Drawn by E. W. Kemble.

“Boo-hoo,” Scootie wailed. “Aw! shut up,” the old man snapped.

([See page 12].)

E. K. MEANS
Is this a title? It is not. It is the name of a writer of negro stories, who has made himself so completely the writer of negro stories that his book needs no title. ILLUSTRATED BY
KEMBLE
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1918

Copyright, 1918
BY
E. K. MEANS
The Knickerbocker Press, New York

To
ROBERT H. DAVIS
WHO TAUGHT ME HOW
AND
“ITTU”
WHO KEPT ME AT IT.

Foreword.

The stories in this volume were written simply because of my interest in the stories themselves and because of a whimsical fondness for the people of that Race to whom God has given two supreme gifts,—Music and Laughter.

For the benefit of the curious, I may say that many of the incidents in these tales are true and many of the characters and places mentioned actually exist.

The Hen-Scratch saloon derived its name from the fact that many of its colored habitués played “craps” on the ground under the chinaberry trees until the soil was marked by their scratching finger-nails like a chicken-yard. The name Tickfall is fictitious, but the locality will be easily recognized by the true names of the negro settlements, Dirty-Six, Hell’s-Half-Acre, Shiny, Tinrow,—lying in the sand around that rich and aristocratic little town like pigs around their dam and drawing their sustenance therefrom.

Skeeter Butts’s real name is Perique. Perique is also the name of Louisiana’s famous homegrown tobacco, and as Skeeter is too diminutive to be named after a whole cigar, his white friends have always called him Butts. Vinegar Atts is a well-known colored preacher of north Louisiana, whose “swing-tail prancin’-albert coat” has been seen in many pulpits, and whose “stove-pipe, preachin’ hat” has been the target of many a stone thrown from a mischievous white boy’s hand. Hitch Diamond is known at every landing place on the Mississippi River as “Big Sandy.”

When these tales were first published in the All Story Weekly, many readers declared that they were humorous. Nevertheless, I hold that a story containing dialect must necessarily have many depressing and melancholy features. But dialect does not consist of perverted pronunciations and phonetic orthography. True dialect is a picture in cold type of the manifold peculiarities of the mind and temperament. In its form, I have attempted to give merely a flavor of the negro dialect; but I have made a sincere attempt to preserve the essence of dialect by making these stories contain a true idea of the negro’s shrewd observations, curious retorts, quaint comments, humorous philosophy, and his unique point of view on everything that comes to his attention.

The Folk Tales of Joel Chandler Harris are imperishable pictures of plantation life in the South before the Civil War and of the negro slave who echoed all his master’s prejudice of caste and pride of family in the old times that are no more.

The negroes of this volume are the sons of the old slaves. Millions of them live to-day in the small Southern villages, and as these stories indicate, many changes of character, mind, and temperament have taken place in the last half-century through the modifications of freedom and education.

This type also is passing. In a brief time, the negro who lives in these pages will be a memory, like Uncle Remus. “Ethiopia is stretching out her hands” after art, science, literature, and wealth, and when the sable sons of laughter and song grasp these treasures, all that remains of the Southern village negro of to-day will be a few faint sketches in Fiction’s beautiful temple of dreams.

E. K. Means.

CONTENTS

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Late Figger Bush.

Figger Bush did not look like a man who was about to die; if anything, he looked like one who ought to be killed.

He was a scarecrow sort of a negro, with ragged, flapping clothes. His coal-black face formed a background for a little, stubby, shoe-brush mustache, and Figger thought that mustache justified his existence in the world. He had not much use for his coconut head except to support a battered wool hat and grow a luxuriant crop of kinky hair. He had an insuperable aversion to all sorts of work.

None of these things indicated that Figger was about to die; in fact, they showed that he was enjoying life.

The only thing that indicated an unusual condition in Figger was the fact that he was now walking down the middle of the road with rapid and ever-lengthening steps, glancing from side to side, and grumbling aloud to himself.

“I gotta find dat Skeeter Butts an’ find him quick,” he muttered. “Nothin’ like dis ain’t never happen to me befo’, an’ nobody cain’t ’lucidate on my troubles like Skeeter kin.”

A high, cackling laugh, accompanied by a hoarse bellow of laughter, floated to him upon the hot August breeze, and Figger ceased his grumbling and began to chuckle.

“I gits exputt advices now,” he mumbled. “Skeeter am talkin’ sociable wid de Revun Vinegar Atts.”

On top of the hill in front of the Shoofly church, Figger found his two friends resting under the shade of a chinaberry tree.

Skeeter Butts, the little, yellow barkeeper at the Hen-Scratch saloon, had the back of his chair propped against the trunk of the tree, his heels hung in the rungs of the chair in front, and looked like a jockey mounted upon a bony, sway-backed horse. Vinegar Atts, the fat, bald-headed, moon-faced pastor of the Shoofly church, sat on one chair, rested his feet on another, and had his massive arms outspread upon the backs of yet two other chairs. He looked like a pot-bellied buzzard trying to fly upside down and backward.

“Come up, Figger!” Vinegar howled, as he kicked the chair, on which his feet rested, toward him. “Take a seat, take a set-down, rest yo’ hat, spit on de flo’—make yo’se’f at home!”

Figger picked up the chair, placed it back where Atts could rest his feet upon it again, and sat down upon the ground, interlocking the fingers of both hands and nursing his bent knees.

“You been cuttin’ out chu’ch recent. How come?” Vinegar bellowed.

“Religium don’t he’p a po’ nigger like me,” Figger responded gloomily.

“Dat’s a fack,” Atts agreed promptly. “Religium is got to hab somepin to ketch holt on an’ you ain’t nothin’.”

“Whut ails you?” Skeeter inquired, looking at Figger intently. “You ain’t look nachel to me some way.”

Figger sighed deeply, then executed a feeble grin.

“A nigger man is comin’ to see me, Skeeter,” he explained, “an’ I don’t need him.”

“Who’s a-comin’?”

“Popsy Spout.”

“Whar’s he been at?” Vinegar asked.

“Yallerbam’,” Figger told him.

There was a moment of silence while the two waited for Figger to tell them all about it. But if Figger ever did anything he had to be pushed along.

“I don’t see nothin’ so powerful bad in dat,” Skeeter snapped, impatient at the delay. “Popsy Spout is comin’ from Yalabama—well?”

“It’s dis way,” Figger explained, slapping at the ground with his battered wool hat to give emphasis to his speech. “Popsy Spout is my gran’pap on my mammy’s side. My mammy died soon an’ Popsy raised me up. He always toted a big hick’ry cane an’ he raised me pretty frequent. One day he promise me a whalin’ an’ I snooped ten dollars outen his money-bag an’ skunt out fer Tickfall. Dat was twenty year ago.”

“You reckin’ Popsy is comin’ to colleck up?” Skeeter snickered.

“Naw, suh. I figger dat Popsy is gittin’ ole an’ lonesome an’ tuck up a notion to come an’ pay me a little visit.”

“How long will he stay on?” Skeeter asked.

“I kinder think he thinks he’ll stay on till he dies,” Figger announced in tragic tones, as he produced a soiled letter and held it out to Skeeter. “Read dis, an’ see kin you find any yuther hopes in whut he do say.”

Skeeter took the letter out of the envelope and read it aloud, giving the peculiar African pronunciation to the words as he spoke them:

“Dear Figger:

Dis letter will kotch you jes’ befo’ I gits offen de train at Tickfall. I wus raised an’ bawn in de Little Mocassin Swamp, an’ I wants to come home an’ live wid you till I die. I needs somebody of my kinnery aroun’ so I won’t git so lonesome. Good-by. I’m comin’ powerful soon.

Popsy Spout.”

Skeeter handed the letter back with a look of deep sympathy and pity.

“Bad luck, Figger,” Vinegar Atts bellowed. “You cain’t mo’ dan half suppote yo’se’f, an’ now you done got a ready-made gran’pap to suppote. A nigger kin git mighty ole an’ deef, but he always hears de dinner-horn.”

“Dat’s right,” Figger wailed. “Whut muss I do?”

“Don’t start squealin’ like a pig kotch in a gap,” Skeeter snapped, as he passed around a box of cigarettes. “Smoke one of dese an’ ease down yo’ mind a little.”

“Whut muss I do?” Figger wailed again.

“Vinegar, you ax ’terrogations while I medjertates,” Skeeter proposed, as he leaned his chair back against the tree.

“When did you perceive dis here Popsy las’, Figger?” Vinegar inquired.

“More’n twenty year ago.”

“Whut do he look like?”

“He looks like a black nigger. I s’pose he’s bleached out some in de las’ twenty year.”

“Is you ever heard any word from him befo’?”

“Naw, suh. Word ain’t been sont.”

“How do Popsy know you is still livin’?” Vinegar inquired.

“Huh!” Skeeter Butts grunted, as he suddenly sat up and slapped his hand upon his knee. “Dat’s de very idear I needs!”

“Whut?” Vinegar asked.

“Figger Bush will be dead when Popsy comes,” Skeeter snickered. “Dead an’ buried!”

“Not ef I kin he’p it!” Figger announced, as he rose to his feet with a frightened air. “You got to ketch a nigger fust befo’ you kin dead an’ bury him.”

“Set down, Figger!” Skeeter exclaimed. “Yo’ gran’pap on yo’ mammy’s side didn’t inherit you no brains! Dis here is a good plan to git you out of trouble.”

“Tell it to me slow,” Figger begged, as he resumed his seat on the ground. “I don’t favor no plan havin’ a dead Figger Bush in it.”

“Listen, Figger!” Skeeter urged. “I wants you to pick out a nice-lookin’ nigger gal whut could play like she wus yo’ widder.”

“Suttinly,” Figger grinned, beginning to see the light. “Scootie Tandy could play widder. She’s been one about two year—all de nigger mens run after her tryin’ to pussuade her to fergit her spite an’ marry agin. I could git her to play widder.”

