The next day, being Sunday and a dull day, Skeeter found it both
convenient and comfortable to remain in bed and pretend to be severely
injured by his automobile accident. He planned to spend the day in bed,
and slip out at night and carry the rabbit-foot back to the
dresser-drawer in Miss Virginia’s room.
But about ten o’clock the road commissioner called upon Skeeter,
expressed his great regret at the automobile accident and told Skeeter
he had come to settle for the damage that had been done.
“I don’t want any lawsuit, Skeeter. It takes a lot of time, and it takes
a lot of money which has to be paid to the lawyers and the courts. We’ll
fix this up between ourselves.”
“Dat suits me,” Skeeter told him.
“I’ll have your automobile repaired, put in perfect condition, painted
and polished and fixed like new. Besides that I’ll give you one hundred
dollars.”
With these words, he laid the money out on his knee, one hundred dollars
in one-dollar bills.
Skeeter sat up, reached for the money, and thrust it under his pillow on
the bed.
“Whar do I sign?” he grinned.
The smiling commissioner indicated the dotted line, Skeeter inscribed
his name with a flourish, and before that gentleman was out of the yard
Skeeter was kicking off the bed covers, preparing to dress and go out.
“Dis here is my lucky day,” he announced to his immortal soul.
About this time, Orren Randolph Gaitskill, returning from Sunday-school,
met Little Bit who had been waiting for him at the corner for an hour.
The two boys played around the streets for a while, then wandered
aimlessly down the alley and into a vacant place in the rear of the
Gaitskill store. There they found something which interested them very
much.
It was a discarded advertisement.
A piece of cardboard, life-size, represented a big, grinning negro man.
Both arms were folded across his chest and he was hugging a brand of
cured meat called the Hallelujah Ham to his bosom while his great mouth
was wide-spread in a toothsome grin of anticipation over its sugar-cured
sweetness. Having served its purpose, this cardboard man had been tossed
upon the trash heap to be carted away. Org and Little Bit beat the trash
man to it and regarded it as a great possession.
They carried the thing to the corner of the street and set it up in the
middle of the alley.
A negro woman passed, humming a tune. When she saw the big negro, she
jumped to one side with loud bawl:
“My Gawd! Who you tryin’ to skeer?”
When she saw it was merely a cardboard standing up, she went laughing
down the street.
“This is our lucky day, Little Bit,” Org chuckled. “We can have a heap
of fun with this thing. There is plenty of fun scaring people if they
don’t get mad and fight you afterwards.”
“Niggers don’t fight when dey is skeart,” Little Bit said. “Dey runs.”
“But we can’t play with this to-day,” Org said virtuously, recalling his
recent Sunday-school instructions. “This is the Sabbath of the Lord and
this big negro man ought to rest on this day. We’ll take him up to my
house and lay him down in the stable so he can rest.”
“Restin’ time an’ Sonday shore sounds good to a nigger,” Little Bit
giggled. “Even dis here paper pasteboard man is a-grinnin’.”
But this was not a day of rest at the Gaitskill home. They were
arranging to give a great dinner that evening at which would be
announced the engagement of Miss Virginia Gaitskill and Captain Kerley
Kerlerac.
All day long Hopey Prophet, famous cook, was preparing that dinner,
Dazzle Zenor was helping in the kitchen, Mustard Prophet was errand boy,
Skeeter Butts was slipping in and out of Hopey’s cabin in the yard,
seizing such opportunities as he could find to discuss with Mustard the
return of the rabbit-foot.
Org was called in and impressively informed that his beautiful sister
was engaged to Captain Kerlerac and the announcement would be made that
evening; that he would not be permitted to be at the dinner because he
had to be corrected seventeen times at an ordinary meal, and this
occasion was so extraordinary that he was eliminated.
“I don’t care—I’m glad I’m out of it,” Org growled. “Gince didn’t ask me
nothing about her business and I’m not going to help her through. Let
old Gince go and get herself engaged. Little Bit says that Cap’n Kerley
is a easy boss.”
“What I want you to do is to be a good boy all day and stay around the
house,” Mrs. Gaitskill requested.
“I’ll promise not to leave this place all day,” Org said. “There’s
nothin’ doing on Sunday nohow.”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Gaitskill said, much relieved by the promise. “If you
are very good, I’ll promise to do something very nice for you.”
“Will you lemme have a party and invite Little Bit?” Org asked.
“Oh, dear! I can’t promise what I will do just now,” Mrs. Gaitskill
smiled.
