than that, he found the store also locked. But he stopped at the home
of one of his clerks and secured a key.
Entering the building, he opened a small iron safe in the office
situated in the middle of the store, placed the bag of money within,
and gave the combination-knob a few quick turns.
Then hearing the lively duet in the rear of the store, he passed out
into the lot. The duet came to a quick close.
“Howdy, Marse Tom?” the negroes exclaimed in concert. Then Mustard
Prophet added, “I been waitin’ fer you all dis Saddy atternoon.”
“I knew it was you, Mustard,” Gaitskill grinned. “I’ve been hearing the
sound of that old cornet twenty years, and I’d recognize it in China.
What’s aching now?”
“Marse Tom, ain’t dese here hard times? Ain’t money skeercer dan snow
in a hot biscuit-pan?”
“Just so,” Gaitskill said. “I’ve been out collecting to-day, and I
know.”
“I reckin you an’ me will hab to keep on trustin’ de Lawd, Marse
Tom--yes, suh, as de old Injun useter say, trus’ de good Lawd an’ keep
our cotton dry.”
“What did you want to see me about?” Gaitskill asked.
“Look at dese clothes, Marse Tom!” Mustard answered earnestly. “Look at
dese here empty pockets! Ain’t dey no way to sell our cotton? Don’t I
git no loose change fer my year’s hard wuck?”
“Trust the good Lord!” Gaitskill grinned mockingly.
“I’m is trus’ de good Lawd, Marse Tom, but dat ain’t git me nothin’.
An’ I’m jes’ ’bleeged to tell you, Marse Tom, dat while I still trus’
de Lawd I’s lookin’ to _you_ fer some good clothes an’ some money.”
“Put not your trust in princes,” Gaitskill said with solemn mockery.
“Trust the Lord!”
The negro fumbled at the keys of his cornet and sighed.
Gaitskill watched him with twinkling eyes. He was the best plow hand,
the best hoe hand, the best negro overseer in Louisiana, and for twenty
years had been in charge of Gaitskill’s famous Nigger-Heel plantation.
Simple, confiding, good-natured, trustworthy, industrious, Gaitskill
was very fond of him and would do anything in reason for him. He loved
to point him out to his friends as the negro whose hard work had made
the Nigger-Heel one of the show-places among the plantations of the
state.
“We’ll talk about it to-morrow, Mustard,” Gaitskill proposed. “What are
you going to do to-night?”
“Hopey’s lookin’ fer me up to yo’ house, Marse Tom,” Mustard declared,
all his gloom gone. “I ain’t saw dat wife of mine sence all dis here
war trouble come on me.”
“I want you to sleep in this store to-night,” Gaitskill said. “Pile up
some of the empty oat-sacks in the rear of the store and make a bed.”
“Yes, suh. I’ll take keer of eve’ything. You knows me, Marse Tom. Gimme
de key!”
Gaitskill passed over the door-key and the negro followed him through
the store to his horse.
“Marse Tom,” he said, as Gaitskill was mounting his horse, “’bout dis
here war in Yurope; I don’t see no signs of no war in Yurope. Now,
I figgers it out dis way: de Yanks up Nawf is done bought up all de
newspapers an’ dey’s skeerin’ us wid all dis war-talk so dey kin run de
price of cotton down an’ all us pore niggers----”
“Aw, shut up!” Gaitskill said.
Mustard watched the horseman until the dust and dark swallowed him up
far down the street. Then he turned back into the store with a grin:
“Dat white man ain’t onsottlin’ his mind ’bout no war. He owns a bank!”
Mustard locked the front door, shutting himself in, then passed through
the rear door into the lot where Pap Curtain was still waiting for him.
“Pap,” Mustard began, “does you know how come a nigger wucks wid his
hands, while the white man figgers and counts his money?”
“Naw.”
“Well, suh, hit happened this way: A nigger, a Injun, an’ a white man
wus playin’ seben-up under de shade of a tree. De good Lawd dropped
down a box of tools right close to whar dey wus settin’, an’ all of ’em
hopped up to git whut wus comin’ to ’em. De nigger wus hoggish an’ he
grabbed de bigges’ things, an’ he got a shovel, a hoe, an’ a spade. De
Injun, he had to hab his’n, so he grabbed de bow ’n’ arrer. Dar warn’t
nothin’ lef’ fer de white man but a pen, so de white man, he figgers!”
