three short sounds followed by a long, lowing bellow like a bull: “_Ow,
ow, ow! Oo-oo-oo-o!_”
“Whut’s dat?” Mustard asked.
“_Nigger dogs!_” Mobile cried with a voice like a sob. “_Bloodhounds!_”
An uncontrollable sobbing seized the negro and his fright was pitiable.
Mustard and Pap, having no experience with such dogs, looked at him
uncomprehendingly.
Finally, Mobile dropped to the ground and listened. Then rising, he
announced:
“A whole pack, niggers--dogs an’ men! We’ll never git outen dis swamp
alive--dem dam’ dogs’ll gnaw our bones! Come on, less see kin we make
it to de Massacre Bayou!”
They started on a straight line, running side by side.
Then within a hundred yards they faced a slough as large as a lake, no
one knew how deep with mud and water. Taking a long detour around this,
they looked back and in two miles of running, still found themselves in
plain sight of the Kerlerac plantation house.
“Dat’s de las’ big puddle, niggers,” Mobile informed them. “Now go
straight an’ wade eve’ything you come to!”
The ingenuity of the Spanish inquisition devised no tortures comparable
to the possibilities of pain arising from a forced flight through a
Louisiana jungle.
A vine trailing the ground for hundreds of yards in some mysterious
manner wraps three times around a man’s leg, trips him, and leaves
him to struggle with a bond which he cannot unwrap, cannot break, and
cannot cut with a sharp pocket-knife.
Wild rose vines with thorns like spear-points and barbed like a
fishhook snag the garments and the skin, and, like Shylock, demand
their pound of flesh. Hidden in every puddle of water, the hard, sharp
cypress knees lie ambushed in the mud like bayonets to impale anything
which falls upon them.
Overhead, thorn-armed vines and the drooping branches of the dreadful
prickly ash hang down to retard man’s progress and augument his anguish.
In every damp spot the deadly moccasin lurks; by every decayed stump
and root the venomous cottonmouth guards its den; insects thrashed up
by the agitation of the grass and weeds rise like an Egyptian plague
and blind the eyes and fill the nostrils and choke the throat.
And through it all, mud which bogs the runner to his knees; at every
twenty steps a pool of water and mire, which may be shallow enough for
a sparrow to wade without wetting his feathers, or as deep as a well;
and poison ivy, growing waist high, saturating man’s garments with its
vitriol juices, and burning the flesh as if the runner were wading in a
caldron of boiling oil!
But the pursuing dog slips unhindered through the jungle, runs
unmired through the mud, swims the pools of water, and stands howling
underneath the tree where the fugitive has climbed to escape the
canine’s tearing teeth.
In half an hour the negroes, scratched, torn, snagged, wounded,
bleeding, mud-covered, half-naked, looking more like wild beasts than
men, stood on the banks of the Massacre Bayou. Forty yards behind them
a pack of ravening dogs bayed a red-hot trail.
“Swim it!” Mobile panted. “Git across dis creek, fer Gawd’s sake!”
They leaped into the stream and dragged their exhausted bodies up the
opposite bank just as the raging dogs stopped at the water’s edge on
the bank they had just left.
Mobile ran to a hickory sapling as large around as his arm.
“He’p me break dis off, men,” he screamed. “We got to fight ’em!”
With the strength of desperation, the three men wrenched at the
sapling, snapped it off at the roots, broke it in a proper length for a
club, and as quickly as possible selected and prepared two others like
it.
“Look out, niggers!” Mobile howled. “Dey’s gittin’ ready to swim
across! Kill eve’y dog as quick as his front feet touches the land on
dis side. Whatever happens, git dem big, black, long-eared debbils
fust!”
While he was speaking two of the bloodhounds leaped from the bank and
came toward them, swerving not an inch before the threatening clubs.
Mobile stepped to the edge of the water and stood poised to strike,
his crazed eyes glaring at one of the swimming dogs, the features of
his face quivering with spasms of pain and exhaustion. Then the hickory
descended, and the immense dog sank under the water with a startled
grunt.
Mobile and Pap both ministered to the other bloodhound which followed
its mate to the bottom of the bayou.
Then the whole pack, deer-dogs, fox-hounds, hog-dogs, and mongrels,
making the swamp hideous with their howls and yelps, sprang into the
stream.
The three negroes ran up and down the bank of the stream, striking
with weary arms, kicking with feet as heavy as lead, sobbing, praying,
cursing, raving--adding their insane voices to the noise of the hounds,
making pandemonium of the silent, shadowy swamp.
At last the hound-pack, wearied by swimming and unable to effect a
landing, turned back to the opposite shore in defeat.
