirror to Diada.
With wondering faces the two men watched the eternal savage feminine to see if it was like the other kind of eternal feminine. It was.
Diada placed the mirror about four inches from one big, protruding eye, squinted into the glass, and then slipped the little mirror into her hair, gave the hair a deft twist, and brought her hands down—empty.
“Dar now!” Vinegar mourned. “My little lookin’-glass is plum’ gone, jes’ as good as ef she’d swallered it!”
“Dat’s right!” Hitch agreed. “Diader shore made a short cut-off.”
He raised his eyes to the ceiling in an attitude of religious resignation, and saw Little Bit’s mandolin hanging on a nail above his head. He reached up and took it down.
Seating himself, he swept his fingers across the strings. Diada’s mouth opened in a wide grin.
“I’s got her. Vinegar,” Hitch boomed. “Now I’s gwine fetch her a few lively toons, an’ while I plays you open dat do’. Mebbe I kin sing dis heathen chile to sleep, but ef I cain’t, you keep yo’ eye on me an’ git ready to scoot!”
Hitch got busy with the mandolin, and Vinegar availed himself of the first opportunity and opened the door. The rain had ceased, and from the hot ground a fog had risen like steam so thick and heavy that objects were invisible at a distance of twenty feet.
Hitch sang a few songs, and at the conclusion of each song he moved back from the fire under pretense of being too warm; but he moved every time a little closer to the open door.
Then Diada rose and began a weird, awkward dance, marking the steps by a peculiar guttural sound like a grunt. Under the weight of her ponderous tramping feet the cabin trembled. The negroes trembled, too, but they were having a chill. In a moment their fright had assumed the proportions and powers of a dynamo propelling them out of that cabin.
“Git ready, Vinegar!” Hitch howled, as he madly played and sang. “I’s done got in de notion to skedaddle. When I gives de word, you better do it!”
Diada had begun to whirl like a dancing Dervish. Mrs. Gaitskill’s silk kimono stood straight out from her mighty shoulders and Colonel Gaitskill’s pajamas became a blear of color in her mad gyration.
Vinegar Atts rose and walked toward the door. Hitch Diamond stood up, thumping madly upon the strings of his musical instrument, watching his chance.
Just when the two men were ready to bolt Diada whooped, sprang through the door, leaped into the open space in front of the porch, and continued her mad rotary dance. There was a flash of steel, and from somewhere on her person Diada produced what Hitch recognized as Mrs. Gaitskill’s pearl-handled paper-cutter, and the large steel carving-knife which Hopey used in the kitchen.
Then began a dance of steel which filled the negroes with horror.
Diada tossed the knives in the air where they whirled like steel wheels, and beneath them she continued her wild gyrations; with wonderful skill, she kept the two blades in the air above her, catching them unerringly when they fell and tossing them up again, while a strange, guttural shriek emanated from her throat, curdling the blood in the veins of Vinegar Atts and Hitch Diamond.
Suddenly Hitch Diamond bellowed:
“Good-by ma honey! I’ve run out of moneyGood-by, ma honey—I’mgone!”
“Good-by ma honey! I’ve run out of moneyGood-by, ma honey—I’mgone!”
Before the mandolin, which Hitch hurled from him, had struck the ground, he and Vinegar were half-way across the clearing and a race-horse could not have caught them for their first mile of travel back to town.
Pounding up the street toward the Tickfall courthouse, Hitch Diamond spoke for the first time in seven miles:
“Elder Atts, I don’t b’lieve you really favors furin missions!”
Colonel Tom Gaitskill and Dr. Sentelle stood on the street in front of the court house discussingthe missionary meeting of the evening before and the sudden departure of Diada.
“Do you think Diada’s visit will quicken the missionary activities of the women of our church?” Dr. Sentelle laughed.
“Who knows?” Gaitskill grinned. “She certainly made an impression on me! An escaped heathen running at large in the vicinity of Tickfall might quicken all kinds of activities——”
Their attention was diverted by the sight of two negroes who stumbled down the middle of the street in the last stages of exhaustion, puffing like steamboats, covered with swamp-mud, their garments torn to shreds by their flight through the vines and underbrush.
“Hey—Hitch!” Gaitskill called.
The two negroes stopped, staggered to where Gaitskill was standing, and sank down upon the curbstone at his feet.
“We done got away, Marse Tom!” Hitch Diamond panted. “Us escaped jes’ like de Bible say—wid de skin off our teeth.”
“Where have you been?” Gaitskill asked.
“Me an’ Vinegar is been huntin’ dat Diader you sent me atter dis mawnin’,” Hitch answered; then in a tone of sharp complaint: “Marse Tom, whut you makin’ all dis splutter ’bout dat varmint fur? She ain’t right in her intellectuals!”
“I don’t believe you’ve been anywhere near that swamp,” Gaitskill grinned.
