“This is the man who blew open the safe.”
The big-hearted, giant-bodied sheriff gazed upon the criminal, then
stepped over and felt the emaciated hands and arms.
“He was as frail as a girl, Tom,” he said, with a note of pity in his
voice. “But he fought like a snake. I simply had to crush him.”
“Oh, lawdymussy, take me away from dis here terr’ble place!” Mustard
bawled, kneeling before the broken office safe as before an altar.
Handing the negro his cornet, Gaitskill made him rise, and followed him
to the door, where Pap Curtain stood pop-eyed and trembling.
“Marse Tom,” Mustard quavered, “I’s gwine leave dis land of sorrer. I
ain’t never comin’ back no mo’ escusin’ you come atter me an’ fotch me
back.”
“Me, too!” Pap Curtain piped.
The two white men watched the progress of the two negroes as they
hastened down the street.
“Mustard didn’t have a thing to do with it,” Flournoy said.
Gaitskill nodded his assent.
IV
THE CONQUEST OF KERLERAC
“Marse Tom say I warn’t to blame and Sheriff Flournoy turned me loose.
But dem white gemmans whut kicked me an’ blimblammed me in de sto’house
las’ night ain’t say _nothin’_. Mebbe dey’s gwine hang me yit. I dunno.
I ain’t gwine be aroun’ handy till dey gits deir minds sottled dat they
_ain’t_,” Mustard Prophet declared.
“Ef dey finds out dat you and me wus bofe in dat house stuffin’
ourse’ves wid vittles, dey’ll take a notion dat dey _am_,” Pap Curtain
asserted.
“I’s done heerd de call of de migrashun nigger, Pap,” Mustard said
mournfully.
“Go wid me to my cabin an’ lemme git my trombone-hawn,” Pap replied.
“Den I’ll mosey wid you.”
The two spent the day under the willows on the banks of the Dorfoche
Bayou, lamenting their luck.
“Pap,” Mustard said, “de good Book say dat troubles is seasoning.
Pussimmons ain’t good till dey’s fros’-bit. But it ’pears to me like I
done had my sheer of sorrer.”
“Me, too,” Pap agreed. “Now I argufies dat de only fitten occupation
for a sorrowful man is fishin’. Less go ketch some grasshoppers and see
kin we land a few trouts.”
“All right,” Mustard said. “But I favors fishin’ to’rds de railroad
bridge, because we’s gwine ketch de souf-boun’ freight.”
Just at dark, the whistle of the freight train screeched for the
Dorfoche crossing. Mustard and Pap tossed their poles into the middle
of the stream and ten minutes later were aboard an empty freight car,
nursing their musical instruments in their laps, bound for an unknown
destination.
The fact that the side door of the car which they had caught was open
would have published to an experienced traveler that that particular
car was not going very far.
When Mustard and Pap woke up, they thought at first that the train had
stopped.
Then peeping out cautiously, they ascertained that the engine had
sidetracked their car and gone on. Finding themselves in the middle
of an immense sugar plantation, they climbed on top of the car to
reconnoiter.
Their first familiar sight was a broad, muddy river.
“Dar now!” Pap exulted. “Dat’s ole Massasap. Home’s up de ribber.”
“I bet dis here plantation ain’t fur from some town,” Mustard reasoned.
“Less hoof it up de river an’ see kin we find some place whut ain’t so
lonesome.”
Picking up their musical instruments, they walked to the levee and
turned upstream.
“I smells Tickfall,” Mustard muttered, sniffing the air. “’Tain’t no
matter how fur it is, dis river goes past it.”
“I hopes Tickfall ain’t smellin’ us,” Pap declared. “I’s got it proned
into me dat we made a good riddunce outen dat place.”
Two miles up the levee and around a bend in the river, they came to a
little town squatting like a bullfrog under the protection levee, its
gutters running constantly with the seepage water from the dike, its
few houses clothed in river fog and standing on high foundations like
stilts, the paint upon them cracking and their eaves dripping with
moisture.
“Dis here town looks like a spindle-shanked crane,” Mustard declared in
disgust. “Dem legs under dem houses is shore fixed fer wadin’.”
Then a prominent building came into view, and Pap Curtain stopped like
a man turned to stone.