“Yes, suh, dat’s whut de good Book say. But I’s heerd tell it diffunt.”
“How’s dat?” Mustard asked.
“De good Lawd made a nigger, a white man, an’ a Injun outen good clean
mud. Atter de dirt had dried real good, He fotch ’em befo’ de big white
jedgment seat.
“He say to de white man: ’Whut you gwine do?’ De white man specify:
‘I’s gwine be a merchant.’ Den He say to de Injun: ‘Whut you gwine do?’
De Injun spoke Him back: ‘I’se gwine hunt and fish.’
“Den He say to de nigger: ‘What you gwine do, cullud pusson?’ De
nigger, he claw his head an’ ’spon’: ‘Dunno, boss. I reckin I’ll jes’
foller atter de boys. Mebbe dar’ll be cold vittles lef’ over fer me!’”
“Dat’s shore a true sayin’, Pap,” Mustard grinned. “An’ dat reminds my
mind. Marse Tom didn’t say nothin’ ’bout me gittin’ my supper nowhar.”
“White folks cain’t turn a dog in a meat-house or a nigger in a
sto’-house an’ especk him to starve to death,” Pap suggested.
“An’ of co’se, white folks cain’t be mad ef de dog or de nigger gives a
invite to his frien’,” Mustard grinned. “Come in, Pap, less git somepin
to eat!”
In the rear of the store they switched on an electric light, set out
an empty box to serve for a table, and began a search for food. There
was plenty of it, and they helped themselves and each other with
extravagant liberality.
For a long time utterance was impeded by food, but at last Pap Curtain
managed to articulate a query:
“Mustard, wid all dis grub in dis ration-house, how come ole Miss
Mildred Gaitskill is so skinny an’ Marse Tom ain’t no fatter dan he wus
when we fust knowed him fawty year ago?”
“Fattenin’ hogs ain’t in luck,” Mustard told him philosophically. “When
you gits all you wants to eat, look out for de butcher! Escusin’ dat,
white folks ain’t studyin’ ’bout somepin to eat. Dey studies money.”
“Huh,” Pap sighed, as he rubbed his stomach, then rose and walked
around the store to make room for more food. “I wouldn’t mind a invite
to hold dis fer a _constant_ job--plenty of steady sleep an’ reg’lar
rations.”
“I’s got to whar I kin still chaw, but I cain’t swaller much mo’,”
Mustard lamented. “Less hunt somepin kinder loose an’ little to eat, so
it’ll fill up de cracks inside us!”
The hours passed.
At last Mustard leaned back in his chair. His stomach was gorged, his
head blood-flushed until his temples throbbed like drums. He kicked
over the box which had served as a table, thus dumping the cans and
bottles and other empty receptacles into a corner of the store and rose
to his feet.
“Whar is de seegaws in dis sto’?” Pap inquired sleepily.
“I’ll git ’em,” Mustard said.
Selecting the largest cigars in stock, he wandered sleepily back to
Pap Curtain. The clock in the court-house steeple tolled the hour.
Mustard counted.
“Twelve!” he exclaimed. “Here we been eatin’ five hours an’ to-morrer
is de secont day! Git outen dis sto’, Pap Curtain!”
Pap rose, and Mustard followed him to the rear door and shut him out.
Then, tossing his cigar aside, Mustard piled an armload of sacks in
the corner, snapped off the electric light, and sprawled down upon
his pallet, sinking instantly into a slumber like the lethargy of the
gorged boa constrictor, or the inertia of the hibernating bear.
He was a sound sleeper.
II
THE LONE WOLF.
Slatey the Skull was a gentleman of leisure and perverted education; he
was also a nitroglycerin expert, making a specialty of the application
of this sovereign explosive to burglar-proof safes.
