heart good to see them what likes they vittles? Bulldog, yo’ am de
most satisfactoriest meal hound what I know.” Uncle Henry doubled with
laughter, in which Bulldog, his mouth already crammed full, joined
heartily.
Uncle Henry sincerely liked Bulldog. The giant never referred to the
fact that Uncle Henry was a lifer. For twenty-seven years he had been a
convict-camp cook. It was as a young man that, under the influence of
ten-cent white mule, he had lifted a chair against his legally married
wife. In Uncle Henry’s mind that dreadful event had always remained
as an accident. His whole life was being freely given in atonement.
When some of the younger convicts taunted him and called him the old
murderer, they left a hurt that remained with Uncle Henry for weeks.
Bulldog shuffled toward the door finally with a sigh. “Ef Ah swallows
another swallow, Uncle Henry, Ah busts.”
“Boy, come again when yo’s hungry; yo’ makes me proud.” The old cook
chortled, looking after him.
As Bulldog turned into the lane to Captain Jim’s quarters, a small
whitewashed bungalow, two hounds bayed a ferocious greeting.
“Yo’ Lady Belle, yo’ Junie, hush yo’ mouf!” Bulldog bayed back. Then
he grinned and tossed the remains of the fresh ham bone over the
chicken-wire inclosure. The hounds left off their racket instantly and
pounced on the bone, while Bulldog leaned complacently against the
inclosure and eyed them with satisfaction.
“Dem houn’ dawgs go after dat bone lak it was a runaway nigger,” he
commented with approval. Though every other Negro on the place looked
upon the bloodhounds as a possible Nemesis, such a thought had never
entered Bulldog’s massive head. To him they were companions, and the
fact that he was allowed to feed them was proof conclusive that he was
above the ordinary regulations of the convict camp.
He turned from the hounds presently and made his way to a small
outhouse, where he procured a pail, a whitewash brush and a scraper.
Captain Jim liked things to look spick-and-span, and the timbers
supporting the bungalow porch had acquired a reddish-brown mud colour
from the recent rains. Bulldog proceeded at the first job that he knew
would catch Captain Jim’s eye. He knew on which side his bread was
buttered.
“Wasn’ it sad to see _Titanic_ sinkin’ down,
Wasn’ it sad to see _Titanic_ sinkin’ down;
Husban’s an’ wives, little chilluns los’ dey lives;
Wasn’ it sad to see _Titanic_ sinkin’ down.”
Verse after verse, in the droning singsong of the old spirituals, kept
time to the whitewash brush. The underpinning of the bungalow was
certainly going to catch Captain Jim’s eye when he came up the lane.
Two and a half hours later Bulldog took up his accustomed place in
line on the way to the mess hall. If he had recently gorged until he
couldn’t swallow another swallow, that was not going to interfere with
his doing full justice to Uncle Henry’s supper. And later, spread out
at full length in the bunk room over the mess hall, he lay on his
back and slept the sleep of the just. Sleeping on one’s back is said
to be conducive to snoring, but Bulldog was a silent sleeper. If he
was primitive in his mode of living, so, too, he was primitive in his
sleeping hours. Dead to the world he was, yet ready to be instantly
awake.
Once upon a time a fellow convict night guard had taken the liberty
to bring his stick across the soles of Bulldog’s bare feet as he lay
asleep. It was a common trick, and as the sleepers were chained to
their flat bunks, the guard had only to step back out of harm’s way,
while the startled sleeper rubbed open his eyes and bellowed revenge
to the accompaniment of catcalls from the other prisoners. But the
unlucky guard who had attempted the prank at Bulldog’s expense carried
an eye that squinted forever after as a warning to all and sundry that
the giant was equally dangerous, asleep or awake. It must have been
that Bulldog had heard the swish of the descending stick in his sleep,
for the smack of it against the soles of his feet and the whoosh of
his hand striking the unwitting guard had been nearly simultaneous. So
Bulldog slept the sleep of the just.