“We shore has, Marse Tom,” the negroes said in one breath. Then they began a recitation of theirexperiences, snatching the sentences out of each other’s mouths:
“She built a fire by rubbin’ two sticks——”
“She et raw sassages——”
“She danced a jig in dat cabin wid butcher-knives——”
“She had on a chop-tailed nightshirt——”
“An’ cute little pants jes’ de color of a rotten egg busted on ’em——”
Their recitation was interrupted by the sound of galloping hoofs. Two mules were coming down the road at full speed, one mule ridden by a bent-shouldered old man whose kinky white wool fitted his head like a rubber cap, and the other ridden by a diminutive, pop-eyed boy so black he could shut his eyes and become almost invisible.
At every jump the riders belabored their mules with clubs, thus giving them additional reasons why they should accelerate their operations; and even the mules seemed to realize that it was an urgent case.
They shook their heads, groaned like elephants in distress, and seemed to measure off ten or fifteen feet at a leap. The riders jolted to and fro like two gray squirrels in the storm-tossed branches of a tree, but they hung on to the shaggy manes of their mounts with one hand and operated their clubs with the other.
“Hey, you niggers!” Gaitskill called. “Whoa!”
The mules, hearing that last command, stopped.
Now when a mule stops, he stops with a suddenness; he stops all over and all at once; he stops like awet dish-rag which drops upon the floor, like a stepladder which collapses and comes down flat upon the ground.
The mules stopped.
Isaiah and Little Bit did not. They went on. They dived ungracefully over the heads of their mules, struck the ground twenty feet ahead of them, rolled over and over in the moist sand, then got up in a most solemn and dignified manner, walked sedately to the spot where Vinegar and Hitch sat on the curbstone, and took a seat beside them.
“Bless gracious, Marse Tom!” old Isaiah panted. “I’s skeart plum’ outen my good sense!”
“What happened, Isaiah?” Gaitskill laughed.
“Marse Tom,” Isaiah answered, “dar’s a plum’ wild woman out in de Little Moccasin Swamp. She throwed a gun at me de yuther day an’ run me an’ Little Bit clear outen de hog-camp. Us rambled back dis atternoon, an’ dat wild woman wus still dar—settin’ on de po’ch steps bangin’ on Little Bit’s banjo an’ singin’ jes’ like a pig squeals when he gits hung in de fence. When she seed me a comin’, she riz up—she looked powerful mad to me——”
Isaiah broke off and chuckled. Then he continued, in solemn and convincing tones:
“Marse Tom, I’ve saw a pig git mad an’ bust outen de pen an’ fight an’ bite jes’ like a dog an’ run eve’y pig and nigger off de plantation. An’ I’ve saw a cow git mad an’ kick over de bucket of milk an’ hook de feller whut milked her. An’ I’ve saw a man git mad an’ cut up scand’lous an’ git tuck up an’ crammed in jail. An’ I’ve saw a woman git mad—plentywomans—but I ain’t never stayed an’ saw whut dey done. Naw, suh, I skedaddles. Dat’s how come me an’ Little Bit is here now. Dat wild woman looked mad!”
There was a loud whoop up the street, and the sound of galloping hoofs smote again upon the ears of the little group in front of the court house. As they turned to look a whole cavalry troop of horses and mules swung into the main street and galloped at full speed toward the court house square.
It was a perfect Mardi Gras procession.
One aged negro passed on a blind mule, holding a baby in his lap, while two little pickaninnies rode behind him—four on one animal. An immensely fat woman rode by astraddle of a pacing donkey; she balanced a bundle as large as herself on the neck of her mount—food and household comforts of that sort, wrapped up in a red bed-quilt.
A negro boy came by holding a sack whose contents wriggled and whined, and the mustang he rode was throwing fits—the sack contained four hound pups. Another coon rode by holding in his free hand a bucket of molasses; and strapped to his back, like a knapsack was an immense bird-cage containing a parrot, who clung desperately to his giddy perch and squawked: “Look out! Look out! Look out!”
Thus, in grotesque procession, there passed before the astonished eyes of Colonel Tom Gaitskill every negro tenant and workman from the Nigger-heel plantation—four hundred men, women, and children, with his overseer, Mustard Prophet, in the lead!
“Thunderation!” Gaitskill bawled in a mighty voice. “What’s the matter with you damnation niggers?”
Mustard Prophet wheeled his mule and stopped before Colonel Gaitskill.
The whole procession swung into a large open space beside the court house, set apart for the use of the country people as a hitching place for their horses. All the business men in Tickfall promptly shut up shop and assembled in front of the courthouse to learn what all the fuss was about—and every white man’s coat-pocket sagged down on one side about four inches lower than it did on the other, and he kept his hand in that pocket.
The negroes of Tickfall and the neighboring plantations outnumbered the whites by ten thousand.