He was a child of the congested cities, loving the noise and clatter
of their streets, the whir of machinery, the hum and hustle of their
myriad life. But tuberculosis clutched at his panting, crumbling
lungs with the pitiless fingers of death, and the ravages of the
disease had changed a naturally ruddy countenance into the emaciated,
soapstone-colored face which gave him the name among his fellows.
Under sentence of death, imposed, not by the law of the land which
he defied, but by the law of life which defied him, he had wandered
from the city to the deep woods and sparsely populated villages of the
South as a wild goat leaves its fellows and crawls into some desolate
mountain cave to languish and die alone.
Despairing of his own life, indifferent to the lives of others, he was
a lone wolf, perilous, predaceous, as quick to strike and as deadly as
a viper. His admiring fellows said of him that he could “smell money.”
Slipping like a shadow from the log-train which stopped for water at
Tickfall shortly after midnight, he wandered up the crooked, silent,
deserted streets toward the business portion of the village.
Pausing before the door of the Gaitskill store, his thin, flexible
nostrils quivered like a rabbit’s nose. Flattening himself against the
door like the wraith of a man, his keen eyes searched the streets, his
acutely sensitive ears listened intently.
Then he turned, and with an ease like the magic of a sleight-of-hand
performer, he opened the door and entered the store.
“I smell a nigger,” he muttered with a curse, as the stale odor of
cigar smoke racked his frail body with noiseless coughing.
Leaving the front door unlocked, he walked noiselessly down the avenue
between the counters to open the door in the rear. There he found
Mustard Prophet sleeping on a pile of sacks, invisible to the eye, but
easily vizualized by the trained mind of the Skull as he listened to
Mustard’s stertorous breathing.
“A nigger,” he racked with his noiseless cough, “stuffed like a fat
woman’s stocking, sleeping like a stiff!”
He walked back to the little office partitioned off in the middle of
the store. His frail fingers fumbled with the combination knob of the
safe for a moment, then caressed its top and sides.
“Forty years old,” he sighed, “and made of pot-metal. If I was not so
weak, I’d turn it over and kick a hole in the bottom of it with my
sore toe. As it is, I’ll have to work with this soup and cough like an
alligator for a week with its fumes in my lungs.”
Ten minutes later the door of the safe swung crazily open, hanging upon
a half-broken hinge.
The bony arm and hand of the Skull explored the contents. His fingers
grasped the top of the coarse bag which Colonel Gaitskill had placed
there a few hours before, and he lifted it out.
“No further seek its contents to disclose or draw its dollars from
their frail abode,” the Skull parodied. “The simp put it all in one
sack for me and tied the top with a rawhide string.”
His fingers fumbled the contents of the sack through the thick cloth.
“Gosh!” he sighed. “Gold and silver and a little dirty paper
money--heavy as pig-iron--and I’m too weak to carry an empty pill-box
across the street to a homeopathic doctor.”
Nevertheless, he took the bag with him as he started to leave. At the
rear door, he paused at the pallet where Mustard lay sprawled out and a
sardonic smile distorted his skull-like face.
“Behold the guardian of this gold!” he muttered. “Strange the South has
been the fall guy for this sort of servant ever since the South began.
Well, Cæsar had his Brutus, and every colonel has his coon!”
Then he stepped out into the lot and closed the door behind him.
There was the crack of a pistol, and a bullet plugged into the
door-jamb.
“You missed, friend!” the Skull called tauntingly. “I had my sharp edge
turned toward you!”
The night prowler in the Southern village seeking spoils is exposed to
no danger by the night watchman sleeping sweetly on a soft stone step.
The yeggman dreads the fox-hunters.
They leave town at sundown accompanied by friends, followed by dogs,
comforted by the contents of sundry jugs. They are kept keyed up to
alert wakefulness by the excitement of the chase and return only when
the jugs are empty.
It was a party of fox-hunters, headed by Sheriff Flournoy, with whom
Slatey the Skull had now to deal. Passing through the town on their
return from the hunt they had heard the dull explosion in the store and
had made an investigation. They were now in ambush, waiting for the
appearance of the safe-blower.
It was Flournoy’s pistol which had roused the Skull to his danger.