“Dat’ll put an eend to yo’ mis’ry,” Skeeter cackled. “Go tell Scootie all yo’ trouble, ax Scootie to meet de train dat Popsy comes on, an’ bust de sad news to him dat you is dead an’ buried!”

“Mebbe Popsy won’t b’lieve her,” Figger objected.

“Me an’ Vinegar will back her up in dat tale,” Skeeter assured him. “De revun elder won’t mind stretchin’ de blanket a little fer de sake of savin’ a friend. Ain’t dat so, Revun?”

“Dat’s so!” Vinegar declared. “My life job an’ my callin’ is savin’ niggers!”

“Whar muss I git to while I’m bein’ dead?” Figger inquired.

“Go fishin’,” Skeeter grinned. “Fishin’ is de best spote on yearth fer de livin’ an’ de dead!”

“How long am I got to stay dead?” Figger asked.

“When de ole man Popsy hears tell dat you is gone hence an’ ain’t no mo,’ he’ll take his foot in his hand an’ ramble back to Yalabam’,” Vinegar rumbled. “Dat’ll be yo’ sing to come fo’th from de dead!”

Figger put on his battered hat and stood up. He asked pleadingly:

“Couldn’t you loant a dead man half a dollar, Skeeter?”

“Whut you want wid it?” Skeeter snapped.

“I figger dat a real live corp’ oughter git a hair-cut an’ a shave!” Figger chuckled.

“Dat’s right,” Skeeter laughed, as he handed out the money. “You scoot over an’ see Scootie right now!”

Scootie Tandy was a fat, good-natured young woman, who wore red head-rags, wrapped up her kinky hair with strings to give it a better kink, and had no higher object in life than to be regular at her meals.

She had worn deep mourning for over a year for a worthless husband whose death had been advantageous to her in that it gave her an excuse for doing even less work than she had done when he was living.

“It ’pears like I ain’t been well an’ strong sence Jim died an’ lef’ me to ’tend to eve’ything,” she whined at the kitchen doors of the white people, to aid her plea for food and old clothes.

Figger believed he was in love with Scootie, and Scootie made eyes at him, but Skeeter said they were not thinking about marrying. He declared they were merely watching each other to see which could live longest without work and without landing in jail for vagrancy.

“Scootie,” Figger began, “you don’t mind playin’ a widder, does you?”

“Naw,” Scootie told him. “Men is a heap mo’ int’rusted in deir minds ’bout widders dan dey is ’bout gals, pervidin’ ef de widders ain’t got no nigger chillun crawlin’ on de cabin flo’.”

“Would you mind bein’ my widder?” Figger inquired hesitatingly.

“I’d like it,” Scootie laughed. “Is you aimin’ to die real soon?”

“I passes off powerful soon,” Figger grinned.

Then Figger told her of his troubles, and explained what he wanted her to do.

“My ole gran’pap won’t hab no easy job attachin’ hisse’f onto me,” Figger announced in conclusion. “Dis here corp’ is gwine keep movin’ his remainders somewhar else.”

“Whut train is Popsy comin’ on?” Scootie asked.

“He’ll be here on de dinner-time train, I think,” Figger replied. “You go down an’ meet dat train, an’ ef he comes you pass him back onto de caboose an’ tell him to keep trabbelin’.”

“When muss I tell him you died?” Scootie asked.

“Gwine on a year!” Figger suggested.

“Whut did you die of?”

“Two buckles on de lungs,” Figger told her.

“Wus you sick very long?” Scootie asked.

“Yes’m. Tell him I wus feelin’ feeble an’ not able to wuck none fer about fo’teen year, which is how come I ain’t leave no property,” Figger declared.

“Ain’t you got no picture of yo’se’f fer me to set on de mantelpiece an’ cry at?” Scootie asked.

“Suttinly,” Figger said, as he slipped his hand into his coat-pocket and brought out a cheap photograph. “Dis am de best koodak I’m ever had took—it shows off my mustache so good! Don’t dem lip-whiskers look nachel?”

“Dey shore do sot off yo’ face,” Scootie replied, as she studied the photograph and considered all the information Figger had given her. Finally Scootie asked:

“S’pose Popsy don’t b’lieve all dese tales?”

“’Tain’t no danger,” Figger answered. “I’ll make myse’f absent, an’ Skeeter an’ Vinegar will back you up.”

“All right, Figger,” Scootie grinned. “I’ll gib you a lift-out. I don’t mind succulatin’ de repote dat you is dead; some folks will be dum glad to hear it!”

“Bein’ dead ain’t such awful bad luck,” Figger laughed. “I done promise de white folks to do about fawty jobs of wuck, an’ dem whites keeps me a dodgin’ like a bumpin’-bug. Furdermo’, I owes a heap money in dis here town whut I don’t never expeck to pay back, an’ my tongue gits dry tellin’ how soon I hopes to wuck an’ make some cash money. Bless Gawd, dead niggers like me cain’t wuck an’ cain’t pay—dey got to charge all my debts to de dust an’ let de rain settle ’em!”

“My stomick tells me dat de dinner-time train is mighty nigh here, Figger,” Scootie said. “You better git away an’ let me dress up accawdin’ to dis here sad succumstance.”

“Dis is whar I disappears complete, Scootie,” Figger grinned, as he stepped off the porch. “I hope you won’t slight yo’ mournin’ fer me atter I’m gone.”

Then Scootie prepared herself to meet the train—a black dress, black gloves, a long black veil over a purple and yellow hat with a poll-parrot on it, a palm-leaf fan, the edge appropriately encircled with black braid, and a white handkerchief with a broad border. She looked at herself in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction.

“I’s gwine wear mournin’ all my life,” she announced to herself. “It makes my complexion mo’ fair.”

When the train pulled into the station, Scootie was standing near the negro coach, looking for a man who resembled Figger’s description of Popsy Spout as he remembered his grandfather after twenty years. Only one negro passenger got off, and Scootie merely glanced at him and waited for some one else.

When the train pulled out, Scootie turned, and the negro passenger was standing close beside her on the platform.

“Is you lookin’ fer somebody?” Scootie asked. “I knows eve’ybody in dis town.”

Then Scootie got a surprise.

“Yes’m,” the man answered, in a weak, tired voice. “I wus expeckin’ Figger Bush.”

Scootie reeled back and glared at the speaker with popping eyeballs.

He stood before her, over six feet tall and as straight as an Indian. His face was as black as new tar and was seamed by a thousand tiny wrinkles, written all over with the literature of life and experience. His long hair was as white as milk, and his two wrinkled and withered hands rested upon a patriarchal staff nearly as tall as himself.

On his head was a stove-pipe hat, bell-shaped, the nap long since thrown off like an outworn garment, and the top of the hat was as red as a brick from exposure to the weather. An old, faded, threadbare and patched Prince Albert coat swathed his emaciated form like a bath-robe.

Instantly Scootie knew that this man belonged to that vanishing race of negroes who were the glory and the pride of the South in the ante-bellum days. They cling like vines around the old homesteads, cared for and protected by men who were once their white masters, and when they die, more white people attend their funerals than members of their own race.

Only one thing denoted that age had left a blight upon the dignified form of Popsy Spout, and that mark was in his eyes: the vacant, age-dimmed stare of second childhood, indicating that reason no longer sat regnant upon the crystal throne of the intellect, looking out of the windows of the soul.

“I’s powerful glad to meet a young gal like you, honey,” he said in the high falsetto of old age. “Figger is missed meetin’ me some way. He always wus a mos’ onreliable piccaninny. I’s had a long trip. My name is Popsy Spout.”

This was Scootie’s cue to turn on the water-works. She brought out her black-bordered handkerchief and began to weep.

“I wus lookin’ fer you, Popsy,” she sobbed. “Poor Figger Bush is dead an’ I’s his widder!”

“How’s dat—which?” the old man quavered.

“Dead! Plum’ dead—dead an’ buried!” Scootie wailed.

“Did he die layin’ down?” the old man asked.

“Yes, suh. He died nachel.”

“Huh!” the old man snorted. “Dat suttinly is strange. I never predick no sech come-out fer Figger—how come de white folks didn’t shoot him or hang him? He shore deeserved it!”

“Boo-hoo!” Scootie wailed.

“Aw, shut up!” the old man snapped, in high, shrill tones. “Figger didn’t never amount to nothin’ nohow. I know it’s all fer de best, an’ ef you had de sense Gawd gibs to a crazy geese, you’d be dum glad he’s a deader!”

“Mebbe so, suh,” Scootie mourned, “but I shore miss him a-plenty.”

“Of co’se!” Popsy exploded. “You miss de stomick-ache, too, but ’tain’t resomble to howl because you ain’t got it. It’s proper to miss pestications but ’tain’t good sense to mourn deir loss. How long is Figger been dead?”

“’Bout a year,” Scootie sobbed.

“By jacks!” Popsy snorted. “Been dead a year an’ here you is all blacked up in mournin’ like a bucket of tar. Shut up! Whut you so crazy ’bout a dead nigger fer?”

Thus importuned, Scootie saw that she was wasting her tears on Figger as far as Popsy was concerned.

“Whar is you gwine now?” Scootie inquired in a voice which showed that she had found comfort.

“I’s aimin’ to ooze along over to yo’ house an’ git my dinner,” Popsy told her. “Which way does we start?”

“Figger would shore be mighty sorry to miss yo’ visit ef he wus alive an’ knowed about it,” Scootie remarked as she led the way to her cabin.

“’Tain’t so!” Popsy snapped, as he strode along beside her, resting one hand upon her fat shoulder and the other on his staff. “Dat nigger ain’t never missed nothin’ but a good whalin’—I promised him a lickin’ twenty year ago an’ he runned away. He ain’t never come back.”