Having a natural respect and generally a true friendship for the white people, following the peaceable pursuits of agriculture, raising cotton, cotton, and then more cotton; music-loving, laughter-loving, care-free as children and inoffensive as a bird, the negroes of Tickfall lived quietly with their white neighbors and employers.
But any unusual movement among them always awakened the white man’s suspicions and brought him forth full-armed, grim as death, white-faced and keen-eyed, to search the matter to the very bottom.
A white man jostled against Dr. Sentelle.
The venerable preacher thrust his hand into the tail-pocket of his clergyman’s coat and found himself in possession of a heavy pistol. Colonel Gaitskillbacked quietly into the arms of a man standing behind him and found both side pockets of his coat weighted down with weapons.
Then Gaitskill stepped forward again and became the spokesman, his voice cracking like a bull-whip in the hands of a cowboy:
“What are you niggers doing in town?”
“Us comed to town to git away from de canned bull, Marse Tom,” Mustard Prophet informed him.
There was a barely audible “Ah!” from the throats of the white men, who had held their breath in intense desire to catch Mustard’s answer. The anxiety of the white men was instantly relieved. They did not understand, but if that crowd of men, women, and children were scared and running away from something, that put a much better light upon the matter.
“To get away from—what?” Gaitskill snapped.
“Dunno, suh,” Mustard replied, scratching his head. “I’s done heerd tell dat she eats ’em alive.”
“Eats—what? who?”
“Dey calls her de canned bull,” Mustard informed him in uncertain tones.
“I presume he meanscannibal,” Dr. Sentelle suggested with a loud chuckle.
“Yes, suh,” Mustard acquiesced. “Dat whut I jes’ said.”
“What do you know about acannibal?” Gaitskill growled.
“Hopey, de woman whut cooks fer you, sont me word, an’ old Isaiah an’ Little Bit fotch me depertick’lers,” Mustard told him. “Ole Isaiah tole me dat he done saw dat wild woman fight a bear an’ she kilt it dead. He specify dat she gib dat bear de all-under holt an’ de fust two bites!”
“Isaiah is an old liar,” Gaitskill said.
“Yes, suh. But I knowed you didn’t want me to happen to no harm, so I hauled off an’ come to town.”
“What did you bring all these other niggers for?” Gaitskill asked.
“I didn’t fotch ’em wid me, Marse Tom,” Mustard declared. “I tried to git ’em to stay back, but sompein itched ’em right sudden to trabbel, an’ here dey all am.”
There was a loud burst of laughter from the white men, Gaitskill found his coat-pockets relieved of their heavy guns, Dr. Sentelle lost the six-shooter out of the tail of his Prince Albert coat, and the business men went haw-hawing to their stores, leaving Colonel Gaitskill and Dr. Sentelle to face the rabble of panic-stricken negroes.
Gaitskill’s mind revolved a number of plans before he found one to suit him. Finally he stood on the court house steps and made oration:
“Hey, you niggers! Listen to me: Go to the back door of my store and get your rations for the night. All you nigger men be at the old cotton-shed to-morrow morning by sunrise! Hear me!”
“Yes, suh!” a number of voices responded.
“Now, Mustard,” he said to his negro overseer, “you get all these coons to the cotton-shed on time. We want to get an early start!”
The next morning fifty-five negroes mounted on mules and horses waited at the cotton-shed for Colonel Tom Gaitskill. Their only theme of conversation was Diada.
“Revun Atts,” Mustard demanded of the pastor of the Shoofly church, “when you got shet up wid dat wild woman in de hawg-camp, why didn’t you ax her ’fess religion?”
“I did make a riffle,” Vinegar Atts responded, “but I couldn’t git my mouf set right fer preachin’ de Word.”
“He seen his duty but he done it not!” Hitch Diamond bellowed.
“I didn’t had no light onhowto do it,” Vinegar said defensively. “Excusin’ dat, I warn’t studyin’ how to save by grace; I wus ponderin’ how to save my grease.”
The conversation ended by the arrival of Colonel Gaitskill, dressed in a hunting suit and riding his favorite black horse.
The negroes grouped their mounts close around him to hear what he had to say.
“I want you niggers to ride out to the hog-camp with me and help me bring Diada back to my house. All this talk about Diada being a cannibal is a lie. She ain’t a pretty nigger woman, but she’s just like other black folks. She won’t hurt anybody. When you find her, go right up to her, just like you would to any other nigger woman. Hear me!”
“Yes, suh!” the voices answered.
“Marse Tom,” Hitch Diamond asked, “who’s gwine lead dis here peerade?”
“I am.”
“I’s powerful proud to hear dat, kunnel,” Hitch declared. “An’ please, suh, kin I fotch up de rear an’ keep dese niggers from laggin’ back?”
“Yes, if you prefer that place.”