But the Skull was not disturbed. Shifting his bag of money so that he
carried it on his left arm as a woman carries a bundle, he slipped his
automatic from his pocket.
Crouching low in the darkness and walking with the noiseless tread of
a cat within ten feet of Flournoy, he passed unobserved by the sheriff
out of the lot into the alley and on to the front of the store. The
bullets zipped around him as he ran out of the alley toward the middle
of the street, but the Skull’s first shot was upward at the electric
street light which went out, leaving him sheltered by almost total
darkness.
Running down the alley, Flournoy fired into that circle of darkness at
a venture.
The answer of the Skull’s gun was instantaneous. The sheriff felt a
jar which almost paralyzed his right arm. Making an investigation he
uttered a low exclamation of wonder and admiration: The Skull’s bullet
had struck and destroyed the sheriff’s weapon.
In the mean time the rest of the fox-hunters had been spreading out,
trailing along the street in front of the store. In a moment half a
dozen pistols began to shoot and the Skull was engaged in the battle of
his life.
In the Louisiana villages promiscuous shooting upon the street at night
is a fire-alarm. Roused by such shooting, men quickly slip on their
clothes, seize their own firearms, and run down the street toward the
first alarm, firing into the air as they run, thus rousing the whole
town.
All over Tickfall, men heard what they thought was a fire-signal from
the business section of the village. Fearful of losing their stores
and offices, they ran toward the fray, shouting and shooting, until
Tickfall sounded like a battle with a thousand men engaged.
“The beggars are coming to town,” Slatey the Skull quoted with a skinny
smile. “I’ll wait until the mob arrives, then slip through the crowd in
the dark.”
But alas, the Skull was not acquainted with Sheriff Flournoy.
Adopting the old Indian trick of lying flat on the ground, thus
throwing the object he was approaching against the sky so that he could
see it, the sheriff with bones like an ox and a mouth as grim and cruel
as a bear-trap was slowly crawling toward the sardonic creature of skin
and bones, as frail and delicate as a girl, who sat sedately beside the
stolen money-bag.
Suddenly Slatey screamed like a wildcat and sprang to his feet.
Wrestling with his feeble strength, shooting wildly, biting, clawing,
he struggled in the bear-like hug of the giant sheriff. Then something
snapped inside the Skull’s body and with a frightened “Ah!” he sank
limply into the hands of his captor.
At that moment the street was filled with armed men, white and black,
looking for the conflagration. Explanations flew from lip to lip. Some
one entered the Gaitskill store and turned on the lights.
Then Sheriff Flournoy entered carrying Slatey the Skull.
“Is he dead?” the crowd asked in one breath.
“I think not,” the sheriff said. “I did not shoot.”
“Gib him a leetle dram, Mister Johnnie,” Pap Curtain spoke up.
“Go over to my office and get my flask, Pap,” the sheriff commanded, as
he tossed Curtain his office keys, “You’ll find it on my desk.”
Pap Curtain started after that flask at full speed. In the middle of
the street, under the broken electric light, his foot struck a coarse
canvas bag, he stumbled, fell headlong, butted a hitching post with a
resounding whack and stayed right there.
Ten minutes later the crowd found him, unconscious, clutching the
office keys in his cold hand.
One negro, a belated arrival, saw Pap Curtain fall.
He ran to Pap’s rescue, but never arrived. His foot also struck that
bag. Stooping, he picked it up, felt of its contents, recognized the
familiar rattle of coins, and promptly departed, taking that bag with
him lest some other person fall over it and get hurt.
The sheriff had no sooner sent Pap Curtain after a flask than several
were produced and tendered. The liquor, poured down the throat of
Slatey, started a shudderlike cough and a bloody spume issued from the
wounded man’s mouth. Then he spoke splutteringly:
“You broke a rib and caved it through the only good lung I have, Mr.
Officer. I guess you win.”
“Where’s the money?” Flournoy demanded.
“I--ah--” A shuddering, racking cough stopped all speech and the
pitiful creature struggled as if he were never to breathe again. At
last he spoke:
“I’m suffering very much. Get a doctor--”
“Where’s the money?” several men asked in a chorus.
