an’ pick out yo’ grave befo’ you starts!”
XVII
SMOKE OF BATTLE.
By terrible and evil ways, the reckless feet of Dinner Gaze and Tucky
Sugg had come to that cleared space in the Tickfall court-room. In the
next few minutes, they were going to make Tickfall history.
No man knew this better than the sheriff, the district attorney, the
judge of the district court, and the jurors, as each man stood in his
place and planned his part in the coming battle. The negro is the
deadliest fighter on earth--when he makes up his mind to fight.
Sheriff Flournoy raised his gun--and the fight was on. With a motion as
easy and as mechanical as the gesture of a man flecking a speck of dust
from his cuff, Dinner Gaze turned his hand and shot back. The two guns
spoke simultaneously.
With an oath, Sheriff Flournoy dropped his useless gun at his feet--the
bullet from Dinner Gaze’s pistol had struck it and put it permanently
out of business.
Hitch Diamond snarled like an angry beast. By a thrust of his foot,
he turned over the table before which Skeeter Butts sat, making a
barrier for himself. At the same instant of time, he hurled a heavy
chair straight at Dinner Gaze, who stood grinning, leering at Sheriff
Flournoy, who was now weaponless.
Hitch dropped down behind the table as a bullet splashed through the
wood two inches above him, and also splashed every juryman out of the
box like a big flat rock falling in a puddle of mud!
Skeeter Butts jerked a pistol from his coat pocket and tossed it to
Hitch Diamond. Lifting with his powerful left arm, Hitch held up that
heavy table as a shield between him and his enemies, and crashed
forward toward Gaze and Sugg, shooting as he went. Falling, he shot
again; sprawling upon the floor, he raised himself above the table and
shot still again.
Once more Hitch Diamond charged forward, drawing closer to the
fighting pair, staggering with his heavy table as a shield, economical
with his gun-fire, waiting for a chance to kill, blazing, terrible,
alone, moving toward the flash and smoke and rattle of the two guns
barking from the hands of the two men who stood with their backs
against the wall with leering grins upon their faces.
The unarmed men in the court-room dodged behind the furniture and
crawled under the seats, shuddering at the fury of battle, as the
bullets tore the plastering from the ceiling and the walls, splintered
the furniture, ricocheted around the room, smashing windows and the
glass globes of the electric lights.
In less time than it takes to tell it, Hitch’s last bullet was fired
and he snapped his empty gun into the faces of his enemies. At nearly
the same moment Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg threw aside their own empty
and useless weapons.
With a loud bellow, Hitch Diamond tossed the table from him, breaking
off the two legs on one side. He sprang around, and in and out,
striking blows which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring all
over the State. He struck and parried and struck again, pounding,
pounding at the faces of the two shrieking men who fought at him with
weapons mightier than their fists, for they were fighting with the legs
of the table which Hitch had broken off when he tossed his improvised
shield aside!
There was a rush of help coming to the aid of Hitch Diamond--Sheriff
Flournoy, the district attorney, the two mill owners, a court-clerk,
twelve jurors, Skeeter Butts, and Vinegar Atts.
Then began a noise of shouting and tumult, oaths, curses; shrieking,
horrible, blood-stained faces, snarling lips and gnashing teeth, and
Hitch Diamond fought on, leading the hosts who stood for law and
justice. Pain tore at his bruised and bleeding face, blood streamed
from his hands and arms, his mighty, heaving chest left stains of red
upon his white shirt bosom.
Men fell, and Hitch stepped on them. Hitch fell, and men stepped on
him. All men slipped and slid in blood, crushed each other, dragged
each other down, struck each other--and all heaved and cursed and
shouted and hammered and tore at the shuddering tangle of human flesh
and bone.
Standing on a chair close to the struggling men was a woman--a woman
of wicked, half-caste beauty, her long Indian hair streaming down her
back, her golden-colored hands weaving to and fro with clenched fists,
her golden face blazing with hate and fury--fit mate for Hitch Diamond,
whose wife she was.
Her voice rang like a trumpet:
“Kill ’em, Hitchie! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”
Such a brutal, demoniacal struggle could not endure long. Vinegar Atts
was senseless. Skeeter Butts lay flat on his back against the wall
with the blood streaming from an ugly cut upon his head. Three of the
jurors nursed broken arms, and several more had retired from the fray
disabled by their injuries.
Sheriff Flournoy lay on the floor with the blood flowing from a wound
on his neck. He crawled over and picked up the pistol which Skeeter
Butts had given to Hitch Diamond and which Hitch had discarded. He
extracted the cartridges from his own useless pistol and slipped them
into Skeeter’s gun, for he had given that weapon to Skeeter and they
were of the same calibre.
Just at that moment Tucky Sugg fought his way through the tangle of
human arms and legs and sprang into the open window. Then he went
screaming downward to his death as a bullet from the sheriff’s pistol
went with him, pocketed in the murderer’s heart!
Then, as if the crack of the sheriff’s pistol was her cue to enter,
another woman came up-stage and stood in the blazing light of battle.
