to the hog-camp in half an hour.
Throughout the length and breadth of this swamp, about a mile apart,
there were curious mounds rising ten or twelve feet above the
surrounding marsh. All these mounds were round in shape and flat on the
top.
Some of them were not more than a hundred feet in diameter, while
others were large, containing half an acre of land. They had been built
a hundred years before by the Indians--and served a very practical
purpose. When the water flooded the swamp in the autumn the wild
animals took refuge on these mounds. The Indians penetrated the jungle
in their canoes and visited each mound, easily slaying the deer and
bears, and thus procuring their winter supply of meat.
The Gaitskill hog-camp occupied the largest of these mounds, the cabin
standing in the center of a two-acre plot. The flat top of the mound
had been kept cleared of timber, but the jungle encroached to the very
edge.
The posse galloped into this clearing, and Colonel Gaitskill dismounted
from his horse.
“You darkies stay here!” he commanded. “I’ll see whether Diada is in
the cabin.”
The cabin was empty. All of Isaiah’s smoked sausage and hams had
disappeared. Little Bit’s mandolin, with the strings broken, lay in the
corner of the room, and a part of Mrs. Gaitskill’s silk kimono hung
from a splinter on the wall, showing how it had been torn off. From a
nail on the wall hung a long lasso.
Taking down the rope Gaitskill walked out again to the negroes.
“She’s not here, men,” he announced. “We’ll have to hunt her in the
swamp.”
Adjusting the rope to his saddle-horn he mounted and sat for a moment
debating his next move.
Then Diada emerged from the jungle and stood at the edge of the
clearing, looking curiously at the troop of men.
“Dar she!” the negroes howled.
Gaitskill rode slowly forward, holding out his hand in a gesture of
friendliness about as one would approach to catch a horse. But Diada
moved slowly backward, keeping in the cleared space, always just one
leap distant from the jungle.
Twice they circled the clearing in this ridiculous fashion, Gaitskill
repeating in most wheedling and coaxing tones every expression of
fondness and endearment with which he was acquainted.
“Dat chin-music ain’t gittin’ Marse Tom _nothin’_,” Vinegar Atts
declared, watching the elusive Diada. “Me ’n’ Hitch’s done tried dat!”
Finally Gaitskill abandoned that plan, and quietly loosened his rope
and got ready to throw.
Riding back a few feet he gave the rope a quick swing, and the noose
settled prettily around the arms of the giant woman just above her
elbows. There was not a trace of fear in her face, and she moved slowly
backward until the rope was taut. To the interested negroes it looked
like the simple, peaceable game of “playing horse.”
Then Gaitskill spurred his horse to one side and gave the rope a sharp
jerk. Instantly a long-bladed butcher-knife flashed in Diada’s hand,
and the severed rope trailed loosely upon the ground, while the now
harmless noose slipped down over her hands and was lightly tossed aside.
“Dar now!” Hitch Diamond exclaimed in tragic tones. “Dat fish is done
unbit an’ div!”
Gaitskill slowly drew in the rope and was busy making another noose,
when there was a warning shout from the negroes.
Diada was coming across the clearing toward Gaitskill, leaping like a
deer. There was no trace of anger in her manner, and no sign of danger
except the long-bladed knife in her powerful hand.
Gaitskill’s nervous horse shied at that monstrous woman with her
fluttering, ragged garments, and wheeled and bolted, snorting with
terror.
The jungle kept the horse in the clearing as effectively as a
barbed-wire fence, but the animal had two acres of level ground to
run on and he proceeded to cover that ground in record-breaking time.
Gaitskill might have quieted the animal very quickly, except for the
fact that this performance seemed to please Diada, and she continued
her pursuit, chasing Colonel Gaitskill all around the lot.
“Look out, Marse Tom!” the negroes bawled, amid whoops of laughter.
“Don’t let her ketch yer!”
The laughter of the negroes diverted Diada’s attention to them.
With a loud “_Whoosh!_” she sailed into that compact mass of men and
horses, scattering them like a brick dropped into a pile of feathers.
Horses nickered and plunged, mules squealed and kicked, and negroes
screamed with fright, and in a moment the cleared space in front of the
hog-camp was a circus-ring of panicky men and beasts performing every
imaginable stunt, with Diada in the star rôle of circus-master and
chief of clowns.