“Hitch needs he’p, kunnel,” Vinegar Atts declared promptly. “I’ll fetch up behine wid Hitch.”
“All right,” Gaitskill agreed, stifling a desire to laugh. “Of course, if Diada should attack us from the rear——”
“Huh!” Vinegar Atts interrupted him. “I’s gwine fetch up de exack middle of dis here peerade.”
“Now, listen!” Gaitskill commanded in a loud voice. “I don’t want Diada hurt in any way. Don’t use any clubs or guns or knives. Catch her with your hands. Come on, men!”
The posse pounded down the swamp road for four miles, then started in single file along the narrow bridle-path which led to the hog-camp three miles distant in the center of the swamp.
From the moment they entered the swamp the shouts and laughter of the negroes ceased.
They had all spent their lives within sight of that jungle and knew well its fearful menace and entertained toward it a most wholesome fear. They knew that three deep, broad bayous flowed into it, widened into an enormous mud-puddle and disappeared, swallowed up by rank, encroaching vegetation. They knew that the slow-moving, slimy water was abreeding place for countless insects which stung and bit and poisoned, and inhabited in pestilential swarms the only open breathing spaces reserved amid the vegetation, and they had seen cattle stagger out of that swamp, their nostrils, throats, and ears filled with tiny insects, fall to the ground in convulsions, and die.
The ground around them was covered with vegetation, so ropy with vines that a raccoon could not penetrate it; the branches of the immense trees hung downward, and were draped with long, ropelike funereal streamers and festoons of Spanish moss, so that it seemed that half the vegetable world was growing from below upward and the other half was growing from above downward, making a hot-house purgatory, shut off from the sky above and the earth below, and enclosing the men who rode that narrow path like a trap.
The dim ridge which their horses trod was the one route of ingress and egress through that obscure, uncharted morass reeking with poison and choked with a growth which seemed coeval with the dawn of creation itself.
Gaitskill, noting the sudden silence of the negroes, became uneasy. He knew that if the darkies were thrown into a panic they would spur their mounts into the jungle to hide, and that would be the end of both the horse and his rider.
“Marse Tom,” old Isaiah said in a trembling tone, “My hoss is a walkin’ lame.”
Gaitskill stopped and stood facing the long line of frightened negroes.
“All you niggers pull to one side and let Isaiah ride back to town!” he called.
“Who? Me?” Isaiah bawled. “Naw,suh! Dis hoss ain’t so powerful lame—not as much as he wus when I fust spoke. An’ even if his behine leg wus twisted plum’ off, I’d shore make him hop along wid you-alls.”
“Any of the rest of you niggers got lame horses?” Gaitskill laughed.
“Naw, suh, kunnel,” Hitch Diamond yelled, the last man in the line. “My hoss is walkin’ so spry I cain’t keep him behine by hisse’f. Lemme ride up dar close to you!”
“Stay where you are, Hitch!” Gaitskill laughed. “You asked me to let you ride behind. Come on, men!”
The path widened and the horses struck into a trot which brought them to the hog-camp in half an hour.
Throughout the length and breadth of this swamp, about a mile apart, there were curious mounds rising ten or twelve feet above the surrounding marsh. All these mounds were round in shape and flat on the top.
Some of them were not more than a hundred feet in diameter, while others were large, containing half an acre of land. They had been built a hundred years before by the Indians—and served a very practical purpose. When the water flooded the swamp in the autumn the wild animals took refuge on these mounds. The Indians penetrated the jungle in their canoes and visited each mound, easilyslaying the deer and bears, and thus procuring their winter supply of meat.
The Gaitskill hog-camp occupied the largest of these mounds, the cabin standing in the center of a two-acre plot. The flat top of the mound had been kept cleared of timber, but the jungle encroached to the very edge.
The posse galloped into this clearing, and Colonel Gaitskill dismounted from his horse.
“You darkies stay here!” he commanded. “I’ll see whether Diada is in the cabin.”
The cabin was empty. All of Isaiah’s smoked sausage and hams had disappeared. Little Bit’s mandolin, with the strings broken, lay in the corner of the room, and a part of Mrs. Gaitskill’s silk kimono hung from a splinter on the wall, showing how it had been torn off. From a nail on the wall hung a long lasso.
Taking down the rope Gaitskill walked out again to the negroes.
“She’s not here, men,” he announced. “We’ll have to hunt her in the swamp.”
Adjusting the rope to his saddle-horn he mounted and sat for a moment debating his next move.
Then Diada emerged from the jungle and stood at the edge of the clearing, looking curiously at the troop of men.
“Dar she!” the negroes howled.
Gaitskill rode slowly forward, holding out his hand in a gesture of friendliness about as one would approach to catch a horse. But Diada moved slowly backward, keeping in the cleared space, always just one leap distant from the jungle.