She weighed four hundred and ten pounds, and resembled a balloon
divided in the middle by an apron string. She was conducted by Dainty
Blackum and a strange young negro man, and her name was Ginny Babe Chew.
Inside the railing, she picked up a heavy iron cuspidor, and walked
over to the table where, earlier in the morning, the district attorney
had sat.
“He’p me up on dis here table, honey!” she grunted, hugging the heavy
cuspidor in her arms.
The district attorney lay unconscious under the table on which Ginny
stood.
Ginny announced her position by a loud bellow. She raised the large
iron cuspidor above her head with her fat arms, and every pound of her
monstrous weight was quivering with unspeakable hate.
“Git outen my way, Hitchie!” she whooped. “Gimme room accawdin’ to my
fat, sonny! Let yo’ mammy put somepin acrost!”
For more than a minute Sheriff Flournoy had been fingering his pistol,
waiting for a chance to shoot without killing Hitch Diamond. Ginny Babe
Chew’s remarkable stunt gave him pause and caused him to lower his gun
with astonishment.
Hitch reeled and stumbled backward. His eyes were glazing, his right
arm hung broken and useless at his side, he was one bloody mass of
wounds.
Dinner Gaze, his clothes torn from him until he was bare to the waist,
his whole body screaming with pain from countless injuries, slowly
followed Hitch in his retreat, chopping at him with weakening arms,
still fighting with the broken table-leg.
“Look up, Dinner Gaze!” Ginny Babe Chew bawled. “Dis is yo’ la-ast time
to see de hoodoo face!”
Unconsciously responding to the command, Dinner Gaze raised his
pain-shot eyes upward, and looked into the fat face, through whose
rolls of flesh two green pig eyes gleamed upon him with a serpent’s
venom and deadly malignity.
The heavy iron cuspidor came down with a crash. It crushed the
criminal’s head like an egg-shell. It bounced, fell on its rounded
edge, and rolled slowly across the floor.
Dinner Gaze fell face downward, kicked the floor three times with the
toes of his shoes, and died.
“Dar--_now_!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped.
Then she held out a fat hand to the slim young girl standing beside the
table and said:
“Gimme yo’ hand an’ he’p me down offen dis table, honey! Dis here duck
is too dang fat to be roostin’ so high!”
XVIII
THE HOODOO FACE SMILES.
The panic and outflow of negroes from the trial chamber in the Tickfall
courthouse started a riot-call in the town.
A clerk in the Gaitskill store across the street ran over and tolled
the courthouse bell ten times. In response, every white man in Tickfall
dropped his task, armed himself, and came with all possible haste to
the court square.
When Tucky Sugg fell screaming from the open window, Colonel Tom
Gaitskill started at the head of a band of armed men up the steps
leading to the court-room. The band arrived too late to do more than
constitute themselves into an ambulance corps, and render first aid to
the injured.
Four physicians came panting up the steps, bumping their instrument
cases against the wall as they ran, and their arrival converted the
room into a hospital where the doctor became a wise and efficient
judge.
Colonel Gaitskill appointed ten men as assistants and runners for the
doctors, assigned to the rest of his band the task of standing on the
square in heroic attitudes and guarding the courthouse, and then he
cleared the room of all the curious and useless persons and closed the
door.
An hour later all the wounded sat up and took notice, and some of them
smiled.
Skeeter Butts arose from his place, sobbing with pain. He staggered
across the blood-splashed floor toward a pitcher of water which sat on
the floor by the judge’s bench. Weakness overcame him, and he sank down
in the witness-chair, almost fainting.
Judge Henry Haddan, whose Websterian head was considerably larger
now on account of certain bruised and swollen places, and a big wad
of cotton applied to them, thrust a glass of water into Skeeter’s
trembling hands.
“Skeeter,” he asked, “how did you know that Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg
committed that crime in Sawtown?”
“I didn’t know, Marse Henry,” Skeeter answered in a weak voice. “I sot
down in dis chair an’ I said jes’ whut Ginny Babe Chew tole me to say!”
Everybody in the court-room heard Skeeter’s answer. There was a general
gasp of astonishment.
Judge Haddan walked wearily up to his bench and sat down. It appeared
later that he was seriously hurt, and he spent many weeks in bed. But
now he was sustained by the excitement of the moment.
The district attorney dragged himself across the floor and sat down at
his table near to where Dinner Gaze lay face downward, his hand still
grasping the table-leg.
Ginny Babe Chew walked to the middle of the room, rested a fat hand on
each fat hip, and looked up into the face of Judge Haddan.
“Yes, suh, boss,” she said. “Ginny Babe Chew is to blame fer dis here
noble fracas!” Then she smiled.
“How did you know, Ginny?” Judge Haddan asked, twisting his pain-shot
face into an answering smile, and feeling of an extremely sore place on
top of his head.
“Dude Blackum tole me!” she answered.
“Dude Blackum is dead--drowned in attempting to escape!” Judge Haddan
snapped.
“Naw, suh. He warn’t drowned. He’s a settin’ right dar by Dainty
Blackum now!”