This speech had a sing-song swing to it, as if it was a complaint which he had repeated for many years whenever Figger’s name was mentioned.

“He ain’t never come back to git his wallupin’,” the old man repeated.

Scootie snickered.

“Dat sounds right!” Popsy applauded, patting the fat shoulder which supported one of his withered hands. “’Tain’t no use to shed tears over Figger. Livin’ or dead, he don’t deeserve nothin’ but a big bust-out laugh.”

“I’s glad you feels dat way about it, Popsy,” Scootie chuckled. “You shore has cheered me up some an’ eased my mind a-plenty.”

“You got any fryin’-size chickin at yo’ cabin?” Popsy asked.

“Yep. I kin cook ’em so you’ll wanter die wid a chicken bone in yo’ hand, too,” Scootie told him. “An’ as fur my hot biskits—you’ll want one of my hot biskits carved on yo’ tombstone!”

“Kin you affode to keep ice-water?”

“Yep. A driver on de ice-wagon is courtin’ me servigerous an’ he slips me a free chunk eve’y day.”

“Dat’s good sense,” Popsy told her. “Is you got any objections to my chawin’ all de eatin’ terbacker I wants to?”

“Naw, suh,” Scootie giggled. “Figger chawed.”

“Does you maintain a jug?” Popsy wanted to know.

“I does; an’ it’s passable full, too.”

“I bet it splashed pretty low when Figger wus livin’,” Popsy bleated. “When I wus fotchin’ up dat piccaninny he jes’ nachelly graduated to’des a jug like all de buzzards in de settlemint comin’ to a mule’s fun’ral!”

“Dar’s my cabin—over yon.” Scootie pointed.

The walk had wearied the old man, and it required all of Scootie’s strength to lift him up the steps to a rocking-chair upon the porch. She brought him out a turkey-wing fan, a twist of chewing-tobacco, and a pipe which had belonged to her deceased husband. Then she thought of Figger’s photograph, and she handed that to him.

But the aged man’s mind had suddenly gone blank because of his physical weakness, exhausted by his long walk.

“Whut you gimme dis here little card fer, Scootie?” he asked perplexedly.

“Dat’s a picture of Figger, Popsy!” Scootie exclaimed, turning it so he could see the face.

“Figger who?” Popsy inquired.

“Figger Bush, Popsy,” Scootie told him in a patient tone. “Yo’ little Figger—my dead husbunt—don’t you remember Figger!”

“Is dat so?” the old man asked in uncertain tones. He held the card up and looked at the photograph for a long time.

“Whut you think about him, Popsy?” Scootie asked.

“Dat dead nigger’s face an’ head shore growed strong on hair an’ whiskers,” Popsy quavered, as he laid the photograph in the crown of his upturned stove-pipe hat, “like a damp marsh—don’t grow nothin’ but rank grass!”

“Dat was de way Figger wus,” Scootie laughed. “His head wus shore kinder soft an’ oozy.”

“When is we gwine git our dinner, Scootie?” the old man demanded.

“Right now!” Scootie told him.

“All right!” Popsy said, as he leaned back in his chair. “You call me when she’s ready. Feed me chicken an’ hot biskits an’ ice-water—lemme taper off wid a dram an’ a leetle nap—den I want you to lead me to de bank whar Marse Tommy Gaitskill stays at. Lawd! Lawd! I ain’t sot my eyes on little Tommy fer fifty year!”

At two o’clock that afternoon Scootie conducted Popsy Spout through the door of the Tickfall National Bank, down a corridor in the rear of the big vault, and knocked upon a door which bore in dainty gold lettering the word: “President.”

In response to a voice within she opened the door and pushed Popsy Spout forward.

Colonel Tom Gaitskill sat beside a table in a swivel chair, a tall, handsome man with the air of a soldier, ruddy-faced, white-haired, genial, and smiling. Gaitskill’s fine eyes took him in with a photographic glance.

The old negro stood before him, immaculately neat, though his garments were ragged and time-worn. Dignity sat upon his aged form like virtue upon a venerable Roman senator. Indeed, there flashed through the banker’s mind the thought that men like this one who stood before him might have sat in the Carthaginian council of war and planned the campaign which led young Hannibal to the declivities of the Alps where his horde of Africans hung like a storm-cloud while Imperial Rome trembled with fear behind the protection of her walls.

Then fifty years rolled backward like a scroll.

Gaitskill saw a blood-strewn battlefield torn with shot and shell; he saw clouds of smoke, black, acrid, strangling to the throat, rolling over that field as fogs blow in from the sea; he saw a tall, young, black man emerge from such a pall of smoke carrying a sixteen-year-old boy dressed in the bloody uniform of a Confederate soldier. The young soldier’s arms and legs dangled against the negro’s giant form as he walked, stepping over the slippery, shot-plowed ground. He saw the negro stagger with his burden to an old sycamore tree and lay the inanimate form upon the ground at its roots, composing the limbs of the boy with beautiful tenderness; then he saw the negro straighten up and gather into his giant paws a broken branch of a tree which two men could hardly have handled.

Waving this limb at the creeping pall of smoke, he screamed like a jungle beast, and whooped: “You dam’ Yanks, keep away from dis little white boy—you done him a-plenty—he’s dead!”

Gaitskill stood up and stepped forward. He held out a strong white hand, clasping the palsied brown paw of Popsy Spout. No white man ever received a warmer greeting, a more cordial welcome than this feeble black man, aged, worn, tottering through the mazy dreamland of second childhood.

Unnoticed, Scootie Tandy walked to a window and seated herself.

The two old men sat down beside the table and Scootie listened for two hours to reminiscences which went back over half a century. Frequently Popsy Spout’s mind wandered, and Gaitskill gave him a gentle stimulant of liquor, as thoughtful of the darky’s waning strength as a courtier would be of the comfort of a king.

“How old are you now, Popsy?” Gaitskill smiled, after they had talked of old times.

“I’s sebenty year old—gwine on a hundred.”

“Do you really expect to live that long?” Gaitskill asked.

“Yes, suh, ef de white folks takes good keer of me,” Popsy answered.

He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a bulky package, tied up with many pieces of many-colored string.

“Dat’s my money, Marse Tommy. Please unwrop it an’ count it out loud fer me.”

Gaitskill poured the currency and coins upon the table and with a money-handler’s expert ease, he counted it aloud, announcing the total in about a minute:

“One thousand dollars!”

Scootie Tandy gasped like a woman who had been under water for about five minutes and had just come up, but neither of the men noticed her.

Popsy Spout hesitated a minute, scratched his snow-white hair, and looked at the neat piles of money with an air of perplexity.

“Isn’t that correct?” Gaitskill asked.

“Yes, suh, dat’s c’reck,” Popsy said uncertainly. “Dat’s de same number I got when I counted it, but somepin is powerful strange ’bout dat money.”

“What’s the trouble?” Gaitskill asked.

“You counted it so quick, Marse Tommy!”

“Well—I counted it right, didn’t I?”

“Yes, suh, but—I reckin’ it’s all right, Marse Tommy. But, you see, it tuck me five whole days to count dat money an’ it wus de hardest wuck I ever done—I sweated barrels of sweat! It ’peared like a whole big pile, when I counted it. But ef I spends it as quick as you counted it, ’twon’t las’ me till I kin walk outen dis here bank!”

“I understand,” Gaitskill smiled. “But you don’t want to spend this money. How long did it take you to accumulate it?”

“Fawty year,” Popsy told him. “Bad times comes frequent to a nigger, an’ I wanted to save a leetle ahead.”

“The idea is to take as long spending it as you did accumulating it,” Gaitskill said. “In that case, it will last you until you have passed one hundred.”

“Yes, suh, dat’s de properest way to do,” Popsy agreed. “Dat’s why I fotch dis money to you. Kin you keep it fer me?”

“Certainly. That’s what this bank is for.”

“Marse Jimmy Gaitskill over in Burningham—his bank paid me int’rust prannum on dat money,” Popsy said.

“I’ll pay you interest per annum, too,” Gaitskill smiled, well knowing that his brother had supported Popsy Spout for half a century. “How much money will you need to live on each year?”

“I kin git along on ’bout ten dollars a month, Marse Tommy—wid de clothes an’ vittles dat de white folks gimme. I kin save a little out of dat to ’posit back in de bank fer rainy days.”

“That’s one hundred and twenty dollars a year with clothes and food,” Gaitskill laughed. “Some of the bank’s patrons would like to get that much interest per annum.”

“Yes, suh. Marse Jimmy Gaitskill specified dat my nigger money drawed powerful int’rust outen his bank.”

“You can come here and draw ten dollars every month,” Gaitskill said, and he picked up a card and wrote a few words upon it.

“Dat’ll fix me fine, Marse Tommy. I kin live scrumpshus on dat.”

“Where are you going to live?”

“I ain’t got nowhar yit,” Popsy said.

“Would you like to live in the log cabin where you lived fifty-five years ago?” Gaitskill inquired.

“Whar I married at? Whar me an’ Ca’lline live happy till all us boys went off to de war? Whar you an’ me an’ Marse Jimmy an’ little Hinry useter roast goobers in de hot ash?” Popsy asked eagerly.

“The very same,” Gaitskill answered softly. “With the big pecan tree still standing before it, and the big stone door-step where we boys cracked the nuts.”

Popsy Spout rose to his feet and bowed like some aged patriarch standing in the presence of a king. His high, quavering voice sobbed like the wailing of a child:

“Marse Tommy, de Gaitskill fambly is de top of de heap fer kindness an’ goodness to dis pore ole nigger!”

He sank back into his chair, wiping the tears from his eyes.

“I guess so,” Gaitskill said, and his voice was so soft that each word was like a caress. “We all remember Henry.”