Twice they circled the clearing in this ridiculous fashion, Gaitskill repeating in most wheedling and coaxing tones every expression of fondness and endearment with which he was acquainted.
“Dat chin-music ain’t gittin’ Marse Tomnothin’,” Vinegar Atts declared, watching the elusive Diada. “Me ’n’ Hitch’s done tried dat!”
Finally Gaitskill abandoned that plan, and quietly loosened his rope and got ready to throw.
Riding back a few feet he gave the rope a quick swing, and the noose settled prettily around the arms of the giant woman just above her elbows. There was not a trace of fear in her face, and she moved slowly backward until the rope was taut. To the interested negroes it looked like the simple, peaceable game of “playing horse.”
Then Gaitskill spurred his horse to one side and gave the rope a sharp jerk. Instantly a long-bladed butcher-knife flashed in Diada’s hand, and the severed rope trailed loosely upon the ground, while the now harmless noose slipped down over her hands and was lightly tossed aside.
“Dar now!” Hitch Diamond exclaimed in tragic tones. “Dat fish is done unbit an’ div!”
Gaitskill slowly drew in the rope and was busy making another noose, when there was a warning shout from the negroes.
Diada was coming across the clearing toward Gaitskill, leaping like a deer. There was no trace of anger in her manner, and no sign of danger except the long-bladed knife in her powerful hand.
Gaitskill’s nervous horse shied at that monstrouswoman with her fluttering, ragged garments, and wheeled and bolted, snorting with terror.
The jungle kept the horse in the clearing as effectively as a barbed-wire fence, but the animal had two acres of level ground to run on and he proceeded to cover that ground in record-breaking time. Gaitskill might have quieted the animal very quickly, except for the fact that this performance seemed to please Diada, and she continued her pursuit, chasing Colonel Gaitskill all around the lot.
“Look out, Marse Tom!” the negroes bawled, amid whoops of laughter. “Don’t let her ketch yer!”
The laughter of the negroes diverted Diada’s attention to them.
With a loud “Whoosh!” she sailed into that compact mass of men and horses, scattering them like a brick dropped into a pile of feathers. Horses nickered and plunged, mules squealed and kicked, and negroes screamed with fright, and in a moment the cleared space in front of the hog-camp was a circus-ring of panicky men and beasts performing every imaginable stunt, with Diada in the star rôle of circus-master and chief of clowns.
Colonel Gaitskill’s horse found the path which led back to Tickfall, plunged down the embankment, and ran away with his helpless rider. The negroes, seeing Gaitskill’s departure, followed at their swiftest gait, their shrieks and wails of fright and woe rolling through the swamp with hideous reverberations.
One mile from the hog-camp Gaitskill regained control of his horse, and turned to ride back.
Then he heard the thundering hoofs of the horses and mules coming down the narrow bridle-path toward him. The road was not wide enough to pull aside and let them pass; even if it were, in that moment of panic, the horses and mules might become frightened at him and plunge into the swamp.
Gaitskill regretted the necessity for his action, but there was nothing else to do; he led that column of wailing negroes in ignominious flight back toward Tickfall.
He kept ahead of them until he reached the main road, then turned aside and let them precede him.
As he sat watching that ludicrous procession of squalling blacks, his own horse suddenly snorted and bolted down the road at its wildest speed. Gaitskill looked back to ascertain the cause of the animal’s fright.
Lo, Diada was in full pursuit of the flying posse, trotting with the speed of a galloping horse, her tongue hanging out like a hot dog’s, Mrs. Gaitskill’s kimono trailing behind her like a torn battle-flag, her long, ugly-bladed knife clutched in her powerful hand. One word came from her throat with the explosive sound of a pistol-shot:
“Whoo-ash!”
There was no stopping his horse, so Gaitskill rode the four miles back to Tickfall in something like eight minutes. When he swung out of the swamp road into the town he looked back again.
Diada was half a mile behind him, trotting tirelessly, covering about ten feet of ground with eachtremendous stride. Her farewell admonition came to him across the distance.
Softened by the intervening space, it seemed to contain a plaintive note of appeal; yet this impression was but momentary, for Gaitskill found too close a kinship between this outlandish expression and the snarl of the wolf, the hiss of the snake, and the scream of the jungle beast bent on blood and death.
Fifty-five terrified negroes galloped wildly into Tickfall, distributed themselves in the various negro settlements of the village, and told fifty-five separate and distinct tales of horror about the fiasco at the hog-camp.
One half truth ran through all the narratives, holding them together as vari-colored beads are held upon a string:
“Marse Tom Gaitskill bragged his brags at de cotton-shed dat he wus gwine walk right up an’ put his hand on dat wild woman. But he never done it a-tall—naw, suh.”