“Say!” Org exclaimed, struck by a sudden thought. “Don’t I get anything
to eat out of this?”
“Certainly. But you’ll have to wait until the others have eaten.”
“Is Little Bit in on the eats, too?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll be good,” Org announced.
And he kept his promise. He and Little Bit played in the stable all day
long. About dark it pleased his fancy to carry his cardboard negro man
to the house where there could be no danger of anyone stealing it. At
first he thought he would take it up to his own room, then he decided to
store it in a room which Colonel Gaitskill called his “office,” for he
knew that no one would enter that room that night.
The Gaitskill home was arranged in this fashion: Entering the front door
a guest stepped into the reception room in the rear of which was a
staircase leading to the bed-rooms above. On the left of the reception
room was the dining-room, behind that the butler’s pantry and the
kitchen. In the rear of the staircase was a back hall with a flight of
back stairs leading to the bed-rooms above. On the right of the
reception room was the drawing-room, and in the rear of that, entered by
folding doors, was what Mrs. Gaitskill called a library, and Miss
Virginia called a den, and Colonel Gaitskill called his office.
In this “office” Org set up his cardboard man, knowing that Gaitskill
never entered this room on Sunday, and that no guest would be admitted
to it that night.
As Org came out of the room, he was captured by Dazzle Zenor, who
conducted him to his room, ordered him to bathe, and superintended his
dressing. Then she dismissed him with instructions not to leave the
house and hastened to assist Miss Virginia with her toilet.
Orren sneaked down to the dining-room and gazed with awe at the
wonderfully picturesque table; boylike, he began to seek what he might
devour. There was nothing good to eat on the table yet, nothing on the
sideboard. He pulled open a door in the sideboard, and found far back a
cut-glass dish full of candies.
“Oo-oo!” he exclaimed. “Candy mints! They put ’em way back here to hide
’em from me!” and he filled his pockets.
Then he smuggled Little Bit up-stairs to his room to keep him company,
and showed him the candy mints.
“Dat looks good to me,” the little negro said.
“I bet it’ll make our mouths run water to eat ’em. When eatin’ time
comes, us is gwine expe’unce joy.”
“We’ll lay ’em on this table till everybody goes to eating down-stairs,”
Org said.
There were some Tickfall notables at that dinner.
There was Dr. Sentelle, clergyman, a hang-over from Civil War times, an
unreconstructed rebel, a cripple since Antietam, whose voice was music,
whose speech was eloquence, and every word a caress; whose face was
beautiful, written all over with the literature of experience. There was
John Flournoy, who had served forty years as sheriff of the Parish, a
man with the physical frame of an ox, the strength of Samson, a mouth
like a bear trap, and the gentle heart of a woman—the little children
followed him on the streets. There was Judge Haddan, a pale, sickly man
with a weak voice, trembling hands, and the stooped shoulders of the
student; but his head was massive and Websterian, his eyes glowed like
the eyes of some jungle beast, and no man within the borders of the
State commanded more respect as a lawyer and a jurist. There was Colonel
Gaitskill, the host, serene, powerful, with his snow-white beard and
hair, his face glowing like an alabaster vase with a lamp in it, such a
man as one beholds once in a lifetime and remembers forever. And around
these a bevy of women and girls who had known these men since their
babyhood.
And there was the girl of the evening, Miss Virginia Harwick Gaitskill,
descendant of a long line of beautiful women and handsome men, her skin
like the faint iridescence of pearls, her eyes like cornflower
sapphires, her hair like cobweb, thick and wavy, colored like the heart
of a ripe chestnut burr, her whole face like pearl and pomegranate and
peachbloom, with the amber nimbus above it always from that soft brown
hair, her laughter light and happy like a Sicilian shepherd’s reed, and
her heart like oil on salt sea-water—all the beauties of the world
moving, circling, advancing, retreating, but smoothing out all ruffled
surfaces and stilling the storm!
And Captain Kerley Kerlerac, such a man as every mother wants her son to
be that he might fill her heart and satisfy her love completely—but it
is customary to ignore the man in a case like this, or dismiss him with
faint praise.
The dinner was about half finished when Little Bit, in Orren’s room
up-stairs, looked longingly at the candy mints upon the little table and
remarked:
“All dem eaters down dar makes me feel hongry.”
“Me, too. Less eat our candy mints,” Org suggested.
“I’ll bet dey’ll make my mouf water when I gits ’em inside,” Little Bit
chuckled. “My mouf is been waterin’ jes’ to look at ’em.”
Indeed, they did make his mouth water.