“Dat’s so, suh,” Popsy said, suddenly straightening his bent and quivering shoulders. “Marse Jimmy is told me frequent ’bout you an’ him gwine up dar an’ findin’ Hinry under dat sycamo’ tree whar I buried him at. I’s glad you fotch him back home an’ buried him wid his own folks.”

“Yes, we’ll walk out to his grave together some day,” Gaitskill murmured.

He rose and walked to the window. He looked out for a moment, then turned and handed Popsy the card on which he had written a few minutes before.

“I’ll see you often, Popsy,” he said. “Your old cabin is still at the foot of the hill by the old spring. It’s unoccupied—move in as soon as you please.”

“Whut is dis, Marse Tommy?” Popsy asked, as he looked curiously at the folded paper.

“It’s an order on my store for food,” Gaitskill said. “You can draw some groceries every Saturday night. That’s part of the interest per annum, you know.”

“Bless Gawd!” Popsy Spout quacked. “Ten dollars a month wages an’ reg’lar rations eve’y Saddy night! You shore is a noble white man, Marse Tommy! Come on, Scootie. Us’ll git gwine befo’ we gits happy an’ gits to shoutin’ an’ bust up all de furnisher in dis white man’s bank!”

“My Lawd, Figger Bush!” Skeeter Butts exclaimed, as his friend entered the Hen-Scratch saloon. “You look like a skint mule.”

“I done disguised myse’f!” Figger grinned as he took off his battered wool hat.

Figger’s famous shoe-brush mustache was gone, and his head was shaved until it was as smooth and slick as a black piano key.

“Whut you did yo’se’f so funny fer?” Skeeter demanded, as Figger smiled and revealed a row of teeth like new tombstones.

“I decided to stay in town an’ be a corp’,” Figger explained, “so I had myse’f fixed up so dat not even my widder would know me.”

“Is you seed Popsy yit?” Skeeter asked.

“Yep. I hid behime de cornder of de deppo when de train trundled in, an’ Popsy dismounted off. Scootie cried an’ tuck on consid’able, an’ I wus plum’ satisfied wid de results.”

“Did Popsy ’pear much broke up?” Skeeter inquired.

“I couldn’t tell ’bout dat,” Figger chuckled. “Scootie tuck him to her cabin fer dinner an’ I seed ’em walkin’ aroun’ town—I s’pose dey is huntin’ fer my grave.”

“How do bein’ a corp’ feel like—so fur?” Skeeter snickered.

“’Tain’t so bad,” Figger remarked. “It mought be better ef de town would take a notion to gib me a fust-class fun’ral. Of co’se, de Tickfall quawtette would hab to sing, an’ I’s de male serpranner in dat quawtette. It would be a real nice somepin new fer a corp’ to sing at his own fun’ral.”

“Mebbe us could git de Nights of Darkness to hold a lodge of sorrer on you,” Skeeter cackled.

“Ef dey does, I wants to sing my new solo ’bout ‘Locked in de stable wid de sheep,’” Figger announced.

“Whut about de death ben’fit?” Skeeter inquired. “Is you gwine apply fer dat?”

“Naw,” Figger laughed. “Ef de cormittee ’vestigates an’ repotes me dead, dey kin gib dat ben’fit to Popsy.”

At this point the green-baize doors of the saloon were pushed open and Scootie Tandy blew in quivering with excitement.

“Whut’s up, Scootie?” Skeeter exclaimed, springing to his feet.

“Gawd pity you, Figger!” Scootie howled in tragic tones. “You made a awful mistake in gwine dead so suddent!”

“Which way?” Figger asked in a frightened voice.

“I went to de bank wid Popsy Spout an’ found out dat Popsy an’ Marse Tom Gaitskill is kinnery!” Scootie gushed forth.

“Hear dat, now!” Skeeter exclaimed in a voice of wonder.

“Popsy gib Marse Tom a wad of money dat it took Popsy five days to count!” Scootie ranted.

“Oh, my Lawd!” Figger wailed.

“Marse Tom gib Popsy one hundred an’ twenty dollars int’rust prannum on his money, an’ a awder on de sto’-house fer reg’lar rations, an’ a cabin to live in!” Scootie squalled.

“My gawsh!” Figger bleated in dismay. “I done busted a egg on my own doorstep an’ hoodooed my own se’f!”

“Dat’s whut you done, Figger!” Scootie howled. “I tole Popsy real prompt dat he needed a nuss an’ housekeeper in his ole age, an’ as Figger’s widder I wus lawfully ’lected to dat job, an’ he tuck me up right now!”

“Oh-huh!” Figger grunted in despair.

“Me an’ Popsy is gwine move in de ole log hut behime Marse Tom’s house to-morrer,” Scootie exulted. “Ten dollars per month an’ reg’lar vittles, chicken an’ pie—I won’t never hab to wuck no more.”

“Lawdymussy!” Figger sighed.

“Good-by, niggers!” Scootie exclaimed in a happy voice. “I won’t never reckernize you-alls no mo’—I draws a pension!”

She swept out of the house and left two men struck speechless by the information she brought.

A moment later they were interrupted again. Vinegar Atts plowed through the swinging doors, puffing like a steam-boat and sweating like an ice-pitcher.

“Whar kin I find Brudder Popsy Spout, Skeeter?” he bellowed. “I wants to ’vite him to jine de Shoofly chu’ch an’ set heavy in de amen cornder. Dat’s de biggest nigger whut ever come to dis town. Word is sont out dat he old-soldiered wid de Gaitskills—fit wid de white folks! I needs him in my chu’ch!”

Neither Skeeter nor Figger made a reply. Their air of tragedy silenced Vinegar Atts, and he crept forward on tiptoe to where the two men were sitting, smoking cigarettes and sighing. When Vinegar reached a point, where he could see the face of Figger Bush, he jumped as if he had seen a ghost.

“My—good—gosh, Figger!” Vinegar wailed in his siren-whistle voice. “You done suicided yo’se’f! Took five days to count his money—got it in de bank fetchin’ int’rust—livin’ in his own cabin an’ drawin’ rations—an’ you is de only blood kin of Tickfall’s leadin’ nigger sitson an’ you—is—dead!”

“Tell me whut to do, Revun?” Figger wailed.

“I ain’t got time, Figger!” Atts bawled. “I got to tote a Christyum greetin’ an’ welcome to dat noble nigger man!”

Vinegar Atts went out of the saloon with the rolling walk of a big bear.

“Tell me whut to do, Skeeter!” Figger wailed.

“Search me!” Skeeter exclaimed. “’Tain’t no trouble fer a nigger to die—dat comes nachel. But when a nigger tries to come to life an’ make folks b’lieve it—Lawdy!”

“I’s gwine right down an’ see Popsy!” Figger announced with sudden determination. “I’ll tell him dat Scootie is been lyin’ to him all de time. I kin prove by Marse Tom an’ all de white folks dat I ain’t never been dead a-tall!”

“I hopes you luck, Figger!” Skeeter exclaimed in a tone which indicated that he considered such an enterprise futile.

Figger lost no time in getting to the cabin where Scootie lived.

He found Popsy sitting upon the porch, smoking a corn-cob pipe which had been the property of Scootie’s deceased husband, and languidly slapping at his face with a turkey-wing fan. His stove-pipe hat rested upon the floor at his feet and contained a big red handkerchief.

“Howdy, Popsy!” Figger greeted him cordially, holding out his hand. “Don’t you reckomember me?”

The old man removed his pipe from his mouth, rested his turkey-wing fan upon his lap, reached for his long patriarchal staff as if he were about to rise; then he leaned back in his chair and surveyed Figger a long time.

“Naw, suh, I ain’t never seed yo’ favor befo’,” he quavered.

“I’s little Figger,” Figger informed him ingratiatingly.

“Little Figger is dead,” Popsy answered, looking at Bush with faded eyes, in which the light of doubt and suspicion and a little fear was growing. “I lives wid little Figger’s widder.”

“Dat’s a mistake, Popsy,” Figger protested. “I ain’t died yit. Scootie’s been lyin’ to you ’bout me.”

The old man leaned over and fumbled in the crown of his stove-pipe hat. He brought out his big red handkerchief, and slowly unwrapped the photograph which Scootie had given him when he first entered her home, a photograph of a negro with a woolly head and a shoe-brush mustache. Handing this to Figger, he asked sharply:

“Does you look like dat nigger in dat photygrapht?”

“Naw, suh,” Figger replied with evident reluctance.

“Dat’s de little Figger Bush I mourns,” Popsy said. “Dat’s Scootie’s dead husbunt. You ain’t look like him a bit—you look like a picked geese!”

“I’s de very same man, Popsy!” Figger wailed in desperation. “Only but I done had my hair an’ mustache cut off.”

“I don’t believe it!” Popsy declared in positive tones. “I raised dis here Figger Bush, an’ I knows he never earnt enough money in his dum lazy life to commit a shave an’ a hair-cut!”

“O Lawdy, whut muss I do?” Figger wailed.

“Git away from dis cabin an’ don’t never show yo’se’f here no mo’!” the old man howled. “I wouldn’t b’lieve you wus Figger Bush ef you sweared on de Bible an’ all de twelve opossums!”

Popsy pounded upon the floor of the porch with the end of his long staff.

“O Scootie!” he called. “Git outen dat kitchen an’ come here a minute.”

Hope flamed up in the heart of Figger. He knew that no one could convince Popsy that he was not dead more certainly than the woman who pretended to be his widow.

Scootie came out upon the porch and gazed with popping eyes at Figger Bush.

“Is dis here nigger yo’ dead husbunt?” Popsy snapped, pointing a palsied finger at Figger.

“Naw, suh,” Scootie replied truthfully.

The old man stood up. He caught his long staff at the little end as a man grasps a baseball bat. He balanced it a moment, poising himself on his feet, as if he were getting ready to knock a “homer,” aiming the stick at Figger’s round, ball-like head!