He was awake with the sun, and lay there for half an hour studying his
toes, even as a small boy of five or six months studies them. When
a man can do that intently for half an hour, his conscience isn’t
bothering him. So to breakfast presently and to take his place at the
head of the squad line. They were starting the new Ogeechee Canal and
Bulldog knew that Captain Jim meant him to set the pace. It was an
accepted fact that a squad line with Bulldog at its head got about a
week and a half of digging done in a week. It was useless to try to
drive labour out of Negro chain gangs, but to lead it out of them--that
was different. It explained why Captain Jim needed Bulldog. Winter was
coming along and the new drainage canal must be finished before the
flood rains of spring.
The beginning was to be made some three miles away from camp, and
they marched out in formation, five men to a squad. The chain-gang
squad of five meant two ahead, two behind, and one in the middle. Each
prisoner had a leg iron around his right ankle, to which was attached
the four-foot squad chain. When they were on the march the squad chains
of each squad were linked together in a common ring, so that if a
man attempted to bolt on the road he would have to take four of his
companions with him. Even if the bolt were successful, it was poor work
for five men, chained together, to beat off pursuit in the swamp. When
they worked, each man carried his own chain hooked to a snaffle sewed
to his tunic.
But the work line was watched over by a convict guard whose duty it was
to sit on a palmetto stump all day with a sawed-off shotgun across his
knees. Sometimes a prisoner escaped, but not often.
Bulldog, at the head of the line, had never tried to escape. When his
time was up he had always hurried to town in high glee, but with a
certain remote feeling that sooner or later he would be coming back to
Cap’n Jim. Once back, he was content to work out his time. He liked to
work, he gloried in the fact that he could do the work of seven.
“Ah reckon, big boy, dey hangs yo’ dis time.” Chinkapin, so named
because of his size, was the middle prisoner in Bulldog’s squad. He had
spoken irrelevantly to the landscape, a dreary waste of cypress knees
and cabbage palmetto extending half a dozen miles to the row of live
oaks that marked the river line. No one in the squad paid any attention.
“Ah reckon, big boy, dey hangs yo’ dis time!” Chinkapin repeated.
This time Bulldog half turned his head to speak, but as he did so
three turkey buzzards flapped crazily out of the swamp just ahead and
absorbed his attention for the moment. By the time the buzzards had
settled out of sight again Bulldog had forgotten Chinkapin.
But the little convict was not to be so readily neglected. “Ah reckon,
big boy, dey hangs yo’ dis time,” he intoned once more.
“Hangs who?” Bulldog demanded bluntly. “Chinkapin, yo’ half-size
nigger, shut yo’ mouf befo’ Ah sicks dem eye-pickin’ buzzards on yo’!”
“Ah ain’ kill nobody,” Chinkapin answered glibly; “dem flip-flop death
angels ain’ lookin’ fo’ me.”
“What yo’ mean yo’ ain’ kill nobody? What lie yo’ fixin’ to tell now?”
Bulldog had stopped and was facing his tormentor. “Who hangs who for
what? Yo’ tells de truf or Ah smacks yo’ cross-eyed.”
Chinkapin had an active mind. Although he had never seen him, he had
heard about the squint-eyed night guard. Bulldog towered above him. In
one glance Chinkapin made full appraisal. Bulldog’s hand was the size
of a ham. There was no going back now, for the big Negro was evidently
riled. The three buzzards taking wing had been an omen. Chinkapin
should have realized that before he pressed his point.
“Ah ain’ lyin’, Bulldog,” the diminutive one countered quickly. “My gal
done tol’ me las’ night when she brung mah clo’s. Ah’m leavin’ Sa’day.”
“Who cares when yo’ leaves, han’ful? Did Ah ax yo’ when yo’ leaves? Who
hangs for what? Yo’ answer me dat in de whole truf or I slaps you pas’
an’ presen’ an’ back again!”