Colonel Gaitskill’s horse found the path which led back to Tickfall,
plunged down the embankment, and ran away with his helpless rider. The
negroes, seeing Gaitskill’s departure, followed at their swiftest gait,
their shrieks and wails of fright and woe rolling through the swamp
with hideous reverberations.
One mile from the hog-camp Gaitskill regained control of his horse, and
turned to ride back.
Then he heard the thundering hoofs of the horses and mules coming down
the narrow bridle-path toward him. The road was not wide enough to pull
aside and let them pass; even if it were, in that moment of panic, the
horses and mules might become frightened at him and plunge into the
swamp.
Gaitskill regretted the necessity for his action, but there was nothing
else to do; he led that column of wailing negroes in ignominious flight
back toward Tickfall.
He kept ahead of them until he reached the main road, then turned aside
and let them precede him.
As he sat watching that ludicrous procession of squalling blacks, his
own horse suddenly snorted and bolted down the road at its wildest
speed. Gaitskill looked back to ascertain the cause of the animal’s
fright.
Lo, Diada was in full pursuit of the flying posse, trotting with the
speed of a galloping horse, her tongue hanging out like a hot dog’s,
Mrs. Gaitskill’s kimono trailing behind her like a torn battle-flag,
her long, ugly-bladed knife clutched in her powerful hand. One word
came from her throat with the explosive sound of a pistol-shot:
“_Whoo-ash!_”
There was no stopping his horse, so Gaitskill rode the four miles back
to Tickfall in something like eight minutes. When he swung out of the
swamp road into the town he looked back again.
Diada was half a mile behind him, trotting tirelessly, covering
about ten feet of ground with each tremendous stride. Her farewell
admonition came to him across the distance.
Softened by the intervening space, it seemed to contain a plaintive
note of appeal; yet this impression was but momentary, for Gaitskill
found too close a kinship between this outlandish expression and the
snarl of the wolf, the hiss of the snake, and the scream of the jungle
beast bent on blood and death.
IX
“DESE HERE IS TURR’BLE TIMES”
Fifty-five terrified negroes galloped wildly into Tickfall, distributed
themselves in the various negro settlements of the village, and told
fifty-five separate and distinct tales of horror about the fiasco at
the hog-camp.
One half truth ran through all the narratives, holding them together as
vari-colored beads are held upon a string:
“Marse Tom Gaitskill bragged his brags at de cotton-shed dat he wus
gwine walk right up an’ put his hand on dat wild woman. But he never
done it a-tall--naw, suh.”
“He didn’t git no nigher dat woman dan de eend of a lassoo, an’ when
she snuck up behine him wid dat big butcher-knife in her han’, dat
white man jes’ nachelly _’vaporated_! Yes, suh! Us niggers tried to
keep up an’ go along home wid him, but we ain’t never got in sight of
Marse Tom till yit--an’ us is plum’ back in town! Dat nigger woman run
at us jes’ like a wild hawg--you-all knows how de hawgs pop dey jaws
an’ says ’_Whoosh_!’ When a wild hawg does dat way, nigger, you better
coon up a tree. Well, suh, dat’s jes’ whut she said to us--_’Whoosh_!’”
Thus the negroes walked from house to house telling their appalling
stories to little groups of pop-eyed listeners, adding something more
blood-curdling to the tales with each repetition, until the terrified
inhabitants of Shiny, Shoofly, Hell’s Half-Acre, and Dirty Six were as
uneasy and fearful as if they were standing in the crumbling crater of
a rumbling volcano.
Then the grapevine telephone was put into operation.
There is nothing as mysterious to the white man as the negro’s method
of communicating information for long distances and to the remotest
cabins of his race. “Word wus sont,” is the negro’s only explanation of
how he happened to know twenty minutes after it occurred that a murder
had been committed in the woods twenty miles away.
Long before night the town began to fill up with negroes coming in from
plantations ten and twelve miles away. They arrived unostentatiously,
seeming to spring up from the very sand of the street. They seemed
jumpy when they were spoken to, moved about not singly but in groups,
and kept looking back over their shoulders.
The white people of the town noticed the anxiety and strain, and
it became a contagion. They knew that a wild woman was at large,
meditating they knew not what outrage.
The sun set as red as blood, and in a few minutes a heavy, smelly,
yellow Gulf fog swept the town, making objects invisible at a distance
of twenty feet, almost blotting out the little electric lights which
had just enough candle-power to reveal where they were but not
sufficient to show where anything else was.