These candy mints were not what Orren Randolph Gaitskill thought they
were. They were shaped like candy mints, but they contained no candy and
no mint; they were little wafers, which dropped in water in the
finger-bowls, would effervesce, causing the water to bubble and sparkle
and look pretty.
Both boys grabbed a handful of these things and poured them in their
mouths.
They tasted sweet. The saliva moistened them, and suddenly one of them
exploded in each mouth. It was a very slight explosion, just enough to
cause all the tablets to crumble into tiny pieces and get under their
tongues and between their teeth, and fill the entire cavity of the mouth
like an expanding balloon.
When the explosion occurred in Little Bit’s mouth, that little darky
felt like the whole top of his head had been blown off, and he opened
his mouth and uttered a startled bellow.
Then in both mouths, each little globule began to explode as the
moisture penetrated it. Half a dozen popped under each tongue, several
cracked between the teeth of the boys, and the vibration of the nerves
of the teeth made them feel as if there was a sound like a pistol shot
at each tiny explosion.
“Poison!” Org gurgled.
“P’ison!” Little Bit seconded.
The two boys decided that they needed expert medical attention at once.
Dr. Moseley was down in the dining-room. They would not wait for him to
come up; they would go down to him! They ran down the hall and galloped
down the back steps, their feet making as much racket as a pair of mules
crossing the gangplank of a steamboat. They burst into the dining-room,
foaming at the mouth, their frothy tongues protruding, gargling their
words as they tried to speak. Little Bit, his coal-black face smeared
with foamy white bubbles, looked like he had swallowed the handle of a
shaving brush and left the soapy end sticking out!
“I’m poisoned!” Org gargled.
“My Gawd! I’m p’isoned!” Little Bit squalled.
Simultaneously with the startling advent of the children in the
dining-room, there came a scream, so shrill, so terror-fraught, so
penetrating, that all the guests sprang to their feet in consternation.
From the kitchen, Dazzle Zenor’s voice sounded like a steam whistle:
“Oh, my Gawd! A alligator is tryin’ to git in dis kitchen!”
Almost instantly in the reception room there was a sound like the
delivery of a ton of coal——
Skeeter Butts had fallen down-stairs!
Hopey Prophet, hearing all the commotion, started from the pantry to see
what it was about; glancing across the back hall into Colonel Tom
Gaitskill’s office, she beheld a strange negro man with a broad grin on
his black face, hugging a Hallelujah Ham to his bosom!
She hurled herself into the dining-room among the astounded guests, her
fat arms stretched up toward the ceiling, her dough-like face ashen with
fright as she bawled at the top of her voice:
“Fer Gade ’lmighty’s sake, white folks! Dar’s a big nigger man in Marse
Tom’s library!”
When Mustard Prophet heard Dazzle’s scream of fright, he rushed from a
little side porch where he was waiting to serve the cream when they were
ready, taking a pistol from his pocket as he ran. There had been no
doubt in Mustard’s mind that he had really seen an alligator in the
orchard the day before and he had armed himself for protection in case
he saw it again.
But before Mustard got to the kitchen, he heard the sound made by
Skeeter Butts in his tumble down the front stairs, so he changed his
course and started in that direction.
Just as Mustard arrived in the reception room, he heard Hopey’s wild
whoop and her statement that a strange negro was in the library. So
Mustard ran across the drawing-room floor, pushed open the folding doors
and entered the library, knocking over in his haste a cardboard
representation of a negro man who stood holding a Hallelujah Ham to his
bosom. Approaching from the rear of this figure, Mustard could not see
what it was. It fell face downward and nobody recognized it.
Captain Kerley Kerlerac hastily excused himself from the table, stepped
into the back hall on his way to the library. Looking about for a
suitable weapon, he laid hold upon Orren’s baseball bat standing in the
corner.
He entered the library through one door just as Mustard entered it
through the other. Kerlerac closed his door behind him, thus shutting
out the light from the little back hall by which Hopey had been able to
see the cardboard figure, and which would have shown Kerlerac that the
negro was Mustard whom he confronted. But Kerlerac was in the dark, and
Mustard had the light from the drawing-room behind him. What Kerlerac
saw was a big negro with a big pistol in his hand.
The battle began at once!
Mustard shot ten times at Captain Kerlerac, the bullets flying in every
direction. Three of them entered the dining-room among the guests,
having no effect except to splash the diners out of that room, like a
brick splashes water when dropped into a puddle of mud!