Chinkapin shivered. The delay had stopped the whole squad line, and
back along the line a convict guard was shouting. But Bulldog was
intent only on the little Negro before him.
“Does yo’ answer me, Chinkapin, or does I knock you loose?” One hand,
open palmed, was raised threateningly.
“Dat Washin’ton nigger died,” Chinkapin blurted out in shaking fear.
“My gal tol’ me when she come las’ night.”
Bulldog’s hand dropped to his side. He stood absolutely motionless,
looking blankly at the quivering messenger of bad news. For a full
minute he stood there, and to Chinkapin it seemed that death itself was
standing there.
“Is yo’ tellin’ de whole truf?” Bulldog demanded.
“So help me!” quavered the terror-stricken Chinkapin.
“If yo’ ain’----”
But the sentence was never finished. One of the guards, alarmed at
the sudden halt, had fired into the air as a signal to the others.
The report of the gun had an electrical effect on Bulldog. If the
Washington Negro had died, he would hang. The three turkey buzzards,
frightened by the gun, came winging past. Out of the corner of one eye
Bulldog saw them.
“Stan’s yo’ back!” he commanded quickly, at the same time shoving the
four other members of the squad into a huddle. That gave him about six
feet of chain to work on. Swiftly he bent. The chain was coiled like
magic first around one forearm and then the other. There was a grunt,
the ring of metal, and the chain had parted. Bulldog dived headlong off
the trail into the palmetto scrub just as the first convict guard came
running up. He fired both barrels of the sawed-off shotgun point-blank
in the general direction of Bulldog’s dive. Then he reloaded and fired
again, keeping up the process until the other guards arrived. In a
circle they closed in on the place. But the turned-back palmetto scrub
revealed nothing. Bulldog was gone.
It was Chinkapin who turned an almost pasty gray face toward heaven as
he exclaimed, “May de Lawd have mercy on dis pore little nigger’s soul,
Ah didn’ mean no hahm!”
When he dived, Bulldog landed in the lush swamp grass and proceeded
through it bellywise like a snake. He made a hundred yards that way
before he got to his feet and broke into a run. The palmetto scrub was
slightly higher than his head as he pressed forward ankle-deep in the
slime. He came to a halt presently to get his second wind, knowing that
he was safe for the immediate present. The convict guards couldn’t
leave the chain gang. They would have to summon Captain Jim and a
posse. By that time Bulldog would be well on his way. But where?
Half an hour later, ploughing his way through the swamp grass to the
river, he was still pondering the question when his ear caught the
far-away bay of a hound.
“Dere’s dat posse, sho’ nuff,” Bulldog grunted, and put on speed. He
was nearing the river and higher ground, and the going was easier.
The Big Swamp, on both sides of the river, was mostly tidal backwash.
There wasn’t a habitation for miles ahead, and once he got to the
river, Bulldog felt he could swim downstream and lose himself in the
swamps on the other side. Unless the crime were a very terrible one,
a white man’s posse wouldn’t break its neck searching the swamps for
one chain-gang Negro more or less. Bulldog, for all his uncouthness,
had a rough-and-ready knowledge of the customs of the country. But for
one day the chase would be hot; the cry of the hounds, giving tongue,
assured the big Negro of that. Even now the dogs seemed to have gained
on him, and he stopped to listen. They were much nearer than they had
been before. Bulldog’s worried face changed to reveal a grin.
“Dem houn’ dawgs ain’ on no leash. Cap’n Jim done loosed ’em!” He
chortled aloud as if to convince himself that his ears had not deceived
him. He cocked his head on one side and listened intently. “Sho’ nuff!
Dat’s Lady Belle and Junie.”
The river line, with its row of live oaks festooned with Spanish moss,
was a scant half mile away now, and the going underfoot was solid.