“He didn’t git no nigher dat woman dan de eend of a lassoo, an’ when she snuck up behine him wid dat big butcher-knife in her han’, dat white man jes’ nachelly’vaporated! Yes, suh! Us niggers tried to keep up an’ go along home wid him, but we ain’t never got in sight of Marse Tom till yit—an’ us is plum’ back in town! Dat nigger woman run at usjes’ like a wild hawg—you-all knows how de hawgs pop dey jaws an’ says ‘Whoosh!’ When a wild hawg does dat way, nigger, you better coon up a tree. Well, suh, dat’s jes’ whut she said to us—‘Whoosh!’”
Thus the negroes walked from house to house telling their appalling stories to little groups of pop-eyed listeners, adding something more blood-curdling to the tales with each repetition, until the terrified inhabitants of Shiny, Shoofly, Hell’s Half-Acre, and Dirty Six were as uneasy and fearful as if they were standing in the crumbling crater of a rumbling volcano.
Then the grapevine telephone was put into operation.
There is nothing as mysterious to the white man as the negro’s method of communicating information for long distances and to the remotest cabins of his race. “Word wus sont,” is the negro’s only explanation of how he happened to know twenty minutes after it occurred that a murder had been committed in the woods twenty miles away.
Long before night the town began to fill up with negroes coming in from plantations ten and twelve miles away. They arrived unostentatiously, seeming to spring up from the very sand of the street. They seemed jumpy when they were spoken to, moved about not singly but in groups, and kept looking back over their shoulders.
The white people of the town noticed the anxiety and strain, and it became a contagion. They knew that a wild woman was at large, meditating they knew not what outrage.
The sun set as red as blood, and in a few minutes a heavy, smelly, yellow Gulf fog swept the town, making objects invisible at a distance of twenty feet, almost blotting out the little electric lights which had just enough candle-power to reveal where they were but not sufficient to show where anything else was.
The Reverend Dr. Sentelle stumped his way down to the post office upon his ponderous cane, mailed a letter, and stood for a moment in the doorway puffing a cigar. Several negroes passed, walking down the middle of the street just as the venerable preacher flicked his cigar-stump toward the gutter. The butt whirled round and round and struck the ground with a splash of fire from the lighted end.
What a howl!
The men ran down the street yelping like hound-dogs, their feet pounding upon the sand, their voices trailing off into less audible sounds of woe as they continued their rapid flight.
Wondering at the unusual occurrence, Dr. Sentelle felt his way back to his home through the thick fog, and stood leaning upon his gate gazing up the street.
An object approached him, loomed up with gigantic proportions through the fantastic exaggerations of the fog, stopped a few feet from where the preacher stood, and spoke one word in a thunderous tone:
“Whoosh!”
Dr. Sentelle’s heavy walking stick went clattering upon the ground, he reeled backward, struck his heels against the porch steps, and sat down with aviolence which filled the dome of his cranium with bursting, falling stars.
“Heavens!” he exclaimed.
Diada stooped, picked up Dr. Sentelle’s stick by the little end, and, thus armed with a weighty club, she went loping onward.
A group of darkies sat in a negro barber-shop discussing the wild woman of the woods. Diada opened the door, entered as quietly and peaceably as she could, and remarked:
“Whoosh!”
The negroes disappeared as promptly and as completely as if that word were a cyclone puffing at a handful of feathers.
Diada trotted down the street in the direction they had gone and found herself in front of the Hen-Scratch saloon, where a house full of patrons talked in whispers and fortified themselves by indulgence in red liquor. Diada entered the swinging door and gave the pass-word: “Whoosh!”
The negroes whooshed. They went away from that place in every direction, exhausting the treasuries of their throats for sounds to vocalize their surprise and terror.
Suddenly from every negro section of the town there arose a wail which reverberated through the village of Tickfall and brought every white man to his feet white with fear:
“Ah-ee!Ah-ee!Ah-ee!”
Every white man seized his arms and ammunition and started for the front door; then the thought of his defenseless family stopped him, and held himthere to patrol his yard and guard his own house from the unknown peril which threatened.
Everywhere could be heard this wild call of fear.
Horses and mules broke out of their enclosures and galloped wildly about the streets with a thunder of pounding hoofs, calling to each other with frenzied nickering. The cows began a ceaseless bawling, and the excited dogs ran madly up and down the premises of their masters, making a pandemonium with their furious barking.
At intervals the noise lulled for a moment; then invariably would be heard a wild scream, clear as the outcry of a panther, ending with Diada’s one word, divided now into two distinct syllables:
“Whoo-ash!”
Colonel Tom Gaitskill leaned against the white columns of his porch and listened to the weird sounds which came to him from every quarter. In one negro settlement the inhabitants were bawling a song at the utmost capacity of their lungs, drowning their fears with music.
In another settlement, with the regularity and drumlike throb of a mighty chorus of immense hammers pounding upon steel anvils, was heard the cry: “Ah-ee! Ah-eel Ah-ee!”