“That’s for you to find out,” the Skull answered, with a momentary
flash of his old lawless spirit. Then weakly: “Get a doctor!”
“Where’s the money?” Colonel Gaitskill asked, bending over Slatey.
“Where’s the sawbones, Santa Claus?” Slatey mocked, coughing little
flecks of blood off his lips.
“Get a doctor!” Gaitskill commanded sharply, glaring at the crowd.
Dr. Shuttle stepped forth, producing, with an important air, a pocket
medical case containing a hypodermic needle and several vials of
medicine.
Dr. Shuttle was young and very ambitious. He quickly made a hypodermic
injection into the Skull’s side. It eased the criminal’s pain. In fact
he has never suffered since. In short, he died.
“Where’s the money?” the sheriff demanded again, shaking the lifeless
form.
The Skull’s mouth drooped open in a grotesque imitation of a laugh.
Slatey had nothing more to say.
“Thunderation!” the sheriff exclaimed in a mighty voice. “Hunt around
for that money-bag. This fellow did not get away with it.”
Oil lanterns were quickly procured and the crowd searched the street,
the alley, the lot in the rear and the neighboring places. They
discovered nothing but the limp form of Pap Curtain.
While the crowd was gathering around Curtain, from inside the store a
mighty shout arose:
“Here’s the other one, Flournoy!”
The crowd plunged into the store, surged to the rear and gathered in a
tight circle around the prostrate form of Mustard Prophet.
He was still asleep!
III
THE SLEEPER WAKES.
A number of eager feet kicked Mustard Prophet into wakefulness.
As many willing hands assisted him to his feet. He stood among
them, glaring owlishly, blinded by the light, confused by the
noise, frightened by the unaccountable presence of most of the male
inhabitants of Tickfall.
“’Scuse me, white folks,” he began. “I shore is befuddled-up by all
dis here gwines-on. Marse Tom say fer me not to let nobody in dis here
sto’-house.”
“Where’s that money?” a voice demanded.
“Which?” Mustard asked.
“Where’s that money you and the white man got?”
“I ain’t got no money, white folks,” Mustard declared. “You-all ax
Marse Tom! An’ Marse Tom say me not to let nobody in dis sto’--”
“Aw, come off!” another voice exclaimed. “You ain’t been sleeping
through all this racket. Tell us where the bag of money is!”
“Befo’ Gawd, white folks!” Mustard replied. “I ain’t got no bag of
nothin’.”
Then Mustard saw Colonel Gaitskill. “Bless gracious, Marse Tom!” he
pleaded. “Come here and fotch me away from dese pesticatin’ white
gemmans. Dey examinates me ’bout money like I done sold all de
Nigger-Heel cotton ’thout turnin’ in de tickets--”
Colonel Gaitskill whispered to Flournoy.
“Put him in jail, John, and after the crowd disperses, we’ll slip
around there and talk to him.”
Flournoy promptly acted upon this suggestion, and on the way picked up
Pap Curtain, now restored to consciousness--Dr. Shuttle had had better
luck with Pap--and incarcerated them both.
The crowd followed and watched the sheriff until he locked the two
negroes behind the bars.
“Nothing more doing to-night, friends,” he announced in his drawly
voice. “We’ll all go to bed and discuss the matter to-morrow.
Good-night.”
He walked down the street toward his home. The crowd gathered in
little groups, talked for a few minutes and dissolved.
Colonel Gaitskill returned to the store, issued orders to his clerks
concerning the disposition of the Skull’s body, and went home.
Just at daybreak Sunday morning, Gaitskill and Flournoy, after another
fruitless search for the lost money, entered the jail.
They found Mustard and Pap Curtain sitting side by side, steeped in
deepest gloom. Gaitskill became the spokesman:
“Where were you all last night, Mustard?”
“I wus in de sto’-house, Marse Tom. I didn’t leave dat place a minute
till de white folks tuck me to jail.”
“What did you do after I left?”
“At de fust offstartin’, I et.”
“What did you eat?” Gaitskill asked, wondering what food could produce
slumber as profound as Mustard seemed to have experienced.
“I et two cans of sawdines, an’ a can of devilish ham, an’ a hunk of
cheese.”