Bulldog broke into a steady run. In a few minutes he had reached the
first of the live oaks. Back in the glory days of the old South, these
magnificent trees had been set out by some long-since-departed rice
planter. Now their branches interlaced.
Bulldog swung himself into a tree, got up among the middle branches,
ran out a good-sized limb like some giant monkey, paused, and then
swung himself into the next tree. The hounds were close now; he could
hear them as he climbed. But they were running the trail far ahead of
the posse. Through the second tree and into the third swung the apelike
giant. He kept on until he had reached the fifth, from which he dropped
swiftly to the ground. He found a stout section of an old branch,
tested it with the weight of his hand, and then swung back in a circle
to lie in wait beside his trail.
He did not wait long. The hounds went by in full cry, Junie in the
lead, Lady Belle at his heels. The bloodhound cares neither for sight
nor sound, but follows his nose. Bulldog closed in behind them and
grinned broadly as they came to a baffled halt at the foot of the live
oak.
“Yo’ Lady Belle, yo’ Junie, hush dat racket!”
At the sound of his voice the hounds whirled to face him, baying
excitedly at this strange turn of affairs.
“Yo’ heah me? Hush dat racket!” Brandishing the broken limb, Bulldog
stepped toward them. “Ah feeds yo’ wiv mah own han’s and yo’ runs me
down jes’ lak Ah was a runaway convic’ nigger! Junie, Lady Belle, fo’
dat Ah frails yo!”
The broken limb descended in a sidelong swish and Junie was bowled
over. A split second later, in the midst of a protracted howl, Lady
Belle got the same treatment. Both hounds scrambled to their feet
whimpering.
“Hush dat noise! Yo’ ain’ hurt!” Again the tree branch came swishing
down, but this time above their heads. The hounds were cowed. “Tracks
me down lak a runaway convic’ nigger, will yo’? Now yo’ gits!” Bulldog
grunted savagely. “Home, Junie! Home, Lady Belle, befo’ Ah cuts loose
an’ frails yo’ good!”
With tails down, both hounds turned and fled. Bulldog sent the tree
branch soaring through the air after them. It lit at their heels and
sent them scurrying faster.
“Why fo’ Cap’n Jim let loose dem houn’ dawgs? He might knowed Ah’d
frail ’em,” the big Negro commented philosophically. It was common
knowledge that a bloodhound loose on the trail could be beaten back, or
frailed, as usage had it. But time for philosophy was short. Bulldog
went down to the river at a jog trot, hesitated at its brink and then
dived overboard into the deep water that cut into the live-oak bank. He
came up with a snort and struck out for the opposite shore.
The tide was strong and carried him well downstream, which was to his
advantage in putting distance between himself and his pursuers. It
was in searching for a convenient landing place that he spied a boat
pulled up in a bayou. That meant someone else was there, and he allowed
himself to be swept farther downstream. It also offered him means of
getting upstream with much less trouble than through the swamp. He cut
into shore presently, and keeping well under the bank, worked his way
around to the boat. It was high and dry, and a pair of oars were tucked
under the seats.
Just as Bulldog reached for them there was the reddish-brown flash of a
copperhead that had been sunning itself. Outraged at being disturbed,
the reptile struck. But the giant Negro was quicker and snatched his
hand back out of harm’s way.
“Jes’ fo’ dat, little red snake, Ah whuffs yo’,” Bulldog grunted.
Sensing danger, the copperhead squirmed for the gunwale of the boat and
the safety of the river. Once more the big Negro was quicker. His heel
descended and the snake’s head was crushed.
“Whuff!” he grunted. “What Ah tell yo’?” Reaching down, he picked up
the remains and tossed them on the sun-baked bank. The whole little
drama had consumed not more than ten seconds. Bulldog shoved the boat
into the river and clambered quietly aboard.