From the section of the town occupied by the whites could be heard the nickering and running of horses, the bellowing of the cows, the barking of the dogs, and now and then a fusillade of pistol shots. While in the negro section closest to his home, Colonel Gaitskill could hear the Rev. Vinegar Atts bellowing like a bull of Bashan, praying in a voice whichcould be heard a mile, while those who knelt with him backed him up in his stentorian implorations with responses which echoed like a roll of thunder:
“O Lawd, dese here is turr’ble times——”
(“Listen, Lawd, dat’s de trufe—turr’ble times——”)
“De sun is done turned inter darkness an’ de moon inter blood, an’ de drefful day of de Lawd am come——”
(“O-o-o Lawd, she sho’ am come——”)
“We done saw de woman clothed wid de sun an’ de moon am under her foots——”
(“Ah-ee! Amen!”)
“Accawdin’ to Dy Word she done flied out to de wilderness whar she done been nourished fer a time, an’ half a time, an’ yuther times——”
(“Ah-ee! Double time——”)
“Woe to de inhabiters of de yearth——”
(“Whoa!”)
“O-o-o Lawd, fotch down thy angel to tote dis nigger home——”
Not a man or woman, white or black, closed an eye in Tickfall that night.
The sheriff and a number of business men held innumerable conversations over the telephone and finally a company of them convened in the sheriff’s office in the courthouse to confer about what should be done to quell the panic. But conversations and conferences came to naught because they were afraid to go through the negro settlements in the dense darkness lest some panic-stricken negro fireupon them from behind the door or beneath some cabin.
At the first streak of dawn the negroes, with one accord, moved toward the business part of the town and assembled in a dense mass around the courthouse, looking to the white people for protection.
Sheriff Flournoy made them a speech telling them that the white people were their friends, that no harm could come to them, that there was no cause for uneasiness, and that he wanted them to stay around the courthouse all day.
At the conclusion of his speech, Flournoy started across the street to enter the Tickfall bank. There was a wild yell from the negroes and a mighty scramble among them to get around on the other side of the courthouse.
Diada came out of an alley beside the Gaitskill store and stood in the middle of the street. She was holding Dr. Sentelle’s ponderous walking stick by the small end like a club. She gazed, apparently in wonder, at the crowd of negroes and whites.
As the silent mob viewed her with alarm, wondering what outrage she would commit next, she caught the big stick with a hand on either end, raised it high above her head, and screamed:
“Whoosh! Whoo-ash! Whoosh!”
Flournoy drew his pistol and fired in the air above her head three times.
Diada ducked at each shot, then she stood upright, whirled the club around her head, and threw it at the sheriff. The missile curved like an arrow and went straight toward the mark. Flournoyavoided a crushed skull by falling flat upon the ground and letting the club pass over him.
When he rose to his feet, Diada was trotting down the road with the speed of the wind.
“Get your horses—everybody!” Flournoy shouted.
With that word of command began the greatest man-hunt that Tickfall Parish had ever known.
Every man in Tickfall who had any sort of animal to ride bestrode the beast and joined the procession, which moved out of town in the wake of Diada. Hundreds of negroes who had ridden in from the plantations the night before galloped down the road behind the whites. And every canine of any size or color attached himself to the posse and went plunging along with the men.
They came to a straight stretch of road where they could see for over two miles. At the far end of that stretch they beheld Diada, her head and shoulders stooped far over, trotting with gigantic strides, traveling with the tireless persistence of a desert camel.
To their surprise, Diada did not run into the swamp, but continued upon the main road, which led to the Tickfall landing on the Mississippi River. Seeing this, the men did not attempt to run her down, but remained content to keep her in sight. At the end of an hour she was still trotting easily with no signs of fatigue.
Finally Diada turned and ran into the forest. With a mighty clamor the men raced after her, floundering through the underbrush, and galloping far over into the woods. When the posse had passed out of sight among the trees, Diada quietly climbed down from the branches of a big tree, where she had concealed herself, and started down the road again.
The dogs discovered her first.
Yelping furiously they drove her from the main road across the prairie marsh which skirted Lake Basteneau, and penned her upon a narrow point which projected like a peninsula into the lake and was thickly overgrown with cypress saplings about as large around as a man’s wrist.
The marsh between the road and the lake was too soft for the men to venture on with their horses, and it was even dangerous for a man to walk upon because of the quicksands. But the men could look from the road, across a part of the lake, and easily see Diada and the dogs.
“Don’t go after her, men!” Flournoy called. “Let the dogs run her away from there! We’ll get her when she comes off that point!”
With the large butcher-knife which she had procured from Mrs. Gaitskill’s kitchen she had begun to cut down the cypress-saplings, trimming off the leaves and the branches. She piled them up, dozens of them, working swiftly.