As she pointed a young, respectful, nicely dressed negro stood up,
bowed to the judge, and smiled, flashing a gold front tooth.
“Naw, suh, jedge,” he murmured in a deprecatory tone. “I ain’t dead!”
Then they listened while Dude told his story.
After leaving his cabin with the jug, he had taken several drinks and
had crawled under the porch of the commissary store to sleep because
he was afraid to go back home to listen to what Dainty was sure to say
about his conduct. He had been awakened by having something thrown
over his face--and this afterward proved to be the coat and vest which
Tucky Sugg had taken from Hitch Diamond. Dude heard two men talking,
heard them call each other by name, heard them enter the store for
robbery; then Dude had seized his jug and had run to the night-watchman
and made a report.
The night-watchman, running to the store, had been killed.
Dude, dodging among the lumber piles, had been captured; the only man
who could clear him of suspicion had just been killed; his captors
would not listen to explanations, so Dude took a desperate chance by
jumping into the river, and had escaped.
What the mob thought was Dude’s woolly head bobbing upon the surface
of the water was really Dude’s derby hat. Expecting them to shoot at
his hat, Dude waited until the right time, and artfully contributed a
splash and a scream, and the mob thought he had got cramps and sunk.
Chucklingly, Dude told his auditors that he was beating his hat down
the river about thirty yards, swimming like Jonah inside the whale.
He returned to his cabin that night, explained everything to Dainty,
mounted a mustang, and rode to Ginny Babe Chew’s cabin, where she
concealed him until the time of the trial. Skeeter had seen his face at
the dormer window when the chicken-house burned down.
“I knowed dat Dinner Gaze an’ Tucky Sugg done it, Marse Henry,” Skeeter
cackled. “I knowed it all de time--I had a hunch!”
“I knowed it, too,” Ginny Babe Chew rumbled. “I’s got a hoodoo face.”
“I knowed it,” Hitch Diamond growled. “Goldie told me.”
“I think we had better go home,” Judge Henry Haddan said, with a funny
twisted smile. “My head hurts!”
“I beg your pardon, your honor,” the district attorney said, rising
painfully to his feet and leaning weakly against the table. “Excuse
me--but haven’t you forgotten something?”
Judge Haddan’s aching head was not working clearly, and he did not
catch Davazec’s meaning at all. He thought he understood, and so he
announced:
“Hitch Diamond, you are a brave negro. Your heroic fight in this
court-room will be long remembered.” Haddan broke off, tried to smile,
and continued: “Your masterly presentation of your defense disproves,
in this instance, the aphorism that a lawyer who pleads his own case
has a fool for a client.”
“Dat’s right, boss!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped. “Little Hitchie shore is
brave an’ smart, ef I do say it myse’f, whut hadn’t oughter. Nobody in
dis country don’t know it but me and Hitch--but I is Hitch’s mammy!
He is kin to me by bornation on de Flournoy plantation fawty years
ago----”
“Aw, hush!” Judge Haddan exclaimed. “I am feeling very badly, and I am
going home----”
“I beg your pardon, your honor!” the district attorney repeated in a
courteous but insistent tone. “Have you not forgotten something?”
Judge Haddan rested both hands upon his aching head and thought. Then
he forgot his aching head and laughed. He straightened up and spoke:
“The indictments against defendant are dismissed, and defendant
discharged--the jury is excused, and court adjourned! Hitch Diamond,
you are free!”
“Dar now, boss,” Hitch bellowed, grinning into his honor’s face. “I wus
plum’ shore you an’ me could win dis case ef we jes’ sot our minds to
do it. Bless Gawd!”
THE END
GREATHEART
By Ethel M. Dell
Author of “The Way of an Eagle,” “The Rocks of Valpré,” “The Keeper of
the Door,” “Bars of Iron,” “The Hundredth Chance,” etc.
_12^o. Color Frontispiece. $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65_
Surely Miss Dell has never written anything more deserving of the title
“best seller” than this absorbing story, which takes an elemental grip
on the reader to an amazing degree.
The flirtation of a young girl, released for a brief time from the
harsh restraint of an unlovely home, develops until it assumes
overmastering proportions, and she is barely saved from herself by
the steadfast loyalty, unspoken love, and great moral courage of the
physically weak brother of her handsome, impulsive, and philandering
lover. The scene is largely laid in Switzerland, and the ravishing
beauty of that lovely land is painted with admirable skill.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London
The Smiting of the Rock
A Tale of Oregon
By Palmer Bend
_12^o. Frontis. by Belmore Browne
$1.50 net. By mail, $1.65_
Clear, clean, well-written is this story of the adventures brought to
David Kent by “a plain-faced Bishop, a superlatively pretty girl, and a
quixotic resolution”--a book to _refresh_ and _appeal_.
It is sunny with the spirit of the western country, the magnificent
mountains, and the whole-hearted pioneers of to-day. It is a tale of
failure and success, of love and youth and dramatic contrast, lit with
humor and warm with the breath of life and actuality.
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
New York London
[Transcriber’s Note:
Obvious printer errors corrected silently.
Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation are as in the original.]