“Saved!” Mobile sobbed. “Now, niggers, trot down this here bayou till
we git to de public road!”
Ten minutes later, they fell in the dust of the public highway like
monstrous worms or rather like raw, skinned cattle divested of their
hides and their carcasses left as food for the carrion crows.
For a few minutes they were motionless, lying like dead men; then a
consciousness of approaching danger roused them to renew their flight.
Rising totteringly to their feet, they breathed deeply, and started.
Then all hope died.
From out of the high weeds on the side of the road, a deep-seamed,
weather-tanned Spanish face appeared, and two fearless eyes held the
gaze of the helpless negroes like a hypnotist.
“You niggers stop right there!” a quiet voice said.
It was Sheriff Ulloa, who knew the route of fugitive criminals, and had
taken the precaution to guard the only outlet from the Massacre Swamp.
“Please, suh, boss, save us,” the negroes sobbed in a chorus.
“All right,” the sheriff said grimly. “Trot right down the center of
this road and go back to the jail you got out of.”
VII
“GON’ER GIT THEM NIGGERS!”
Just at noon the three negroes stumbled through the door of the jail,
and like men walking in their sleep, obeyed the command of the sheriff
and climbed the steps to the second story. There they fell to the floor
and sank into unconsciousness.
The sheriff closed the jail door and sat down on the steps in front,
where he gave himself up to most serious thought. Almost an hour later
he arose, reëntered the jail, and returning to his three prisoners
picked out Mobile Boone and kicked him into wakefulness.
“Get up, Mobile,” he commanded. “Follow me downstairs.”
Dumbly, the negro obeyed. On the ground floor the sheriff stopped and
spoke:
“Mobile, what are you in here for?”
“I got drunk in de Chicken-Wing an’ tried to claw a nigger’s nose off.”
“Were you arrested with those other two negroes?”
“Naw, suh. Dey fetch me to de calaboose on Sunday mawnin’ an’ dem two
coons come in late Sunday night. I never seed ary one of ’em befo’.”
“If I let you out will you leave town right away?”
“Bless gracious, boss,” Mobile exclaimed with most obvious sincerity,
“ef you lets me outen dis jail, I’ll put dis town so fur behine me back
dat it’ll cost you ninety-seben dollars to send me a postich card.”
The sheriff laughed.
“I means it, boss,” Mobile assured him. “Jes gimme a shirt an’ a pair
of britches so I won’t look like I was jes’ bawned, an’ I’ll shore ax
you good-by!”
The sheriff led the negro across to the office in the court-house,
opened a closet, pawed over some old hunting clothes, and found some
suitable garments for Mobile. When the negro had put them on, the
sheriff handed him a silver dollar and said:
“Now, Mobile, I’ve let you out because the chances are those other two
negroes are going to be mobbed. You are innocent and I don’t want to
see you strung up. You’d better hit the grit!”
Mobile did. He went down the levee at a gait which bid fair to carry
him very far in a brief time--if he could keep it up.
Then the sheriff returned to the jail and sat down in the same place.
The town of Kerlerac was deserted except for the women and children.
Practically every male inhabitant had joined the most exciting of all
chases--the man-hunt.
The sheriff placed a cigar in his mouth, chewed it almost to the other
end without lighting it, then spat it out.
“When that searching party finds their dead dogs and drinks up all
their red liquor,” he reasoned to himself, “and come back to town and
find those coons in jail, they’ll form a mob. My deputies will desert
the crowd when the mob forms, but they won’t join me. It’s up to me to
protect the coons.”
The town-clock struck two.
Far down the road, Sheriff Ulloa heard the piercing yell of the
fox-hunter.
“They’re coming back,” he muttered.
Taking a large pistol from the holster under his arm, he examined it
carefully, revolving the cylinder between his thumb and finger.
A tiny chameleon was playing up and down the bark of a tree twenty feet
distant.
With a motion which appeared almost careless, Ulloa made a turn of his
wrist, there was a loud explosion from the gun, and the little creature
spattered into fragments, leaving a dark, wet spot against the tree
which looked as if a man had spat at a hole in the bark and made a
center shot.
The shot aroused the two negroes on the floor above, and the
man-hunters heard it and hastened back to town.
When the party arrived in Kerlerac they quickly heard of the sheriff’s
capture of the fugitives, but not a man came to the sheriff to ask him
about the capture. They gathered in a body in the Red Elephant saloon.
Soon one of the deputies, white-faced and panting, ran into the
sheriff’s presence with the news that a mob was forming on the
outskirts of the town.