Once in the current, he pulled upstream, using a long, steady, untiring
stroke. As a pickaninny, a flat-bottomed river rowboat had been his
hobbyhorse. It would be a full hour before the posse would get within
sight of the river, he figured, even if it came that far, now that the
hounds were no longer giving cry to guide it. Lady Belle and Junie had
cut it straight for home.
Ten miles above the place where he had first struck the river, Bulldog
pulled the boat into a bayou, beached it well up among a covering
screen of scrub palmetto, and then crawled under it and went to sleep.
The frogs were singing the sun to sleep when he awoke hungry. All along
he hadn’t had any idea at all where he was going, but that was a matter
which could easily remain indeterminate. The gnawing at his stomach was
serious. He would starve to death in the swamp; so, as a hiding place,
the swamp was cast aside.
“Ah got to git me goin’,” he mumbled to himself, his lips protruding
as they always did when he was perplexed. In an hour it would be dark.
He decided to wait. Presently, in the growing dusk, he dragged the
boat down to the river, and tucking the oars under the seats as he had
found them, he gave it a heave that sent it well out into the stream.
He watched while the current caught it up, nosed it around and bore it
from sight in the gloom. “Dey don’ git me fo’ stealin’ no boats,” he
grumbled dispassionately, “but I sho’ would relish me some food.”
The yellowest of yellow moons, as big as a house, bathed the palmettos
with metallic beauty when Bulldog silently and sullenly struck off
through the swamp, heading south. He was going down to the sea, but
there was no romance in his going. It was the urge of his stomach that
led him that way rather than striking inland. The sea coast below
the Big Swamp was a series of wind-swept savannas. It was broken
by innumerable inlets and fringed with islands. But there were no
settlements along this strip for miles and he would be safe from the
sight of men. The beaches offered clams, crawfish, and prawn. He had
never been a fugitive before. He was lonely for the companionship of
his kind. Most of all, he was hungry.
Hour after hour he went on and on through the swamp, another shadow
among a million, yet the only one that moved. His gait was rapid, but
not hurried, a relentless, ever-forward swinging rhythm of motion. If
he took bearings, he took them subconsciously. He made no plan. At the
sea he would find something to eat. His mind travelled no farther than
that. He even forgot that he was lonely.
A sudden cry through the stillness of the night sent dread loneliness
over him like a pall and stirred every fibre of him, so that he
quivered where he stood, as frozen as the other million shadows about
him. At once the night had a myriad of tiny sounds that mounted and
mounted, until, joined with the pulsations of his own body, they seemed
to roar in his ears.
But the cry that had startled him had been human. He sensed that, as he
stood listening to hear it again, stood like a statue in the moonlight,
motionless and breathless. Had the cry come from above or below him,
from before or behind him? He couldn’t tell, but as he strained his
senses he became gradually aware that he was not alone in the swamp.
The moon was well overhead now, and though it was half as bright as day
in the upper world, every shadow was as black as pitch. Insects droned,
the palmetto leaves caught a fitful breeze and rasped dully, unseen
things crackled in the undergrowth.
“Whar yo’ is?”
Bulldog jumped two yards at the sound of his own voice, not realizing
that he had experienced a psychological moment, that the very stress
he had put on his senses of perception had caused him to speak out,
just as a householder who fancies he has heard someone outside his door
will call out, “Who’s there?” And while he stood there unable to decide
whether to remain or run, that human cry came to him again, this time
almost at his feet.
His teeth chattered now from mental if not bodily fear. Sounds do not
come from nothing; and yet, strain his eyes as he would, he saw only
a cabbage palmetto and its jet-black shadow in the place from whence
it seemed to him the cry had come. Still he stared at the shadow.
Something was there. As he stared, he saw it take form. Slowly at first
it grew round and whitish, then its shape became more definite. Bulldog
was hypnotized by it now, glued to the spot where he stood. He tried to
ask it what it was, but his lips refused to move. He was cold now--cold
and shivering. Then, with a rush, his breath came back to him. The
thing had moved and was looking at him and he knew what he saw.