“I knows dis here town,” Pap declared. “Dey calls it Kerlerac.”
“How fur from Tickfall?” Mustard inquired.
“Thuty mile.”
“Come on, den. Less meet deir ’quaintance.”
“Naw, _suh_!” Pap protested. “You see dat high buildin’ over dar? Two
nigger womans helt me up in front of dat Red El’phunt s’loon an’ robbed
me of a dollar an’ fo’ bits. One of ’em helt a razor at my neck, an’ de
yuther tuck my loose change.”
“Dat don’t make no diffunce,” argued Mustard. “Dey ain’t dar now.”
“I reckin not!” Pap said positively. “I kotch ’em when dey wusn’t
lookin’ and helt ’em by deir hair and bumped deir heads togedder! An’
what you reckin dem womans done? Dey paid a white lawyer my own good
money to git me in a lawsuit wid de cote-house, an’ dey put me in de
chain-gang fer six mont’s.”
“Hear dat, now!” Mustard exclaimed. “Bad luck!”
“Shore wus. But I didn’t stay dar no time. I lef’ dat chain-gang in fo’
days. Dat’s how come I ain’t so glad to see dis town agin,” Pap said.
Then after a moment’s thought, he suggested: “I tells you how to do,
Mustard. You take yo’ cawnet-hawn an’ go out an’ pick de town.”
“Pick it?”
“Stop on all de cornders, play ’em a toon, den pass de hat,” Pap
explained. “I’ll set down here an’ res’ my mind till you gits a little
money, an’ in de nex’ town we goes to I’ll do de pickin’.”
So Mustard walked up the levee toward the town alone.
In the Red Elephant saloon, he said to the bartender:
“Mister, dese here white genmans need wakin’ up dis mawnin’. Lemme toot
a toon or two?”
“Crack away, nigger.”
A few experimental strains issued from the cornet, followed by a high,
piercing note; then Mustard started the music of a song everywhere dear
to the heart of the Mississippi River negro:
Oh, honey, when you hear dat roan mule whicker;
When you see Mr. Sun turnin’ pale an’ gittin’ sicker
Den it’s time fer to handle dis job a little quicker
Ef you wanter git a smell of de boss-man’s jug of licker.
Git up an’ move aroun’! Set dem han’s to swingin’
Befo’ de boss-man comes aroun’ a dangin’ an’ a dingin’.
Git up an’ shout aloud! Let de white folks hear you singin’--
Hey! O--Hi--O! Hear dem voices ringin’!
All the morning in various sections of the town Pap Curtain, hiding
under the levee, could hear the strains of Mustard’s cornet.
Just at noon, Mustard came back, walking slowly, his good-natured face
burdened with grief and disappointment, his defeat and dejection
revealed even by the dragging of his ponderous feet.
“Whut ails you, Mustard?” Pap inquired solicitously.
“I’m a son of sorrer, Pap,” Mustard wailed. “Nobody but de good Marster
kin ’preciate what bad luck I’s had.”
“Whut come to pass?” Pap inquired with interest.
“At de fust offstartin’ I blowed my hawn in de Red El’phant till de
white folks gimme a dollar, all in nickles and dimes. Den a white man
follered me out when I lef’ an’ tole me ef I would loant him dat money
he would show me how to make it disappear.
“Of co’se, I loant it to him, an’ he put it in his pocket an’ said
escuse him a minute, an’ he went away an’ I ain’t seed dat white man
sence dat time.”
Pap Curtain gazed at Mustard with an expression of mingled pity and
disgust. Mustard continued his tale of woe:
“Two white kunnels gimme fo’ bits apiece to play _Dixie_ fer ’em. I had
dat money changed over to a paper dollar so it wouldn’t roll away like
de yuther dollar done. Den anodder white man come along an’ say ef I
gib him dat paper dollar he’d show me how to double it.
“Of co’se, I needed it doubled right quick because I wus already behine
one dollar, so I loant it to him to double it. He jes’ folded it over
one time; den he shet one eye at me an’ stuck my dollar down in his
pocket.”
“Didn’t you ax him to give it back?” Curtain asked.