“I expected that,” Ulloa answered quietly. “You and the other two
deputies arm yourselves with rifles and hide in the tower of the
court-house overlooking the front of the jail.”
“What must we do?” the deputy asked tremulously. “Shoot?”
“Do your duty!” Ulloa replied shortly, “whatever you conceive it to be.”
He turned and entered the jail, locking the door behind him.
“Boss,” Mustard Prophet called down to him, “me an’ Pap lef’ our
toot-hawns down-stairs. Please, suh, fotch us up de cawnet an’ de
trombone!”
With a grim smile the sheriff complied with the request.
“You niggers better play the _Dead March in Saul_,” he muttered
grimly. “It’ll be appropriate all right.”
“Us ain’t ’quainted wid dat toon,” Pap grinned, reaching for his
trombone. “But me an’ Mustard kin shore fetch ragtime and religion
songs.”
In the meantime, in the far end of the town, sixty excited men had
supplied themselves with enough rope to hang a man from a not too
distant star; had armed themselves with knives and hatchets and axes,
with guns and pistols; had appointed their leader, Barto Skaggs, a man
of swarthy complexion, a grim mouth, surmounted by a black mustache,
and intense, glowing black eyes, which pressed hard against the lids
and showed a great deal of white beneath the pupil--the eyes of the
wanton destroyer.
“Keep together, men!” Barto Skaggs advised. “When one man acts
everybody act with him. Come on!”
With the first forward step of the mob a tall, gangling, half-wit boy,
with a long neck, a step-ladder head, a long sharp nose, and a receding
chin, and a loose-lipped mouth which dribbled tobacco-juice as he
spoke, began to repeat like a chant:
“Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them
niggers!”
His harsh, crackly, gosling voice, uttering every word with a jerk,
soon took the monotonous roll of a snaredrum. Unconsciously the men
kept step to the words and the purpose expressed in the sentence was
burned into the very fiber of their souls:
“Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them
niggers!”
Turning into the street which led to the jail two blocks away, the
mob rounded the Confederate Circle, in the center of which was a
ridiculous, stump-legged, pewter image of a man, too short in its
stride for glory, but, nevertheless, erected by a grateful populace as
a monument of glory to commemorate the heroes of the South.
Then Sheriff Ulloa stepped out of the jail, locked the door behind him,
tossed the key as far as he could throw it into some high weeds growing
at the side of the prison, and waited.
It was not necessary for the leader and spokesman to explain to the
officer of the law the purpose of their visit.
Fully a block away the half-wit’s strident voice, having gained in
volume by the constant repetition of the phrase, conveyed the message
in tones which crackled like thorns under a pot:
“Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git----”
The mob halted.
“Turn around and go back, gentlemen,” the sheriff said courteously.
“Start your one-man band to playing another tune, and go back!”
In the center of the street there was a rut which had been made by
wagon wheels.
The mob moved slowly forward, and stopped at this rut like children
toeing a mark in a spelling-match. They seemed to feel that a contest
was on, and that this rut was the dead-line.
“We want them niggers, sheriff,” Barto Skaggs said.
“You shall not have them,” Ulloa replied quietly and forcibly.
“When you kill those blacks every man of you is a murderer. I shall
not be sheriff of a parish which contains sixty murderers--men of
prominence--running at large!”
“Aw, come off, George!” an impatient voice exclaimed. “You’ve kilt a
plenty of coons in your day!”
“Yes, gentlemen, I have,” Ulloa answered quickly. “_I have never been
slow to kill!_ And I was elected sheriff of this parish _by you_ for
the one purpose of totally abolishing this wholesale slaughter of
innocent and unoffending blacks, and for the protection of offenders
from mob violence in order that the law might take its course. I shall
do it.”
Looking into the quiet, determined face of the officer, the mob
wavered. Then the half-wit’s snare-drum voice rallied them:
“Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git----”
The mob took one cautious step forward. Ulloa drew his pistol from his
pocket.
“That’s far enough, fellow citizens,” he said, and now his voice
drawled like the purr of a cat and was deadly in its menace. “When you
get those niggers I won’t be the sheriff of this parish. I’ll be dead.
I don’t know who’ll get me, but I’ll kill the first man who takes the
next step forward!”
The mob packed denser, became tense, throbbed like an automobile
when the power is turned on. Ulloa’s eyes gazed straight into the
destructive orbs of Barto Skaggs and held him like a hypnotist. Then
the half-wit began:
“Gon’er git--them niggers! Gon’er git----”
A back-handed blow from Barto Skaggs’s fist struck the half-wit fairly
in the mouth and sent him reeling backward, disarranging for a moment
the tense compact mass of men.