“What else?”
“I et some crackers an’ some beelony sausage, an’ two awanges, an’ fo’
bananers, an’ a box of candy.”
“What else?”
“Nothin’ else, Marse Tom. Of co’se, I kinder nibbled aroun’ a little. I
foun’ some raisins an’ a diffunt kind of cheese whut smelt like somepin
dead to me, an’ some cakes wid white icin’ on de top, an’ a can of
oystyers.”
“Did you get enough to satisfy your appetite?”
“Satisfy--oh, yes, suh, I felt powerful well fed.”
The sheriff broke into a loud laugh.
“No use to cackle, Mister Johnnie. I’s tellin’ de trufe. I shore had a
plenty.”
“What did you do next?” Gaitskill inquired.
“I fotch out one of dem long Perique seegaws an’ lit up.”
Both white men had begun to laugh. Mustard knew there was no harm
coming to a negro from white men with the giggles. So he dismissed his
fears and became expansive in his remarks:
“Dem Perique seegaw stogies ain’t as good as dey looks, Marse Tom. No
man ain’t got a sucker in his mouf strong enough to make ’em draw, an’
when dey does draw, no man ain’t got no cornstitution powerful enough
to stan’ de smoke.”
“What did you do next, Mustard?”
“I laid down on dem oat-sacks an’ went to sleep.”
Gaitskill had known Mustard so long that he could read the negro’s mind
like a book. Although no question had been asked about the robbery,
he was sure that Mustard had nothing to do with it. Then he began to
explain to Mustard:
“Somebody robbed my store last night, Mustard.”
“Lawdymussy, Marse Tom! Bad luck is shore kotch you by de forelock. I’s
powerful sorry to hear dem bad news.”
“The man who blew open the safe was killed in a fight, but we can’t
find the bag of money,” Gaitskill continued.
“Dar now!” Mustard declared with unction. “Mo’ bad luck! It ’pears like
it’s jes’ sorrer piled on top of sorrer in dis here grief-strucken-down
worl’. I’s shore sorry, Marse Tom--”
“The reason I wanted you to sleep in that store was to guard that safe.”
“Hol’ on dar, Marse Tom,” Mustard said, coming quickly to his own
defense. “You didn’t say me no words ’bout dat safe. All you said wus:
‘I want you to sleep in dis sto’ to-night.’ Ain’t dat so?”
“Yes.”
“Well, suh, I done it. I done it fur a fack. I done jes’ whut you tole
me. I sleeped in de sto’.”
“That’s a fact,” Flournoy chuckled, imitating the negro’s mode of
speech: “Dat’s whut he done!”
“I’se sorry, Marse Tom,” Mustard said, “but I ain’t to blame.”
Sheriff Flournoy looked at his watch.
“Look here, Tom,” he said. “If we are going to find the money, we’d
better let this sorry son of sorrow skedaddle. He ain’t got it.”
Mustard showed that he favored the sheriff’s suggestion by rising to
his feet with alacrity.
“Mister Sheriff Johnnie--” Pap Curtain, who had been a silent listener,
began plaintively.
“Shut up, Pap,” the sheriff interrupted. “You can come, too. I can’t
keep a nigger in jail for falling down and bumping his head.”
The four walked out of the jail door together. At the door Mustard
asked:
“Marse Tom, please, suh, dem white gemmans pestered me so stout las’
night dat I couldn’t git my hat an’ my cawnet-hawn befo’ dey tuck me to
jail. Will you open de sto’ so I kin git ’em?”
Consenting to this request, Gaitskill opened the door, and said:
“Go in and get them, Mustard.”
A minute later, within the store, there was a loud whoop and a wailing
cry:
“Oo-oo-ee! Oh, my blessid gracious goodness! He’p, Marse Tom, fer
Gawd’s sake!”
The two white men ran into the store and found Prophet down upon his
knees, hiding the horror before him by shielding his eyes with his
hands, which was the still form of Slatey the Skull outstretched upon a
cooling-board in the office.
Mustard had found his hat near his pallet of oat-sacks, but his beloved
cornet was on top of a desk in the office.