“Naw, suh, dat was a powerful brave-lookin’ man an’ he acted like he
mought ’a’ fought a sawmill ef he wus peeved up.”
“Mustard, you is a plum’, nachel-bawn, stark-naked fool,” Pap informed
him.
“I agrees wid dem sentiments,” Mustard said sorrowfully. “Lawdy, my
foots shore hurts me scandalous. Lemme set down.”
“Ain’t you got no money a-tall?” Pap inquired peevishly.
“Naw,” Mustard informed him.
“Is you had anything to eat?”
“Naw,” Mustard lamented. “An’ I’s so hungry I could eat a houn’-dog
biled in soap grease.”
The two sat for a moment, looking out at the river. Then Mustard
suggested:
“You go out an’ try ’em a few toons, Pap. I axed eve’ybody I met ef dey
knowed a nigger named you, an’ dey said dey didn’t.”
V
TROUBLE’S TWIN.
All the afternoon Pap Curtain played trombone solos on the streets of
Kerlerac while Mustard Prophet rested his feet.
About four o’clock Mustard and Pap slipped into a negro eating-house
and ordered food.
“Whar you cullud pussons come from?” Smart Durret, the negro
restaurant keeper, inquired as his patrons consumed large quantities of
fried catfish.
“We stays at Tickfall,” Mustard answered.
“When did you-alls arrive down?”
“We come dis mawnin’,” Pap responded.
At this point another occupant of the restaurant rose from a table
in one corner of the room, gesticulated mysteriously and forcibly to
Smart Durret and went out of a rear door into the kitchen. The mulatto
proprietor followed.
“Don’t ax so many questions, Smart,” was the prompt advice of the
little negro to the mulatto. “I wucks fer Sheriff Ulloa, an’ I heard
tell dis mawnin’ dat somebody robbed a sto’ in Tickfall an’ dey’s
offered a hunderd-dollar reward-bill fer who done it.”
Smart Durret’s mud-colored eyes opened wide.
“Dat sto’ was robbed Saddy night,” the little negro continued. “Dem two
coons come to town dis mawnin’ early. Dey been takin’ turns hidin’ on
de yuther side of de levee all day. Dem niggers is shore it.”
“Is you gwine tell de sheriff, Solly?” the mulatto asked.
“Naw,” Solly exclaimed in disgusted tones. “I figgers dat you an’
me kin kotch ’em out alone, arrest ’em ourse’ves an’ ’vide up de
reward-bill even.”
“Dat’s de music!” Smart exclaimed, admiringly. “You keep track of ’em
an’ you an’ me’ll git togedder on it to-night.”
Thus advised, Solly Saddler, amateur detective, shadowed Mustard
Prophet and Pap Curtain all the afternoon and when darkness came was
prepared to report their location to Smart Durret.
“Now, Solly,” Smart advised, “we ain’t got no permit to ’rest dese
niggers accawdin’ to de law. So I argufies dat de best way to do is to
git in a fight wid ’em, sen’ somebody fer de cornstable, an’ let him
tote us all to jail. Den we kin esplain to de sheriff whut we knows,
an’ he’ll let us out because you’re a frien’ of his’n.”
“Smart,” Solly exclaimed, “when yo’ mind goes off it kicks like a
muzzle-loader. Dat plan’ll hit de bull’s-eye. But ef you ain’t got no
objections, I’ll be de one whut goes atter de cornstable. Dem two coons
looks powerful perilous to me.”
“All right,” Smart acquiesced reluctantly. “But don’t you lose no time
gittin’ dat cornstable. I ’speck you better fetch de sheriff, too.”
They separated to meet an hour later in the Chicken-Wing saloon, a
negro resort where Mustard and Pap were loudly advertising their
presence by playing duets.
The plan of the two conspirators to start trouble was simple but
effective.
Solly Saddler entered the place with a bucket of red paint and a broad
paint-brush. Smart Durret came in with a large bottle filled with a
foamy, milk-colored liquid--soap-suds.
The two avoided each other for a time, then they got together.
“Whut’s dat you got in dat bottle, Smart?” Solly inquired in a
nigger-minstrel tone.