Then from the second-story front window of the jail, just above the
sheriff’s head and behind him, there came a sound which caused the
sheriff’s swarthy face to whiten to the eyebrows--the most unfortunate
thing which could have happened to his cause:
“Oo-oh! My Gawd, my Gawd! De mobbers is comin’! De mobbers!”
Instantly the mob crouched like panthers ready to spring.
VIII
MOB AND MUSIC.
Up to the moment when their frightened screams had stirred afresh the
mob’s lust to kill, Mustard and Pap Curtain had been totally ignorant
of what was occurring outside the jail. Wandering idly to the window to
look out, they had seen what every negro dreads, whatever the reason
for his incarceration--a mob.
With the first frightened cry Sheriff Ulloa knew that it would be
impossible to disperse the crowd before him. The scream of the quarry
only stimulates the pursuit of the wolf-pack.
For two dreadful minutes the negroes sobbed and prayed; then Mustard
Prophet turned shudderingly away from the window and, going to a window
on the side of the jail, knelt at the casement and wept like a child,
looking up now and then with fear-crazed eyes at the silent statue of
the pewter hero of the Lost Cause.
Then while the grim sheriff stood poised and ready, fronting alone the
crouching crowd of eager men, the shrill note of an automobile horn was
heard and an immense machine whirled around the Confederate Circle and
came sailing down the street toward the jail.
One block distant it stopped--abruptly.
The white-haired, white-bearded man at the steering-wheel gazed
down the street in surprise. The scene was too familiar to require
explanation. Leaping from the car, he walked slowly and cautiously down
the street.
Then, up in the second story of the jail, Mustard Prophet leaped to his
feet sobbing, praying, shrieking in a perfect frenzy of hope and fear.
“Oh, my Lawd!” he exclaimed. “_Dar’s Marse Tom!_”
Grabbing his cornet like a drowning man clutches at a straw, he placed
it to his quivering lips. Loud and clear, throbbing with the eagerness
of hope, the courage of despair, the strains of music became almost
articulate speaking the words of a song:
All de world am sad and dreary,
Eberywhere I roam;
Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!
The god Mars, who had witnessed many warlike scenes in Louisiana, never
beheld an incident so grotesquely dramatic as this.
In front of the jail, grim, white-faced, desperate, determined to end
his life right there, and perfectly sure that the end was near, stood
Sheriff Ulloa. In the middle of the street, a mob, bloodthirsty and
cruel, listening raveningly to the frightened screams of their quarry,
and eager for the kill. Up the street, a man serenely observant,
apparently indifferent to what was transpiring before his very eyes;
while within the jail two strangling, fear-choked negroes whose breath
was like the exhaust of an engine and whose hearts beat in their
breasts like war-drums, sobbed and screamed and prayed and one of them
played on a cornet _Old Folks at Home_!
Not since the poor, pitiful, dissipated author of that sweet folk-song
stumbled over the ragged carpet in his miserable room in the Bowery,
struck his head against his broken water-pitcher, bled to death upon
the floor, and was carried to his grave while his friends sang his
favorite song, had these words and their music been associated with so
dramatic an event.
“Fer Gawd’s sake, Pap!” Mustard sobbed. “Come here an’ he’p me play dis
toon! Don’t you see Marse Tom standin’ on dat cornder? Play, nigger,
play! Say yo’ prayers in dat hawn when you toot it!”
All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation
And for de old folks at home!
Up the street the white-haired man listened, then took off his hat and
scratched his head in a quandary.
“A mob set to music!” he smiled to himself. “This is something new to
me. I wonder what that fool Mustard Prophet is doing here?”
He walked quietly down the street and stopped in front of the jail,
taking his position by the side of Sheriff Ulloa. With a graceful
gesture he removed his hat and thus fronted the mob, serene, powerful,
his fine face glowing like an alabaster vase with a lamp in it, the
wind tossing his snow-white hair and beard--the most striking and
impressive figure one beholds in a lifetime. He stood with bowed head
listening to the music:
Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!
The music ended and the intense silence was broken by a voice in the
mob:
“_Aw, hell!_ I move we adjourn--_back’ards!_”
With a concerted movement like a piece of oiled machinery, the mob
turned and tramped up the street like a drove of mules, leaving four
lengthy coils of rope, a broken hatchet, a hoe-handle, and a corncob
pipe in the middle of the road.
Turning with gracious Spanish courtesy, Sheriff Ulloa bowed low before
the serene, powerful presence of Gaitskill, and murmured:
“I thank you. You saved my life!”
“Nothing of the sort!” Gaitskill snorted. “A mob can’t work to the tune
of Suwanee River! Where’s that fool who’s blowing that horn?”