“Git out!” Popsy whooped.

Figger got out.

Early the next morning Scootie sent two wagonloads of household goods to the log cabin in the rear of Colonel Tom Gaitskill’s home, where Popsy had taken his young wife fifty-five years before.

Scootie deposited these goods in the two front rooms, fixing them up so that Popsy would have a comfortable place after his arrival, and while she was arranging the rest of the rooms. In one room she placed a rickety sofa, a couple of chairs, and a table. She hung a few pictures on the wall, placed a few ornaments upon the mantelpiece, and from the spring beside the house she brought a pitcher of water, placed it on the table, and set a drinking glass beside it.

In the other room she set up Popsy’s bed, placed beside it the only comfortable rocking-chair she possessed, put Popsy’s old, battered suit-case, which contained all his worldly goods, under the bed, and placed upon the mantelpiece all the tobacco and pipes which her late husband had left her.

Then she returned to her own cabin to superintend the removal of the remainder of her goods.

As she came into the yard, Popsy called to her from his seat on the porch.

“I ain’t no good settin’ here in dis rockin’-chair, Scootie. I’ll be gittin’ along to’des my own cabin!”

“Don’t go yit, Popsy,” Scootie begged. “Wait till de nex’ wagon comes. I’ll set de rockin’-chair up in de wagon an’ let you ride to yo’ cabin wid de load!”

“I ain’t gwine do it!” the old man shouted irascibly. “I ain’t gwine be kotch settin’ up in a rockin’-chair in a wagon like a ole nigger woman ridin’ to a all-day nigger fun’ral wid dinner on de grounds. I’ll walk an’ tote my own carcass to dat cabin, like a man!”

“Ef pore Figger wus livin’, I’d git him to hitch up de kerridge an’ drive you to de cabin,” Scootie said mischievously.

“Huh!” the old man shouted. “Figger wouldn’t hab sense enough to find my ole cabin. When de good Lawd passed aroun’ brains, Figger had his head in a woodpecker’s hole lookin’ fer aigs!”

Muttering to himself in sheer perversity, he pranced down the road for a hundred yards or so, then, out of sight of Scootie, he settled down to a sedate and dignified walk. In a little while he began to use his long staff, leaning heavily upon it as he climbed the long hill which led to the Gaitskill home.

At the foot of the hill he passed a negro sitting disconsolately upon the end of a log. He was a scarecrow sort of a negro, with ragged, flapping clothes; a close observer might have noticed that he had recently worn a stubby, shoe-brush mustache; his head was shaved as smooth and slick as a black piano-key.

“Good mawnin’,” Popsy Spout quavered.

“Mawnin’, Popsy,” Figger murmured in a tragic tone—a voice from the tomb, a greeting from the dead!

The old man walked on, his step feebler now, his staff serving him more and more, his progress slower.

The August sun shone with scorching heat, the sunlight spraying from the leaves of the trees like water; the August breeze was like a breath from the open furnace-doors where iron is melted and flows like water; the sand of the highway was like embers scorching the feet. The old man staggered on, muttering to himself.

Figger Bush arose slinkingly and walked behind Popsy at a respectful distance, like a dog which had been whipped and told not to follow. He kept close to the high weeds and the bushes which grew beside the road, so that he could hide promptly if Popsy turned and looked back.

But Popsy did not look back. His age-dimmed eyes were set upon a big white house with large colonial columns which stood upon the top of the hill. Half a century had passed since he had seen this home last, and eagerness overcame his physical weakness and carried him to the hilltop where the beautiful lawn lay like a green carpet spread before the door.

Popsy leaned weakly upon the gate and gazed long and earnestly at the stately old home. He assumed the attitude of one who was listening for some familiar sound, and was perplexed because he could hear nothing.

Alas! Popsy was listening for footsteps that were silent and for voices which for fifty years had not been music in the porches of the ear! For a moment the old man had forgotten the years which had passed since last he saw this house, and he was listening for the voices of a young bride’s father and mother, and for the laughter and shouting of three Gaitskill boys—Tom, Jim, Henry!

“I bound dem boys is huntin’ squorls over in de swamp, or mebbe dey’s monkeyin’ aroun’ dat wash-hole,” the old man murmured doubtfully. “Dat house shore do ’pear powerful still ’thout dem noisy, aggervatin’ bullies bellerin’ to each yuther.”

Popsy fumbled feebly through his pockets and brought his hands out empty.

“Dem dum boys is mighty stingy wid deir chawin’ terbacker,” he mumbled in an irritated tone. “Dey don’t gimme half enough to keep me runnin’! Sence Tom hitched up wid dat pretty Mis’ Mildred, he done lef’ off chawin’, an dat cuts down my ’lowance. Nev’ mind! I knows whar dem dum boys keep deir chawin’, an’ I’ll ’vent some excuse to go to de house an’ I’ll holp myse’f liberal.”

Suddenly Popsy Spout remembered certain boyish pranks which Tom and Jim and Henry had played upon him fifty years before. He dimly recalled finding his tables and chairs hanging from the limbs of trees, his bed carried over in the cow-pasture and placed in the middle of the field, his few cooking pots crowning the tops of fence-posts around his cabin!

“Hod zickety!” he exclaimed. “I bound dem rapscallions is pesticatin’ my Ca’lline plum’ to death!”

He turned away from the gate and hurried as rapidly as his feeble legs would carry him down the road.

When at last he reached the cabin, he sat down upon the big stone step completely exhausted.

A big pecan tree stood in front of the house, its wide-spreading branches completely shading the front yard. Under this tree three of Popsy’s piccaninnies had romped, and countless generations of hound puppies had rolled in the dust, and scratched in the sand at its roots.

To Popsy’s left was the big stone spring-house, the roof entirely gone, and leaves and branches had blown into the four walls and choked the stream which flowed from the hillside.

“I been aimin’ to fix dat roof,” Popsy murmured. “It ’pears like I cain’t hardly find time to do nothin’, I got to wuck fer de white folks so hard.”

He turned and looked behind him.

Two doors opened out upon the front porch, and the two rooms visible to him were furnished. Having seen the furniture in Scootie’s cabin, he recognized it now, and thought it was the furniture of his old home fifty years before.

Then one of the bizarre conceits of second childhood knocked upon the crumbling portals of his brain and found admittance. He thought that he was a young man again, and that the buxom negro girl whom he had married in the presence of the white folks up yonder on the hill in the drawing-room of the Gaitskill home, was still alive, and occupied this cabin with him.

“Ca’lline! Ca’lline!” he called sharply.

But Caroline, sleeping in her narrow, silent chamber under a scrub-oak tree on a hillside in Alabama, made no answer.

“Ca’lline!” he called again, in a voice which he tried to make loud, but which failed through weakness. “Ca’lline! Cain’t you hear me callin’ you?”

The old man stood up in perplexity. His fuddled brain could not grasp the reason for this silence and loneliness. He climbed feebly, with the aid of his staff, up the stone steps, and pounded loudly upon the crumbling floor of the porch.

“Oh, Ca’lline! Whar in dumnation is you gone at?”

He entered the room where Scootie had prepared his bed with the idea that he might want to lie down and rest after his trip to the cabin, and he took his seat in the comfortable rocking-chair, placing his stove-pipe hat beside him on the floor.

“Ca’lline!” he wailed. There was no answer to his call.

The fire of exasperation flamed in the ancient man’s withered frame, and he manifested his annoyance by kicking his beloved stove-pipe hat across the room.

“Dag-gone de dag-gone day whut fotch me de dag-gone luck of totin’ dat dag-gone fat nigger gal to my cabin!” he wailed. “Ca’lline! Whar in dumnation is you an’ dem three nigger brats?”

He leaned back, resting his shaking, palsied head wearily against the chair.

“Dem chillun take atter deir maw,” he commented. “Dey’s gad-arounders!”

From the top of the big pecan tree a mocking-bird broke forth in delirious music. The loud, clear notes, imitating every bird which roamed the woods, echoed back from the woods and the hillside, and broke in jewels of melody around the old log cabin.

The old man listened, sighed gratefully, and smiled.

“Dat’s one of dem wuthless, no ’count piccaninnies a-comin’ now,” he muttered. “Dem chillun got deir whistlin’ gift from deir paw. I could whistle jes’ like dat befo’ I loss all de toofs outen my head.”

Instantly a footstep sounded in the rear of the house, and the door opened. Figger Bush entered the room and stopped near the door, looking at Popsy Spout with eyes as wistful as the eyes of a hound.

“Whar de debbil is you been at, Figger?” the old man howled. “I been callin’ you all de mawnin’!”

“I been settin’ aroun’,” Figger muttered. “I’s tired!”

“By dam’!” the old man snorted. “Mebbe yo’ legs is a little feeble an’ tired, but yo’ stomick don’t never weary none. Whut you been doin’ in dat kitchen—eatin’ or drinkin’?”

“Nothin’,” Figger mumbled.

“Ef you been drinkin’ dat dram agin, I’ll find out about it!” Popsy ranted in the falsetto of senility. “Licker talks mighty loud when it gits loose from de jug, an’ de fust time you whoops a yell I’ll wallop yo’ hide wid dis stick.”

“Yes, suh,” Figger murmured, rubbing his shaved head.

“Whar is yo’ hair gone at?” Popsy howled, glaring at Figger’s bald pate.

“Ole Mis’ Mildred cut it off!” Figger prevaricated with a snicker. “She say she wanted to sot a hin an’ needed my wool to make a nest.”

“Huh!” the old man snorted in disgust. “It’s a pity she didn’t take one of dese here wooden teethpicks an’ beat yo’ brains out while she wus at it!”

Figger turned and started to go out.

“Hey, Figger!” Popsy squalled.

“Whut?” Figger asked.

“You stay aroun’ dis cabin so you kin wait on me!”