The last bullet in Mustard’s pistol skimmed along the cheek of Kerlerac,
making a long, painful cut, just under the lobe of his ear, adding one
more bullet wound to the two he had previously received when he was
fighting for Uncle Sam in the world war.
Then the captain’s baseball bat landed on the top of Mustard’s head and
Mustard sank to the floor unconscious.
Kerlerac walked over with the intention of pounding the negro’s head to
a jelly, but just then——
From a little house in the yard by the side of the residence, there
sounded the thrilling scream of Miss Virginia Gaitskill. The woman he
loved! A moment later she began to shriek, and in her tones were all the
concentrated essence of agonized terror!
Miss Virginia, in her effort to escape from the flying bullets, had run
out of the house through the kitchen. As she rushed out of the door into
the yard, the light from the door shone full into the eyes of a six-foot
alligator. He opened his mouth wide at her approach, and when she
screamed, he snapped his jaws like a bear-trap!
The shrieking girl fled for refuge to the storehouse.
Alas!
A stream of sweetness from a barrel of ribbon-cane sirup had been
running from the spigot for two days and one night. Over the floor of
that storehouse was a pool of molasses one inch deep.
Virginia stepped into that mess and both her dainty slippers stuck! She
screamed. She tried to retreat and stepped out of both her slippers, and
her feet stood ankle-deep in the molasses. Then came a series of shrieks
which were the essence of agonized terror!
Captain Kerley Kerlerac, leaving Mustard unconscious upon the floor, ran
to the rescue of the beauty in distress. Plunging out of the kitchen
door, he leaped over something which looked like an old mud-caked log,
and which snapped at him viciously as he passed.
Failing to get a bite of the captain’s leg, the alligator walked around
to the front of the house.
Kerlerac hurled himself through the door of the storehouse like a
catapult.
Alas for the hero! Both feet landed in the molasses, both feet slipped
from under him, he fell flat on his back, rolled over and over in the
sweetness, and stopped his progress only when both feet struck against
the empty barrel from which all that saccharine had dripped!
He sprang up, threw his sweet arms around the woman he loved, drew her
close to his sirupy form, laid his bleeding cheek against her amber
hair, and carried her forth to safety!
In the meantime, Skeeter Butts was lying in the reception room under a
leather couch, grasping the green-plush box in his nervous hand.
He had started up-stairs to restore it to its rightful owner, just as
Org and Little Bit, thinking they were poisoned, had run down the
hallway above in their flight to the dining-room. Skeeter had turned his
body to retreat, had lost his balance, and had fallen down the steps,
taking refuge under the leather couch, where he was happy to remain
during the subsequent scenes of that memorable night.
When the screams of Miss Virginia Gaitskill attracted all the guests to
the rear of the house, Skeeter crawled from under the couch, crawled
across the reception room, slipped out of the front door and began to
crawl toward the gate.
Someone in the house turned the electric switch, causing the globe light
on the front porch to flash up. Skeeter jumped, hastily concealed
himself behind a bit of shrubbery, and glancing around him nervously,
found himself squatting within two feet of an immense alligator.
The alligator opened his mouth like a door to the pit of the nether
regions, and Skeeter, with that peculiar impulse which everyone has to
strike, or throw something, at a peril, hurled the green-plush box into
the alligator’s gaping mouth!
The jaws snapped together and the box containing the rabbit-foot was
gone.
By that time Skeeter was gone too.
As soon as Mustard Prophet was identified, half a dozen armed men from
the dinner party patroled the lawn with guns and flash-lights, hunting
for the negro whom Hopey had seen. The alligator, disturbed by the
flash-light, which whipped across the grass, crawled under the fence
into the horse-pasture, and was there discovered and killed by Sheriff
Flournoy.
Skeeter Butts, who was hiding in the bushes just across the road, drew a
big sigh of relief.
“Dem white mens is done killed a alligator whut’s got five foots an’ dey
don’t know it,” he chuckled. “One foot is gone down de red lane of his
gullet in a cute green box!”
Skeeter waited until the men returned to the house and then moved away.
“I knows whar dat rabbit-foot is,” he muttered. “But I ain’t gwine atter
it. No Jonah in de whale fer me!”
Over in the negro settlement called Dirty-Six, Skeeter entered the
Hen-Scratch saloon, saying nothing of the exciting scenes he had
witnessed that night. But his mind dwelt upon them, as evidenced by a
song which he sang again and again:
“Some folks do not believe
Dat a whale could Jonah receive
But dat don’t make my tale a-tall untrue.
Dar are whales on eve’y side
Wid deir mouths open wide
An’ you better look out or one will swallow you!”