“I’ll conduct you to him,” Ulloa answered.
A minute later Gaitskill and Ulloa had secured another key to the
jail, had entered, and stood in the presence of Mustard Prophet and
Pap Curtain. The two negroes were too overcome to speak. Crazed by
their horrible experiences, they sat wildly mumbling their prayers and
uttering exclamations of thanksgiving.
“These are the men I telephoned you about,” Ulloa said.
“These are not the men we want,” Gaitskill replied in a disappointed
tone. “One of these darkies is the overseer on my Nigger-Heel
plantation.”
“You asked me over the telephone if one of them was yellow?” Ulloa
said, pointing to Pap Curtain.
“Pap’s yellow, all right,” Gaitskill smiled. “But he’s not the man.
He’s the well-digger of Tickfall. The coon we want is a nigger named
Mobile Boone. He was seen early Sunday morning coming this way with my
bag of money.”
Sheriff Ulloa opened his mouth to speak; then he closed it without
saying a word.
“Marse Tom,” Mustard asked, “wus Mobile a yeller nigger wid a gold toof
in his mouf an’ a scar on his jaw?”
“Yes.”
Mustard sprang to his feet with a loud laugh and gave Pap Curtain a
mighty kick.
“Git up, Pap,” he howled. “Less go git Marse Tom’s money fer him!”
When a moment later the big automobile swung into the Massacre road
leading to the old Kerlerac plantation house, Pap Curtain leaned over
and whispered:
“Mustard, how you know dat Mobile is hid dat money under dat rock?
S’posen you go dar an’ don’t find it? Whut’ll happen den?”
Mustard turned almost white. Then he answered:
“Pap, ef I don’t git dat money dese here white men will hang up my
Chris’mus socks widout takin’ me out of ’em!”
IX
BACK TO THE OLD FOLKS.
Entering the stone ruins of the old plantation-house, Mustard walked
unerringly to the large, flat rock which Mobile had lifted a few hours
before and raised it from the ground. Pap Curtain clawed in the soft
soil with his horny hands, then sprang to his feet with a yell.
He held the heavy canvas bag tied with a rawhide string.
Two hours later, Pap Curtain and Mustard Prophet, sons of sorrow,
reach the pinnacle of happiness. Clothed in new garments, smoking
cigars, rattling money in their pockets, they sat down in a banker’s
five-thousand-dollar automobile, the owner at the steering-wheel, and
started their journey back to Tickfall and the old folks at home.
Mustard Prophet, responsive as mercury to the least chill in the
atmosphere or the slightest increase in the warmth of fortune’s
sunshine, began to expand:
“Marse Tom, I shore hopes you’ll take better keer of de rest of yo’
dollars dan you did of dis bag of money. ’Twus a powerful hard day’s
wuck fer me when I got it back for you!”
No answer from Colonel Gaitskill. The miles sped by.
Then Mustard asked, with as much curiosity as if he had been gone
thirty years instead of less than three days:
“Marse Tom, is Hopey livin’ yit?”
“Yes.”
“I bet dat nigger wife of mine makes ’miration over dese here fine
clothes I’m got on.”
Silence again, then a shout from both negroes:
“Bless Gawd! Dar’s Tickfall.”
When the car stopped in front of the bank, Gaitskill got out, carrying
his money-bag, Pap and Mustard carrying their precious musical
instruments.
“Marse Tom,” Mustard inquired, “does I git my same job at de
Nigger-Heel back agin?”
“Certainly.”
“I’s shore glad of dat, Marse Tom. Sheriff Ulloa offered me a job, but
I ain’t gwine take it.”
“What did the sheriff want you to do?” Gaitskill smiled.
“He axed me to he’p him lay a pipe-line to de Milky Way so he could
start a dairy.”
Monarch of the Manacle.
“Skeeter, whose pup wus dat you wus totin’ aroun’ on yo’ arm yistiddy?”
Figger Bush asked as he sat down beside a table in the Hen-Scratch
saloon. “I’d druther be dead dan be perceived packin’ a pup.”
“Dat warn’t no common growl-an’-bark dawg,” Skeeter grinned, blushing
until his saddle-colored face turned to a deep brownish crimson. “Dat
wus one of dese here Spitz dawgs. It b’longs to Tella Tandy, dat new
gal whut jes’ come to Tickfall. I’s keepin’ it fer her.”
“How come she don’t keep it fer herse’f?” Figger inquired.
“She’s stayin’ down at Mustard Prophet’s cabin, an’ she’s skeart
Mustard’s fox-houn’s will eat her dawg up--dar he comes now!”