“Dis here is a new kind of cleaner fer clothes,” Smart answered. “It
takes all de dirt spots, grease spots, fade spots, an’ paint spots
offen clothes, suits, dresses, an’ sich like.”
“Dat stuff won’t conjure loose no paint spots,” Solly argued,
flourishing the bucket of paint at Smart.
“I bet yer fo’ bits,” Smart answered promptly.
Then followed a heated discussion of the merits of the paint remover.
The crowd slowly gathered around the disputants, and Solly gradually
worked his way around until he stood directly in front of Mustard
Prophet.
Setting the bucket of paint on the floor and stooping over it, he began
to stir it with his brush while the argument waxed hotter and hotter.
Then Solly arose, with the dripping paint-brush in his hand.
Then with a quick turn and flourish, he swiped the dripping paint-brush
up and down the front of Mustard Prophet’s clothes.
“Now, nigger Durret,” Solly bawled dramatically, “lemme see you take de
paint off dis cullud brudder’s coat!”
Mustard reeled backward to escape the paint, a guffaw of loud laughter
swept around the circle, and Solly followed Mustard, still busy plying
the brush.
Mustard was a sight.
Then Mustard got busy. Solly felt a hard hand on the back of his neck,
lost his grip on the brush, and Mustard caught it.
Irresistibly, Mustard led the struggling negro back to the red paint,
held him there as easily as a man can hold a wiggling fish suspended
from a hook, and proceeded to paint him red, frescoing both the
garments and the man within them.
Solly bawled and shrieked and struggled and bit, but Mustard did not
release him until the bucket was exhausted of paint.
Solly, too, was a sight.
Then Smart Durret entered the fracas. Seizing his bottle of magic
cleanser by the neck and manipulating it like a club, he struck it over
the dome of Prophet’s head.
But the soapy neck of the bottle was slick and slipped from Durret’s
hand, bounced from the armor-plated skull of Mustard Prophet like a
rubber ball, and was smashed to fragments halfway across the room.
Pap Curtain, in his turn, came to the aid of his friend. Picking up the
paint-bucket with a circular motion of his long arm, he brought it down
upon the head of Smart Durret. The bucket did not bounce, but Durret
did.
Deciding it was high time to go for the constable and the sheriff,
Solly departed with expedition, deeply regretting that the State
militia and the Federal army were not available in this hour of need.
But Smart and Solly had loyal friends, and in a moment Mustard and Pap
stood with their backs to the wall, each in possession of a heavy
chair, holding it like a lion-tamer to keep the crowd from rushing them.
[Illustration:
Drawn by E. W. Kemble.
Mustard proceeded to paint him red.]
“Don’t scrouge, niggers!” Mustard bawled, as he held his chair poised
for battle. “I done kilt so many coons I can’t count ’em. A feather
fell from a buzzard’s wing an’ hit me on de head when I wus little,
which am a sign dat my path is crossed wid dead men. Come right on an’
git your’n!”
Then for a minute Mustard and Pap were the center of a whirling wheel
of legs and arms and hands and heads; holding their chairs before them
they charged through the ring like two angry bears. Men doubled up
before them and went down and they took a side-swipe at the rest as
they passed.
They had reached the door in safety and were just about to pass through
when the door was blocked by the portly form of the town constable.
The combatants came to a full stop. The battle was ended.
“Dat’s dem, Mister Rogers!” Solly Saddler squealed, as he pointed out
Pap and Mustard. “Dey wus peckin’ on me an’ Smart Durret.”
“You four bucks march along in front of me,” the officer announced
briefly. “Go to jail.”
At the jail door Mustard stopped to make a plea which was ably seconded
by the others.
“Please, boss, don’t put us togedder.”
“Naw,” Solly exclaimed earnestly. “Let me an’ Smart go upstairs. Lock
us away from dem terr’ble mens!”
“Go upstairs, then,” Rogers said.
A minute later, Pap and Mustard stood together behind the bars.
“I done been in jail two times in two days,” Mustard mourned. “Sorrer’s
done kotch me again.”
“Me, too,” Pap lamented. “Bad luck’s got me by de lef’ hind leg wid a
downhill pull!”
“Same back at you, brudders!” a strange voice from the darkness in
tragic tones. “I’s Trouble’s twin!”