The Reverend Dr. Sentelle stumped his way down to the post office
upon his ponderous cane, mailed a letter, and stood for a moment in
the doorway puffing a cigar. Several negroes passed, walking down
the middle of the street just as the venerable preacher flicked his
cigar-stump toward the gutter. The butt whirled round and round and
struck the ground with a splash of fire from the lighted end.
What a howl!
The men ran down the street yelping like hound-dogs, their feet
pounding upon the sand, their voices trailing off into less audible
sounds of woe as they continued their rapid flight.
Wondering at the unusual occurrence, Dr. Sentelle felt his way back to
his home through the thick fog, and stood leaning upon his gate gazing
up the street.
An object approached him, loomed up with gigantic proportions through
the fantastic exaggerations of the fog, stopped a few feet from where
the preacher stood, and spoke one word in a thunderous tone:
“Whoosh!”
Dr. Sentelle’s heavy walking stick went clattering upon the ground, he
reeled backward, struck his heels against the porch steps, and sat down
with a violence which filled the dome of his cranium with bursting,
falling stars.
“Heavens!” he exclaimed.
Diada stooped, picked up Dr. Sentelle’s stick by the little end, and,
thus armed with a weighty club, she went loping onward.
A group of darkies sat in a negro barber-shop discussing the wild woman
of the woods. Diada opened the door, entered as quietly and peaceably
as she could, and remarked:
“Whoosh!”
The negroes disappeared as promptly and as completely as if that word
were a cyclone puffing at a handful of feathers.
Diada trotted down the street in the direction they had gone and found
herself in front of the Hen-Scratch saloon, where a house full of
patrons talked in whispers and fortified themselves by indulgence in
red liquor. Diada entered the swinging door and gave the pass-word:
“Whoosh!”
The negroes whooshed. They went away from that place in every
direction, exhausting the treasuries of their throats for sounds to
vocalize their surprise and terror.
Suddenly from every negro section of the town there arose a wail which
reverberated through the village of Tickfall and brought every white
man to his feet white with fear:
“_Ah-ee!_ _Ah-ee!_ _Ah-ee!_”
Every white man seized his arms and ammunition and started for the
front door; then the thought of his defenseless family stopped him, and
held him there to patrol his yard and guard his own house from the
unknown peril which threatened.
Everywhere could be heard this wild call of fear.
Horses and mules broke out of their enclosures and galloped wildly
about the streets with a thunder of pounding hoofs, calling to each
other with frenzied nickering. The cows began a ceaseless bawling, and
the excited dogs ran madly up and down the premises of their masters,
making a pandemonium with their furious barking.
At intervals the noise lulled for a moment; then invariably would be
heard a wild scream, clear as the outcry of a panther, ending with
Diada’s one word, divided now into two distinct syllables:
“_Whoo-ash!_”
Colonel Tom Gaitskill leaned against the white columns of his porch and
listened to the weird sounds which came to him from every quarter. In
one negro settlement the inhabitants were bawling a song at the utmost
capacity of their lungs, drowning their fears with music.
In another settlement, with the regularity and drumlike throb of a
mighty chorus of immense hammers pounding upon steel anvils, was heard
the cry: “Ah-ee! Ah-eel Ah-ee!”
From the section of the town occupied by the whites could be heard the
nickering and running of horses, the bellowing of the cows, the barking
of the dogs, and now and then a fusillade of pistol shots. While in the
negro section closest to his home, Colonel Gaitskill could hear the
Rev. Vinegar Atts bellowing like a bull of Bashan, praying in a voice
which could be heard a mile, while those who knelt with him backed him
up in his stentorian implorations with responses which echoed like a
roll of thunder:
“O Lawd, dese here is turr’ble times----”
(“Listen, Lawd, dat’s de trufe--turr’ble times----”)
“De sun is done turned inter darkness an’ de moon inter blood, an’ de
drefful day of de Lawd am come----”
(“O-o-o Lawd, she sho’ am come----”)
“We done saw de woman clothed wid de sun an’ de moon am under her
foots----”
(“Ah-ee! Amen!”)
“Accawdin’ to Dy Word she done flied out to de wilderness whar she done
been nourished fer a time, an’ half a time, an’ yuther times----”
(“Ah-ee! Double time----”)
“Woe to de inhabiters of de yearth----”
(“Whoa!”)
“O-o-o Lawd, fotch down thy angel to tote dis nigger home----”
Not a man or woman, white or black, closed an eye in Tickfall that
night.