“Yes, suh,” Figger grinned.

“Ef you leave dis house ’thout axin’ my say-so, I’ll skin you alive!”

“I ain’t gwine leave you, Popsy,” Figger assured him. “Nobody cain’t git me away from dis cabin widout compellment!”

The mocking-bird in the top of the pecan tree started again its song of delirious music.

“Go out an’ tell dat brat to stop dat whistlin’ so I kin take me a nap!” Popsy commanded, as his weary head rested upon the back of the chair and he closed his age-dimmed eyes.

Figger stooped and picked up Popsy’s big red handkerchief and passed out. He sat down upon the steps of the porch and unwrapped from the kerchief a cheap photograph of a man with a shoe-brush mustache and a woolly, kinky head. He gazed upon the picture for a long time, then tore it into tiny bits and tossed the fragments over in the high grass.

“Dat kind of Figger Bush is dead!” he announced to himself, while in his eyes there glowed the light of a great resolution. “I’s related to Popsy by bornation, an’ me an’ Popsy is kinnery of de Gaitskills by fightin’ wid de white folks endurin’ of de war. Us is all quality niggers, an’ we got to ack like we wus white!”

On top of the hill Figger heard the rumbling of two wagons, bringing the last of Scootie’s household goods to her new home.

“Won’t de widder be supprised!” Figger chuckled. “Bless Gawd! I ain’t as dead as she an’ me thought I wus!”

He sat chuckling to himself until he recalled Popsy’s last command, and sprang to his feet.

“He tole me not to let nothin’ disturb his nap!” he muttered, as he walked rapidly up the hill toward the wagons. “Now I’s gwine gib de widder de wust jolt she ever got in her life!”

He hid behind a large tree until the first wagon came to where he was standing. Scootie was driving, and she looked like one who had suddenly come into possession of a great treasure.

“Hol’ on a minute, Scootie!” Figger exclaimed, stepping from behind the tree. “Popsy sont me up here to tell you not to disturb him till he tuck a leetle nap!”

“’Tain’t so!” Scootie snapped. “Popsy don’t know yo’ favor or yo’ face!”

But as she looked at Figger Bush she knew beyond a doubt that he was installed in his grandfather’s cabin. Figger’s face glowed with a light of happiness and peace, and there was even something in the face which held the promise of a new manhood through the influence of the grand old man who now lay asleep in the cabin.

Scootie began to weep.

“I reckin I’ll hab to take my furnicher an’ move out, Figger,” she sobbed. “I kinder hoped I could live wid Popsy an’ take keer of him, an’ make him happy in his ole age—but all dat wus too much luck fer Scootie!”

“’Twouldn’t be mo’ dan you deserve, Scootie,” Figger said in a pleading tone. “An’ I b’lieve you an me could fix it up so dat it wouldn’t be onpossible!”

“How?” Scootie asked.

“Leave dem mules standin’ here in de shade, go wid me to de cotehouse an’ git some weddin’ licenses, an’ git Vinegar Atts to marrify us!” Figger suggested.

Scootie promptly hit the ground with both feet, landing by the side of Figger Bush.

“Come on, honey!” she said, seizing him by the hand. “Less go quick!”

“Kin I go, too?” Little Bit, the driver of the second wagon asked in a whining tone. No answer was given to him, so he jumped down and followed.

From the top of the hill, they looked down to where the red brick court-house baked in the summer sun. Side by side they started toward the court-house, and the new life.

On the other side of the hill, sole guardian of the grand old man in the cabin, the mocking-bird sat in the pecan tree and sang its song of love.

Hoodoo Eyes.

The swinging doors of the Hen-Scratch saloon fell apart and Conko Mukes walked in.

He was a large man and, to look at, very impressive.

The negroes in Tickfall had never seen clothes like his, so large in stripe and so variegated in color. On either lapel of his coat was a large, brassy emblem of some secret lodge.

On the middle finger of each hand was a rolled-gold band ring nearly an inch wide. Across the vast expanse of his sky-muckle-dun-colored waistcoat was a gangrened near-gold watch-chain like the cable chain of a Mississippi River steamboat, and a charm suspended from it was constructed of the talons of an eagle.

His ponderous feet shook the floor as he walked across the saloon and seated himself at a table. Removing his stove-pipe hat, he placed that upon one chair, kicked another chair from under the table on which to deposit his feet, and leaned back in a third chair, with his gorilla-like arms resting comfortably across the back of a fourth. The barroom appeared to be empty.

“Hey, dar! Come here—eve’ybody!” he bellowed.

Skeeter Butts peeped at Conko Mukes around the corner of the bar behind which he was sitting.

The black face which he beheld advertised unmistakably what Conko Mukes was. It was the mug of a typical prize-fighter.

The face was clean-shaven, accentuating a jaw, heavy, brutal, aggressive. His head was also shaven, and every bump on his villainous cranium stood forth like a promontory on a level plain. His eyes were heavy-lidded, lazy, sleepy-looking, like the eyes of a lion.

The nose had been broken and was crooked; his thick lips had been battered in many fights until they were shapeless, and the mouth was simply an ugly gash across his face. And to complete the adornment, one ear was “tin” and the other was cauliflower, both permanently disfigured and disfiguring.

Conko Mukes moved in his chair as if burdened by the heavy weight of his muscles, and his heavy-lidded eyes glowed yellow in the dim light of the saloon as he glared around him. Again his voice boomed:

“Hey! Am eve’ybody done hauled off an’ died? Come out here, Skeeter Butts—whut’s hidin’ you?”

“I guess dis is my move-up,” Skeeter remarked as he pocketed a handful of silver which he had been counting behind the bar and came to the table.

Conko watched the diminutive darky until he stopped by his table. Then the lazy, lion-like eyes glowed with a yellow fire, and with a slapping motion of his monstrous hand he exclaimed:

“Shoo, fly, don’t bodder me!”

Skeeter Butts cackled like a nervous hen, fluttered well out of reach of that hand, and snickered:

“Lawd, Conko, you sho’ is one powerful funny man! Dat gits you a free-fer-nothin’ drink. You is better’n a show-actor.”

“You done kotch de lizard by de tail, son—kotch him de fust time,” Conko informed him in deep, rumbling bellow. “I is a holy show!”

“How is you feelin’ to-day, Conko?” Skeeter asked as he set the drink before him.

“I feels like I is sorry I wus borned to die!” Conko answered, swallowing the raw whisky with one gulp and with a dry eye. “How is de bettin’ gittin’ on?”

“De niggers takes up eve’y bet, Conko,” Skeeter replied. “You see, dis here Hitch Diamond—nobody ain’t never knocked him out yit!”

“He ain’t never fit nobody yit,” Conko remarked easily. “Befo’ dis day is over I’ll make him wish he’d been borned a little nigger gal!”

“I hopes so,” Skeeter said with a nervous flutter in his tone. “I done bet de limit. Ef it ain’t a win wid you, I’s gwine hab de misforchine to lose fawty dollars.”

With a pompous air Conko Mukes thrust his hand into his pocket and brought out a large roll of bills which had been carefully wrapped around a fat corn-cob. He tossed it across the table.

“Dar am fifteen dollars whut you kin bet fer me, Skeeter. Dat many money says to you dat I’s gwine make Hitch Diamond dig a hole in de groun’ to git away from de Georgia Cyclome.”

“Hitch specify dat he gwine rub his gloves wid hoodoo-juice,” Skeeter said as he fumbled with the corn-cob. “Ain’t you got no stunts like dat to pull on?”

Conko Mukes opened his eyes with a sudden and tremendous interest. He sat for a moment in deep thought. Then he answered in a regretful tone:

“Naw, suh, I ain’t never studied ’bout dat befo’. I don’t depen’ on no hoodoo-juice. I depen’s on elbow-grease! I fights straight, and hits hard, an’ knocks ’em out on de level.”

“Yes, suh, elbow-grease is powerful good,” Skeeter said uneasily; “but I figgers dat us oughter hab all de he’p we kin git! Of co’se, I don’t b’lieve in no hoodoo myse’f, but——”

“Us don’t need no hoodoo,” Conko interrupted. “Let Hitch Diamond git it. He needs it. He don’t know it yit, but he needs a dorctor, a preacher, a undertaker, an’ a nice, deep grave in de cem’tery!”

“I wouldn’t be so powerful shore ’bout dat, Conko,” Skeeter suggested. “You ain’t never seed dat Hitch Diamond pufform.”

“Whut sort lookin’ coon is he?” Conko asked.

“He’s mo’ tall dan you, wider dan you, heavier dan you is. He’s got arms long enough to hug a elerphunt aroun’ de stomick.”

“I’ll break dem long arms in fo’ pieces an’ wrop ’em aroun’ Hitch’s neck like a mournin’ rag,” Conko declared.

“Hitch kin put his hands on yo’ head an’ mash yo’ face plum’ down in yo’ stomick—jes’ like you wus a mud-turkle!” Skeeter said.

“He won’t git no chance to mash,” Conko assured him. “I’ll make him think he’s got bofe hands tied behime him an’ bofe behime foots kotch in a bear-trap.”

“Hitch won’t take but two licks at you,” Skeeter continued. “One’ll be a up-cut whut’ll punch you in de air like a balloom; den he’ll take a side-swipe at you when you is comin’ down, an’ phish!—you’ll be over on de yuther side of Jordan!”

“Huh!” Conko grunted. “Whut you reckin I’ll be doin’ to him when I’s comin’ down?”

“De las’ time Hitch had a prize-fight,” Skeeter remarked, as he tried to roll a cigarette with fingers which trembled and spilled all the tobacco, “he specify dat he didn’t need but one glove, an’ he made em tie it on his elbow. He fiddled aroun’ an’ dodged dat big stiff till de nigger got in reach of dat elbow; den Hitch gib him a little jab in his soul-complexion, an’ dat nigger went to heaben fer a week!”