Having no charge against the four negroes except disorderly conduct,
the constable had merely separated the combatants, allowing each pair
the freedom of the entire floor. Mustard and Pap had believed that they
were alone upon this lower floor until the strange voice spoke.
Their hair stood up in superstitious fear, but the voice spoke again:
“Howdy, brudders!”
“Who dat talkin’ to hisse’f?” Mustard asked in frightened tones. “Whar
is you at? Name yo’ name!”
“Dey calls me Mobile,” the stranger confessed, coming forward. Then he
proposed in a whisper: “Less go in one of dese little cages an’ set an’
talk.”
“Naw,” Pap replied forcibly. “De wind might blow dat iron do’ shet. I
likes de outside.”
So, instead, the three groped their way down the corridor and sat down
on the window-sill, using the grating behind them as a rest for their
backs.
“My name is Mustard Prophet.”
“I’s Pap Curtain.”
“Huh,” was the surprised grunt from Mobile.
“Which?” Pap and Mustard asked in duet.
“Whar you-alls from?” Mobile asked.
“Tickfall.”
There was a long silence.
“Whut dey got you in fer?” Mobile asked next.
“A nigger painted my clothes in de Chicken-Wing an’ I fit him to a
finish,” Mustard chuckled. “Pap helped.”
“Oo-ee, brudders!” Mobile exclaimed mournfully. “I bet dey gives you
’bout fo’teen years fer dat. Dis is a _mean_ town to niggers! I got to
dis town on Sunday mawnin’, and got drunk, and got in a rookus in de
Chicken-Wing, an’ dey put me in jail befo’ dinner-time an’ tuck all my
money off me--an’ I had ’bout fifteen cents!”
“Dat’s too bad,” Mustard sighed, leaning back against the grating
behind him. Then he sprang forward suddenly and exclaimed: “Looky here,
Mobile! De bars on dis here winder is plum’ loose!”
“Suttinly,” Mobile whispered.
“How come?”
“I sawed on ’em all Sunday atternoon, an’ Sunday night, an’ all to-day,
an’ a leetle bit to-night,” Mobile told him.
“You ain’t figgerin’ to git out, is you?” Mustard inquired innocently.
“Naw, son!” Mobile denied in tones which throbbed with disgust. “I jes’
wants to let in a leetle mo’ fresh air.”
“Us favors mo’ fresh air, too,” Pap snickered.
“I done got ’em sawed loose--mighty nigh,” Mobile said. “Dey’s sawed
plum’ across on de sides an’ de bottom, but dey ain’t sawed on de top.
You reckon us-all is got muscle enough to ketch holt dat gratin’ an’
bend her in or shove her out?”
“Shorely!” Mustard asserted eagerly. “I kin heft a bale of cotton an’
tote it up de gang-plank of a steamboat.”
The three stood up in the window with their feet resting on the sill.
They stooped and caught hold of the grating at the lower end, and
leaning backward, they lifted up and in. Under that mighty strain, the
iron grating attached to the masonry by four bars at the top slowly
bent and left an opening underneath large enough to allow their bodies
to pass through.
The three lost no time in climbing out. They had gone around to the
front of the jail when Mustard stopped.
“Hol’ on dar, Mobile,” he muttered. “I done ferget my cawnet-hawn an’
lef’ it in de jail. I needs dat hawn.”
“Leave it be,” Mobile advised.
“I done fergot my trombone-hawn,” Pap added. “Go back an’ git ’em fer
us, Mustard.”
“Naw,” Mobile protested. “I got plenty money. I’ll pay you fer ’em.”
“Naw,” Mustard rejoined vehemently. “Marse Tom gimme dat cawnet-hawn,
an’ he’s powerful proud of it. He say he’d know de sound of dat cawnet
in Chinee.”
Their argument ended right there, for suddenly from a window in the
second story of the jail two voices screeched like a calliope:
“Murder-r! He’p! Come here, eve’ybody!”
Yells and whoops and screams and wails came from Solly and Smart who
realized that Mustard and Pap had escaped and who saw the reward for
their capture slipping away, leaving themselves in durance.