The sheriff and a number of business men held innumerable conversations
over the telephone and finally a company of them convened in the
sheriff’s office in the courthouse to confer about what should be done
to quell the panic. But conversations and conferences came to naught
because they were afraid to go through the negro settlements in the
dense darkness lest some panic-stricken negro fire upon them from
behind the door or beneath some cabin.
At the first streak of dawn the negroes, with one accord, moved toward
the business part of the town and assembled in a dense mass around the
courthouse, looking to the white people for protection.
Sheriff Flournoy made them a speech telling them that the white people
were their friends, that no harm could come to them, that there was
no cause for uneasiness, and that he wanted them to stay around the
courthouse all day.
At the conclusion of his speech, Flournoy started across the street to
enter the Tickfall bank. There was a wild yell from the negroes and
a mighty scramble among them to get around on the other side of the
courthouse.
Diada came out of an alley beside the Gaitskill store and stood in the
middle of the street. She was holding Dr. Sentelle’s ponderous walking
stick by the small end like a club. She gazed, apparently in wonder, at
the crowd of negroes and whites.
As the silent mob viewed her with alarm, wondering what outrage she
would commit next, she caught the big stick with a hand on either end,
raised it high above her head, and screamed:
“Whoosh! Whoo-ash! Whoosh!”
Flournoy drew his pistol and fired in the air above her head three
times.
Diada ducked at each shot, then she stood upright, whirled the club
around her head, and threw it at the sheriff. The missile curved like
an arrow and went straight toward the mark. Flournoy avoided a crushed
skull by falling flat upon the ground and letting the club pass over
him.
When he rose to his feet, Diada was trotting down the road with the
speed of the wind.
“Get your horses--everybody!” Flournoy shouted.
With that word of command began the greatest man-hunt that Tickfall
Parish had ever known.
X
THE MAN-HUNT
Every man in Tickfall who had any sort of animal to ride bestrode the
beast and joined the procession, which moved out of town in the wake of
Diada. Hundreds of negroes who had ridden in from the plantations the
night before galloped down the road behind the whites. And every canine
of any size or color attached himself to the posse and went plunging
along with the men.
They came to a straight stretch of road where they could see for over
two miles. At the far end of that stretch they beheld Diada, her
head and shoulders stooped far over, trotting with gigantic strides,
traveling with the tireless persistence of a desert camel.
To their surprise, Diada did not run into the swamp, but continued upon
the main road, which led to the Tickfall landing on the Mississippi
River. Seeing this, the men did not attempt to run her down, but
remained content to keep her in sight. At the end of an hour she was
still trotting easily with no signs of fatigue.
Finally Diada turned and ran into the forest. With a mighty clamor the
men raced after her, floundering through the underbrush, and galloping
far over into the woods. When the posse had passed out of sight among
the trees, Diada quietly climbed down from the branches of a big tree,
where she had concealed herself, and started down the road again.
The dogs discovered her first.
Yelping furiously they drove her from the main road across the prairie
marsh which skirted Lake Basteneau, and penned her upon a narrow
point which projected like a peninsula into the lake and was thickly
overgrown with cypress saplings about as large around as a man’s wrist.
The marsh between the road and the lake was too soft for the men to
venture on with their horses, and it was even dangerous for a man to
walk upon because of the quicksands. But the men could look from the
road, across a part of the lake, and easily see Diada and the dogs.
“Don’t go after her, men!” Flournoy called. “Let the dogs run her away
from there! We’ll get her when she comes off that point!”
With the large butcher-knife which she had procured from Mrs.
Gaitskill’s kitchen she had begun to cut down the cypress-saplings,
trimming off the leaves and the branches. She piled them up, dozens of
them, working swiftly.
The dogs did not advance to attack Diada. They merely stood and barked
at her. But they were in possession of the only exit from the narrow
point on which Diada had been trapped.
“Dat gal must be gittin’ ready to beat dem dogs off wid dem poles,”
Hitch Diamond remarked to the other negroes. “She’s shore put a job up
on herse’f.”
But Diada had a surprise in store for them all.
Balancing one of the long saplings on the top of her hand she hurled
it like a javelin with the speed and accuracy of an arrow. A hound-dog
gave a yelp which seemed to break in two in the middle--then he died.
The javelin had pinned him to the ground like an entomologist’s
specimen on a cardboard.