“Bulldog!” the thing gasped.
“Jedge Barringer! Ah thought yo’ was a ghos’!”
“Thank God you’ve come,” the judge said weakly. “I’ve had an accident.
I’m shot in the leg. Not bad, but I lost a lot of blood before I got
the flow stopped. I guess I’ve crawled ten miles trying to find the
river and my boat. But I’m all right now. Who’s with you? Captain Jim?”
Bulldog heard and yet didn’t hear. Judge Barringer had been hunting
and had shot himself in the leg. He had tried to reach his boat and
had failed. The boat in question was the one Bulldog had found and
appropriated; the boat he had later set adrift. The judge thought
Bulldog had been sent out to look for him by Captain Jim.
“You black hyena, don’t stand there like that!” Judge Barringer
exploded feebly. “I’m no ghost. Call Captain Jim.”
“Jedge, Yo’ Honour, dey ain’ nobody heah but me,” said Bulldog, simply
stating a fact.
“You mean to say you came for me alone?” Judge Barringer was suffering
from a terrible ordeal and was not thinking very clearly. “But how did
you know----”
He stopped. Bulldog had not come for him. No one had come for him. He
had slipped off quietly to hunt alone, expecting to go on that night to
Bryan Neck. The whole idea of someone coming for him had been a sort of
nightmare of hope when his brain had failed to function properly. He
might still be suffering from hallucinations.
“Bulldog!” He spoke to make sure this towering Negro before him was
real.
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour.” Time and circumstances could not alter
custom, and Bulldog’s answer was a tribute to habit.
“Bulldog, what are you doing here?”
“Jedge, Yo’ Honour, it’s thisaway,” the big Negro began.
“That’s enough,” the judge cut in with a sigh of relief. “As long as
it’s you, I don’t give a damn what you’re doing here. Just give me a
hand and help me get to the river. I’ve got a boat there in a little
bayou between two live oaks.”
Bulldog bent and helped the judge to a sitting posture. The judge
groaned and then swore.
“Dat boat, Jedge Barringer?” Bulldog asked. “Dat was’n de boat wiv de
red paint on de oar handles?”
“Yes, that’s the one. So you know where it is? That makes things
easier.” Judge Barringer was fast being able to think once more.
“De las’ time Ah see dat boat, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, she was gwine down de
middle ob de ’Geechee all by itself,” Bulldog explained honestly.
“You mean adrift?”
“Yas-suh, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, jes’ lak a ol’ tree log.”
“All right.” It was no time to bewail the loss of a boat. “Then you can
take me back in your boat, Bulldog.”
“Me, Jedge? Ah swum.”
Judge Barringer put out a quick hand to Bulldog’s leg. The big Negro’s
clothes were dry. “You swam across? When?” he asked warily.
“Ah reckon it mus’ ’a’ been a couple hours befo’ dinnertime,” Bulldog
answered. He knew from experience it was useless to try to lie to Judge
Barringer. But the thought of dinnertime prompted him to add hopefully,
“Yo’ ain’t got nuthin’ to eat on yo’, has yo’, Jedge, Yo’ Honour?”
“Do you mean to tell me you broke away from the chain gang?”
“No, suh!” Bulldog answered hurriedly. “Ah didn’ do nuthin’ lak dat. It
was thisaway, Jedge, Yo’ Honour: Dat Washin’ton nigger die an’ Ah cain’
see no use in cravin’ to hang by mah neck.”
Judge Barringer was thoroughly aroused now. “Who told you that nigger
died?”
“Chinkapin.”
“Where?”
“He’s on de chain gang.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Befo’ de Lawd, Ah wouldn’ lie to yo’, Jedge Barringer, an’ yo’ knows
it!” Bulldog said fervently.
“I mean I don’t believe that nigger died,” the judge explained.
“If yo’ believes it or don’ believes it, Jedge, Yo’ Honour, dat don’
save mah neck.”