At the first screech, Rogers, the constable, who was sitting on a
near-by door-step, ran to the jail and arrived just in time to empty
his pistol at the fleeing forms of the three negroes as they passed
under the last electric street light, and ran onto the protection levee
at the river.
Then the constable hastened back to the jail and became the recipient
of some surprising misinformation from the wailing negroes in the
prison. In an eager antiphony, they recited what they knew, snatching
the sentences from each other’s lips:
“Dem two niggers whut got away robbed de sto’ at Tickfall----”
“An’ kilt dat Mister Skull whut owned it----”
“De feller whut blows de cawnet-hawn done it----”
“He brag his brags dat he done kilt mo’ coons dan he kin count----”
“De monkey-faced tromboner hid behind de levee all mawnin’----”
“An’ de cawnet-nigger axed eve’ybody did us know de tromboner befo’ de
tromboner would come out----”
“Ef you ketch ’em agin, Mister Rogers, does us niggers git de reward
bill?”
Mister Rogers, accompanied by the two negroes, left the jail in a trot
and a few minutes later the constable pounded with his night-stick on
the front door of Sheriff Ulloa’s home, demanding admittance on most
important business.
VI
IN THE MASSACRE SWAMP.
“We goes fo’ miles up dis levee to de Massacre swamp, niggers,” Mobile
panted, as he ran. “Den faller de hog-path two miles to de ole Kerlerac
plantation house. I knows dis country like I knows de insides of a
white man’s hen-coop. Trot, niggers, trot!”
When the Federal soldiers visited the State of Louisiana during the
Civil War, they carried guns and ammunition, but they did their best
fighting and won their greatest victories and wrought their most
extensive devastation with water--muddy river water.
Invading the State, they cut the levees of the Red, Atchafalaya,
and Mississippi Rivers, and then let the snows melting on the loyal
northern hills pour their floods and do their destructive work.
Because of this method of warfare, Louisiana was the last State to
begin to recover from the effects of the Civil War.
Her agricultural enterprises absolutely require the protection of the
river levees; prostrated financially, the State had no money to rebuild
when peace was declared what war had destroyed.
Mobile, followed by Pap Curtain and Mustard Prophet, was going straight
to a spot which indicated after half a century one of the effects of
this mode of warfare.
The Kerlerac plantation house was a three-story building erected of
stone conveyed, literally, from the ends of the earth, for the building
material had been brought as ballast in the sailing vessels which
landed with empty bottoms at the Kerlerac plantation to receive the
products of her soil.
Yearly, during and after the war, the June floods had swept across that
plantation, the water standing from four to forty feet deep above every
inch of its soil.
The old plantation house, surrounded by its stately lawns and shaded by
its colossal evergreen oaks, was abandoned, and now after sixty years
the stone ruins stood in the midst of an almost impenetrable swamp and
cypress trees nearly as large around as a man’s body grew in the center
of the building, their branches protruding above where the roof had
been.
The first gray streaks of dawn showed in the sky when Mobile led his
panting and exhausted followers between the walls of this old house
and allowed them a moment’s rest.
“Don’t take too long to blow, brudders!” Mobile warned them, his own
tongue hanging out like a hot dog’s, his mouth spread wide, showing
a gold front tooth. “Ef de white folks follers us, dey’ll come right
straight to dis here house an’ start deir hunt from here. I knows ’em!”
“Whut you fetch us here fer, den?” Pap Curtain inquired indignantly.
“Us niggers is got to hab some money,” Mobile informed him, “an’ I
knows whar a white man has hid some. Less git it, an’ ’vide up, an’
scoot!”
He walked through the briars and underbrush, stumbling among the fallen
stones, to a certain corner; then motioning for silence, he listened.
“Dat mought be wind,” he muttered uneasily. “Den again, it mought be a
steamboat puffin’ up de river. Den, agin, it moughtn’t.”
Raising a large stone, he kicked at the dirt underneath, then suddenly
ceased his operations and listened.
Then in the dim light his face became ashen, turning a scar upon his
cheek white, and his heart thumped like a drum. He let the rock fall
back upon the treasure, and motioned to Pap and Mustard to follow,
leading them four times around the walls and crisscross through the
center and then back to the entrance.
“Listen, niggers!” Mobile chattered. “My Gawd, listen!”