“Huh!” Conko grunted. “Hitch’ll need gloves on his elbows to-day, too. But he’ll want ’em to keep him from hurtin’ his crazy-bones when I knocks him down.”

“Hitch Diamond challenged Jack Johnsing,” Skeeter declared. “An’ you know whut dat nigger champeen of de worl’ went an’ done? He got on a big ferry-boat an’ went to Framce an’ specify dat he wustn’t never comin’ back to dis country no mo’!”

“Jack Johnsing got skeared too soon,” Conko replied easily. “I always said he had a yeller streak.”

“I seed Hitch fight a bear once,” Skeeter informed him. “He kotch dat bear by de tail, an’ dat bear gib one loud squall an’ drug Hitch plum’ to Arkansas befo’ Hitch could let loose his handholt!”

“Huh,” Conko grunted, undismayed. “I ain’t got no tail.”

Skeeter stopped. His thought could go no higher. His imagination could reach no further.

Conko lighted a big cigar and puffed smoke like a steam-engine. He laid two monstrous hands, palm upward, upon the table between them and remarked:

“Dese here hands needs exoncise, Skeeter. Hitch Diamond is shore gwine make a good punchin’ bag.”

“I hopes you gits yo’ punch in fust,” Skeeter sighed, wishing that he had not bet so heavily.

“Whut’s de matter wid you?” Conko Mukes bawled. “Is you gittin’ cold foots?”

“Naw. Nothin’ like dat,” Skeeter hastened to assure him, “but——”

“’Tain’t no need to git anxious,” Conko declared as he rose to go. “You go out an’ bet my money, an’ remember dat de Georgia Cyclome is a real twister.”

“Hitch is a stem-winder, too,” Skeeter declared.

As Conko Mukes tramped out of the saloon, Skeeter Butts wiped the clammy sweat from his face and sighed.

“My Lawd!” he moaned. “I tried to skeer dat nigger up so he’d be keerful, but Conko don’t take no skeer. Leastwise, he don’t talk dat way. I got de hunch dat he ain’t nothin’ but beef an’ wind an’ a loud noise. I bet I’s gwine lose eve’y bet whut I done bet. Dat’s de bes’ bet I could bet!”

“Huh!” Conko Mukes meditated as he walked slowly toward that portion of Tickfall inhabited by the whites. “Dat Skeeter Butts specify dat Hitch Diamond is some fightin’ coon. I wish I hadn’t bet dem fifteen dollars; I cain’t affode to lose ’em. I needs he’p. Wonder whar I could git some of dat hoodoo-juice?”

Professor Dodo Zodono, medium, magician, hypnotist, stood on a box in front of the Tickfall drug-store, adjusted the joints of his flute, and placed it to his lips. The sweet, piercing notes quickly drew a crowd around him.

The professor was tall and thin, with long black hair, big black eyes, a long mustache, and long, snaky fingers. His black clothes appeared to hang upon his emaciated form like draperies, a circumstance which helped him greatly in his sleight-of-hand tricks.

Two assistants stood on the ground beside the box. Both were tall and very thin, with lank, damp hair and listless, humid eyes, and tallow-colored skin always moist with nervous sweat—you have seen many like them lying in hypnotic sleep in some show window, or have peered down a wooden chute to see them slumbering in a coffin six feet under the ground.

When the music ended Professor Zodono handed his flute to one of his assistants and began his spiel:

“Fellow citizens, I have called you together to give you a little demonstration of my powers.

“We are surrounded by mystery. There is a vast realm of the unknown which science has not explored. I shall demonstrate to you to-night that we have not yet even reached the edge of the great ocean of discovery—price of admission, fifteen and twenty-five cents!

“I shall show you wonders which cannot be accounted for. You will hear sounds which defy the laws of acoustics. You will behold appearances which fly in the face of investigation, and effects which do not appear to have a sufficient cause—all for the insignificant price of fifteen and twenty-five cents!

“I shall now give you a free demonstration of hypnotism. This is no new thing, and I do not charge you a cent to see an old and familiar stunt. It is nothing but a nervous sleep induced by the active mind of the operator upon the subjective consciousness of the hypnotic. This power has been known to the world for eighteen hundred years. Under this influence, the operator can make his subject dance, sing, speak, or perform any stunt he pleases. In New York, Dr. Meseran hypnotized Sandow, the modern Samson, and that giant who could lift three hundred pounds above his head with one hand could not even lift his hand to his head to scratch his ear——”

At this point there was a slight commotion in the closely packed crowd in front of Zodono. A giant darky gorgeously dressed was pressing himself to the front. It was Conko Mukes.

His manner and speech, as he pushed aside both whites and blacks, were the very apotheosis of deference and courtesy:

“’Scuse me, boss! Beg parding, kunnel! Fer Gawd’s sake, don’t lemme disturb you-alls! Gotter git to de drug-sto’ prompt, cap’n. Please, suh, let a po’ mis’ble nigger git by fer de white folks’ med’cine. Thank ’e, suh, de Lawd is shore gwine bless you fer dis nigger’s sake.”

By the time Conko Mukes was within four feet of the box on which Zodono stood, the professor had resumed his speech and the crowd had forgotten the interruption. Mukes stopped where he was and listened.

“Every positive character in the world has this power of hypnotism over every negative character,” the professor proclaimed. “It is the simple power of mind over mind by suggestion—all of which I shall prove to you to-night at the opera-house for a few nickels admission—price, fifteen and twenty-five cents!”

At this point one of the professor’s assistants walked toward the box, his feet dragging and moving as if some one had him by the shoulders, leading him forward. His thin arms dangled at his sides, and his bony fingers twitched and writhed like the tail of a snake.

He climbed upon the box with awkward movements as if the joints of his shoulders and hips were stiff and the hinges rusty, and they hurt him.

He walked slowly, reluctantly toward Zodono, and the professor threw up his hand, snapped his fingers, and cried “Stop!”

The assistant flinched, dodged like a dog, and the crowd snickered.

“My Gawd!” Conko Mukes mumbled in a low tone. “Look at dat!”

For a moment the professor glared in the eyes of his assistant; then his hands began making slow, stroking motions downward before the subject’s face. Red spots came and went in the bleached cheeks of the hypnotic; his breath was short and quick; his nostrils and lips were pinched.

The crowd looked on breathlessly as the hand of the professor, fingers outstretched, clawed the air before that weak, chalky face, with its twitching lips and feeble, trembling chin.

“Ah!” the professor exclaimed theatrically, grinning his triumph in the face of the crowd.

“Ah!” the crowd echoed with an expulsive sound of breath released after a moment of breathless attention.

The man stood before them, asleep on his feet, his body waving slowly like a feather suspended from a thread and gently wafted by a slight breeze.

The druggist and his two clerks came out, picked up the hypnotic, who was as stiff as a board; carried him into the drug-store, and laid him flat on his back in the show window.

Then the druggist unfolded a sheet, covered the body, tucked the covering close around the sleeper’s chalky face, and stepped across the store to the soda-fountain with an eye alert and a hand ready for trade.

“Remember, gents!” Professor Zodono exclaimed. “An educational and instructive show for men, women, and children—opera-house to-night at eight o’clock sharp—fifteen and twenty-five cents!”

Then, followed by his other assistant, the professor walked slowly up the street to the opera-house to dress the stage for his evening’s performance.

They were followed at a respectful distance by Conko Mukes.

The moment the two men had passed out of sight through the stage entrance in the alley by the Gaitskill store, Conko Mukes knocked on the door.

“Open up, Bill!” Zodono commanded. “I guess that is the nigger washwoman come after those curtains.”

When Conko Mukes entered, Zodono came forward.

“Have you come after the washing?” he asked.

Conko Mukes took off his hat, and his immense mouth with its mashed and shapeless lips spread wide in an ugly grin.

“Don’t you know me, Mister Jimmy?” Conko asked.

“My Lord!” Zodono exclaimed after a moment’s inspection. “You damn’ ole coon! What you doing in this place, Conko?”

“I had to take a good riddunce of Georgia, Mr. Jimmy,” Conko growled, grinning like a bear. “De gram jury lawed me all de time an’ dat place got too hot. How is all de white folks an’ de niggers in Tupelo?”

“Fine—when I saw them last,” Zodono grinned. “The grand jury lawed me, too, and I left.”

“Is dat how come you change yo’ name?” Conko asked in polite tones.

“Oh, no; it wasn’t as bad as that,” Zodono laughed. “But I could never make any money in my business with my real name. A spiritualistic medium, fortune-teller, magician, and hypnotist named Jim Skaggs—that would never do. What are you doing here?”

“I’se prize-fightin’, Mr. Jimmy. I been fightin’ up’n down de Mississippi River, an’ I come here to git a fight dis atternoon wid a nigger named Hitch Diamond.”

“How did you like my show out in front?” Zodono asked.

“It wus fine, Mr. Jimmy!” Conko exclaimed in enthusiastic tones. “Dat’s how come I wants to see you. I would like to ’terrogate you ’bout dat show.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Whut I axes you is dis,” Conko began; “you s’pose a nigger could learn how to hypnertize like you?”

Zodono looked at Bill, his assistant, and winked. Then he answered:

“Certainly, Conko.”

“How is it did, boss?” the negro asked eagerly.

Zodono looked at the negro for a moment then grinned. He looked at Bill and Bill grinned back. Here was a chance to have some fun.

“You’re getting ready to pull some hypnotic stunt in that prize-fight this afternoon, ain’t you Conko?” the professor asked.

“Yes, suh,” Conko chuckled like a rumbling train. “I figger ef I could put dat fightin’ coon to sleep like you done dat white boy in front of de drug-sto’, dat I could knock him out widout wastin’ so much wind an’ elbow-grease.”