The dogs did not advance to attack Diada. They merely stood and barked at her. But they were in possession of the only exit from the narrow point on which Diada had been trapped.
“Dat gal must be gittin’ ready to beat dem dogs off wid dem poles,” Hitch Diamond remarked to the other negroes. “She’s shore put a job up on herse’f.”
But Diada had a surprise in store for them all.
Balancing one of the long saplings on the top of her hand she hurled it like a javelin with the speed and accuracy of an arrow. A hound-dog gave a yelp which seemed to break in two in the middle—then he died. The javelin had pinned him to the ground like an entomologist’s specimen on a cardboard.
Then the javelins flew thick and fast into that bunch of dogs, and every flying weapon found a mark and brought forth a yelp of death. In a few moments the dogs turned tail and came whining back to their masters.
Diada snatched up a number of the javelins, ran off the point of land, and trotted down the edge of the lake toward the river.
“Leave your horses and follow her, men!” Flournoy ordered.
Four hundred men sprang to the ground, spread out in a long line like a fish-seine and went plunging across the marsh in pursuit of the fleeing woman. The grass was waist high, dead and dry as dust, but it offered no places for concealment, and Diada’s tall form was easily kept in sight.
At intervals the woman turned and hurled a javelin at the posse, but they were careful to stay out of danger.
In a little while the men noticed that Diada had begun to show signs of exhaustion. She was travelingmore slowly, stopping now and then to catch her breath, and moving forward with a more pronounced stoop to her mighty shoulders.
She had eaten nothing for two days, had had no rest or sleep, and was now on the last lap of a twelve-mile run at full-speed!
Finally she slowed down to a walk, and the walk became a sort of stumble. She still carried a few of her javelins, and it was evident that she was now dependent upon them to keep her pursuers at a distance, while both she and they realized that she was now in the center of a prairie of marsh grass where she could not supply herself with new weapons when those she possessed were exhausted.
Something of the pathos of the situation dawned upon the men, both white and black, and they became silent, eyes strained toward the weakening, staggering quarry, so soon to fall into their hands.
For twenty minutes the silence was unbroken except for the swish of the marsh grass as the men waded through it. Far across the prairie could be seen the levee of the Mississippi River.
Suddenly the silence was broken by the long, dear, musical whistle of a boat upon the river.
Diada stopped. Again that long, clear whistle came belling across the sun-scorched prairie.
Diada raised her hands straight up above her head like a sun-worshiper, emitted a long, plaintive, howling scream, which ended with that word which was branded upon the memories of Tickfall forever: “Whoosh! Whoo-ash!”
So dramatic was her action that the hair stood upon every man’s head, and a cold chill swept across every sweat-drenched body.
The woman trotted slowly onward, moving now in a straight line toward the river. She had nearly a mile to travel to reach the levee, and she saw that she could not make the distance before she was captured.
Then she sprung another surprise—one which came very near being the death of her pursuers.
Kneeling in the grass she picked up two tiny splinters of bark and rubbed them rapidly together. A small blue flame curled around her fingers and caught in the dry marsh grass. Running to another point she dropped the flame there.
Then a wild yell of horror swept across the prairie and she beheld four hundred men in a panic, fleeing for their lives.
Diada was safe from the fire because what little breeze there was blew landward from the lake. In an incredible time that prairie had become a furnace of fire, the racing flames pursuing the screaming men, making a scene resembling nothing so much as the picture of that hell so vividly described “where the smoke of torment ascendeth and there is weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth!”
The fire was checked when it reached the wide sandy road which led to the Tickfall landing.
By the mercy of Heaven the men reached that road unscorched by the flames! Mounting their horses, they looked across the charred grass of the prairie and beheld Diada trotting slowly onward toward the Mississippi levee.
With a wild shout they sent their steeds pounding down the road after her.
Then around the bend of the river came a beautiful sea-going yacht—an exquisite queen of the waters. Her whistle emitted four long, clear signals for the Tickfall landing.
“By George!” Colonel Gaitskill exclaimed, “that is Captain Lemuel Manse’s yacht. My telegram caught him at Vicksburg, and he turned around and came back!”
In a moment the yacht came opposite to where Diada stood upon the bank of the river. The watching men saw her lift her hands high toward the heavens. Then they heard a long, clear shout, ending with the familiar: “Whoosh! Whoo-ash!”
The yacht answered with two short, sharp whistle signals.
Diada ran swiftly down the levee, and then leaped high and plunged far over into the muddy waters of the Mississippi!
The wondering, watching men saw her head emerge from the waves, saw her swim like a fish to the yacht, saw her seize a rope which was tossed over the side, and climb hand over hand to safety and rest and peace and the care and protection of her friends!
“That’s all, men!” Gaitskill said in a voice which choked in his throat. “You may all go back home now. Diada is gone from Tickfall forever!”