Then the javelins flew thick and fast into that bunch of dogs, and
every flying weapon found a mark and brought forth a yelp of death.
In a few moments the dogs turned tail and came whining back to their
masters.
Diada snatched up a number of the javelins, ran off the point of land,
and trotted down the edge of the lake toward the river.
“Leave your horses and follow her, men!” Flournoy ordered.
Four hundred men sprang to the ground, spread out in a long line like a
fish-seine and went plunging across the marsh in pursuit of the fleeing
woman. The grass was waist high, dead and dry as dust, but it offered
no places for concealment, and Diada’s tall form was easily kept in
sight.
At intervals the woman turned and hurled a javelin at the posse, but
they were careful to stay out of danger.
In a little while the men noticed that Diada had begun to show signs of
exhaustion. She was traveling more slowly, stopping now and then to
catch her breath, and moving forward with a more pronounced stoop to
her mighty shoulders.
She had eaten nothing for two days, had had no rest or sleep, and was
now on the last lap of a twelve-mile run at full-speed!
Finally she slowed down to a walk, and the walk became a sort of
stumble. She still carried a few of her javelins, and it was evident
that she was now dependent upon them to keep her pursuers at a
distance, while both she and they realized that she was now in the
center of a prairie of marsh grass where she could not supply herself
with new weapons when those she possessed were exhausted.
Something of the pathos of the situation dawned upon the men, both
white and black, and they became silent, eyes strained toward the
weakening, staggering quarry, so soon to fall into their hands.
For twenty minutes the silence was unbroken except for the swish of the
marsh grass as the men waded through it. Far across the prairie could
be seen the levee of the Mississippi River.
Suddenly the silence was broken by the long, dear, musical whistle of a
boat upon the river.
Diada stopped. Again that long, clear whistle came belling across the
sun-scorched prairie.
Diada raised her hands straight up above her head like a sun-worshiper,
emitted a long, plaintive, howling scream, which ended with that word
which was branded upon the memories of Tickfall forever: “Whoosh!
Whoo-ash!”
So dramatic was her action that the hair stood up on every man’s head,
and a cold chill swept across every sweat-drenched body.
The woman trotted slowly onward, moving now in a straight line toward
the river. She had nearly a mile to travel to reach the levee, and she
saw that she could not make the distance before she was captured.
Then she sprung another surprise--one which came very near being the
death of her pursuers.
Kneeling in the grass she picked up two tiny splinters of bark and
rubbed them rapidly together. A small blue flame curled around her
fingers and caught in the dry marsh grass. Running to another point she
dropped the flame there.
Then a wild yell of horror swept across the prairie and she beheld four
hundred men in a panic, fleeing for their lives.
Diada was safe from the fire because what little breeze there was blew
landward from the lake. In an incredible time that prairie had become a
furnace of fire, the racing flames pursuing the screaming men, making a
scene resembling nothing so much as the picture of that hell so vividly
described “where the smoke of torment ascendeth and there is weeping
and wailing and gnashing of teeth!”
The fire was checked when it reached the wide sandy road which led to
the Tickfall landing.
By the mercy of Heaven the men reached that road unscorched by the
flames! Mounting their horses, they looked across the charred grass
of the prairie and beheld Diada trotting slowly onward toward the
Mississippi levee.
With a wild shout they sent their steeds pounding down the road after
her.
Then around the bend of the river came a beautiful sea-going yacht--an
exquisite queen of the waters. Her whistle emitted four long, clear
signals for the Tickfall landing.
“By George!” Colonel Gaitskill exclaimed, “that is Captain Lemuel
Manse’s yacht. My telegram caught him at Vicksburg, and he turned
around and came back!”
In a moment the yacht came opposite to where Diada stood upon the bank
of the river. The watching men saw her lift her hands high toward the
heavens. Then they heard a long, clear shout, ending with the familiar:
“Whoosh! Whoo-ash!”
The yacht answered with two short, sharp whistle signals.
Diada ran swiftly down the levee, and then leaped high and plunged far
over into the muddy waters of the Mississippi!
The wondering, watching men saw her head emerge from the waves, saw her
swim like a fish to the yacht, saw her seize a rope which was tossed
over the side, and climb hand over hand to safety and rest and peace
and the care and protection of her friends!
“That’s all, men!” Gaitskill said in a voice which choked in his
throat. “You may all go back home now. Diada is gone from Tickfall
forever!”
XI
“WHU ATCH”