“Well,” Professor Zodono began, “first you walk straight up to the subject and look into his eyes.”

“Which eye does you look at his eyes wid?” Conko asked.

“Both eyes—your own eyes!” Zodono explained.

“Yes, suh.”

“Then you make a stroking motion in front of his face with the fingers of your hand extended like you were combing wool——”

“Yes, suh; you paws at him.”

“Then you bring your dominant will to bear upon the subject’s subconscious mind, willing him to sleep—to stand upright and sleep——”

“Dat sounds easy,” Conko grinned.

“Do you think you could do that?” Zodono inquired.

“Suttinly. Dat is—mebbe so. I’d shore like to try it one time befo’ I hypnertized dat fightin’ coon——”

“All right. I’ll let you try it on a white man. If you can hypnotize a white man, you can certainly come it over on a nigger. We’ll try it on Bill.”

Zodono turned and glanced at his assistant. That glance was like the stroke of a whip-lash, and Bill quailed and flinched, the grin faded from his face, and the flush changed to a deadly pallor.

“Now, Conko,” Zodono commanded. “Walk right up to Bill. Look straight into his eyes.”

Bill stood like a rag doll, or anything else you can think of which is spineless and helpless and non-resistant.

Conko walked up and glared into Bill’s listless, humid eyes like a monstrous, bloodthirsty gorilla eying a wax dummy. Bill did not see the negro, for unknown to Conko, the tall form of Zodono stood just behind him, and the professor’s eyes held the hypnotic as a snake charms a bird.

“Now,” Zodono commanded in sharp tones to the darky, “make a stroking motion before his face—slow—slow—slow. Now bring your will to bear upon his subconscious mind—that’s it. Sleep—sleep—sleep—ah!”

With a horrified expression upon his face, Conko stood staring at the face of the man before him. The hypnotic slowly teetered forward and backward, threatening with each swaying movement to lose his balance and tumble over.

“Catch him!” Zodono commanded sharply.

Conko sprang forward and eased the falling man to the floor.

“My Gawd!” a strange negro voice exclaimed. “Did anybody ever see de beat of dat?”

Professor Zodono wheeled and stared at the frightened face of a large, full-bosomed, golden-brown girl, whose long, straight, black hair clung around her face, by contrast making her octoroon complexion almost white. Her bold, black eyes were big with wonder and awe, and the hands clasped over her bosom were trembling.

“What do you want?” Zodono snapped.

“I come fer de washin’,” the girl stammered; “but I wants to git outen here real prompt.”

“Don’t be afraid,” the professor said, as he walked over to a table where a pile of soiled curtains were stacked. “That man is not dead; just sleeping.”

The girl backed around behind Zodono and peeped at Conko.

“Kin dat nigger wake dat white man up?” she asked.

“Yes,” Zodono answered. Then he called to Mukes: “Wake him up, Conko!”

Conko leaned over, shook Bill by the shoulder, and bellowed:

“Git up, Mr. Bill! De bossman say fer you to git up!”

But Bill slept on. Zodono laughed.

“Bring your dominant mind to bear upon his subjective consciousness, Conko,” he grinned.

Conko grabbed Bill on each side of his face, glared into his eyes, and howled:

“Hey, Bill; git up! Don’t you hear me tellin’ you? Wake up!”

While this was going on, Zodono asked the girl:

“What is your name?”

“Dey calls me Goldie,” she answered, staring at Conko Mukes.

“All right, Goldie. Be sure to bring the curtains back to-morrow.”

But Goldie was not listening. She was watching Conko struggling with the inert form of Bill.

Finally Conko stood up and strode toward the exit, his ugly black face frightened and uneasy.

“What’s the matter, Conko?” Zodono called. “Going?”

“Yes, suh. I’s gwine, Mr. Jimmy,” Conko answered nervously. “I—I—done got dat white man hypped, an’ I—I—cain’t unhyp him!”

Without waiting for a reply, Conko passed out of the theater, trotted down the crooked alley, and hastened to the Hen-Scratch saloon.

“Skeeter!” he boomed. “If you got any money to bet, you bet it on me! I’s gwine to pull a stunt on dat Hitch Diamond dis atternoon whut’ll make all de coons in Tickfall think I done borrered de debbil’s own knockout draps!”

A short distance from Tickfall where the Dorfoche Bayou widened into a small lake, and where pine-trees grew thick and shady upon a sandy plain was the negro baseball park and picnic grounds.

Hundreds of negroes had assembled here to witness the prize-fight between Hitch Diamond, the Tickfall Tiger, and Conko Mukes, the Georgia Cyclone. The women were as numerous as the men, and all were betting wildly on the result.

Skeeter Butts, backing Conko Mukes, was in a blue funk.

He had bet forty dollars, and called that the limit until Conko informed him that he possessed a hoodoo-stunt which would decide the contest in his own favor; then Skeeter had hazarded sixty dollars more. He found takers so readily that he had lost all courage and enthusiasm for his pugilist. He considered his money as good as gone.

A rude, squared ring had been roped off on the edge of the little lake by the simple process of stretching the rope from one sapling to another as a woman fixes a clothes-line. The ground, rising from the edge of the water presented a natural amphitheater for the accommodation of the spectators.

Many a prize-fight had occurred at this spot, in most of which the whites had taken a prominent part, being interested spectators and extravagant gamblers. But to-day no white people were on the ground.

When Hitch Diamond emerged from the plum-thicket which had served for a dressing-room, his seconds behind him, and stalked through the crowd to the ring, a wild burst of greeting and applause went up from his waiting fellow townsmen, all of whom, except Skeeter Butts and Figger Bush, had backed him to the limit at any odds.

Hitch bowed right and left, waved his giant arms at the people on the edge of the crowd, and listened with hungry ears to their pleas:

“We’re bettin’ on you, Hitch; don’t make us lose our money!”

“Knock him out, Hitchey! Den us’ll all be rich!”

Hitch ducked through the ropes and walked to his corner, where he sat down upon a folding stool.

Vinegar Atts, the referee, came over and shook Hitch by the hand. Atts was a broken-down pugilist whom the Lord had called to preach after his last K. O., and he and Hitch were great friends.

“How you feelin’, Hitchey?” Vinegar wanted to know.

“Feel as sweet as a fly in a vat of merlasses,” Hitch grinned.

“Don’t let yo’ knock-out punch git sour,” Vinegar grinned. “I got all my loose change on you.”

There was another roar of applause, and Conko Mukes emerged from his plum-thicket and came through the crowd, his knotty, shaved head shining in the sun like a block of ivory. His scarred and villainous face, with its mashed lips and broken nose and iron jaw, glowed with excitement and enthusiasm.

The mob applauded without partizanship as he climbed through the ropes and sat down in his corner.

Each pugilist eyed the other curiously, but neither could see much, for both were swathed in horse-blankets.

Prince Total and a scar-faced negro named Possum, Hitch Diamond’s seconds, slipped on Hitch’s gloves and laced them tight, while Skeeter Butts and Figger Bush performed the same office for Conko Mukes.

Then the seconds removed the heavy woolen horse-blankets, and the two fighters stood forth in their ring costumes, visible in all their fighting strength for the first time to the crowd—both men deep-chested, heavy-thewed, with muscles which moved like live snakes under their black-satin skins, their bodies acrawl with life and brutal power.

The two men advanced and touched gloves.

Then something happened which would make old John L. Sullivan laugh till he dislocated his iron jaw.

You who follow the fistic combats of Jess Willard and other white hopes and hopelessnesses, know that for months before the combatants meet in the ring their press-agents are busy informing the public what each pugilist says he expects to do to his opponent.

In the negro prize-fights in the South, the pugilist, lacking the press-agent, demands the right to make a speech before each round of the fight, in which he tells his friends and backers what he expects to do to his opponent in the next round.

Can you beat that?

So, in accordance with this custom, after the two fighters had touched gloves, Hitch Diamond went back to his corner and sat down.

Conko Mukes stepped to the middle of the ring and bellowed:

“I’s de great unwhupped Tuskeegee Cyclome. I fights any nigger whut misdoubts my words! I’s de brayin’ jackass of Georgia, an’ no nigger in Tickfall cain’t comb my mane!”

He sprang up, cracked his heels together, waved his gorilla-like arms in the air, and uttered a piercing whoop which echoed like a steam-whistle far down the Dorfoche Bayou.

Thereupon Hitch Diamond sprang to his feet and howled:

“I fights any nigger in the worl’ fer two bits, fer a chaw terbaccer, fer a watermillyum rind, fer de tail of a tadpole!”

He jumped three feet in the air, cracked his heels together like two clapboards, and shrieked:

“I’s de Tickfall Tiger, an’ I kin curry dat Georgia jackass fo’ inches under his hide!”

Then the seconds clattered out of the ring with their folding stools, and the two men advanced and took their fighting attitudes.

Pap Curtain picked up a baseball bat and struck a large wagon-tire suspended from a tree on the edge of the bayou. This was the gong.

Drawn by E. W. Kemble

“I’se de braying jack-ass of Georgia, an’ no nigger in Tickfall cain’t comb my mane.”

“Time!” the referee shouted.

“Go fer his stomick, Conko!” Skeeter Butts squealed. “Hit an’ duck! It’s de best thing you kin do!”

Conko hit and ducked; and Hitch Diamond was jarred to the very marrow of his bones. A cold fury took the place of Hitch’s smile.

“Go atter him! Foller him up!” Skeeter squealed.

Conko shot a right hook at Hitch, who neatly side-stepped; then Hitch swung a terrible lefthand blow at the giant figure before him.

“Right cross—lef’ hook, Hitch—dat’ll fix him!” Prince Total barked.

Conko ducked and saved his jaw, but the blow landed on the side of his head. It was too high up to be vitally effective, but powerful enough to bring a black veil of unconsciousness across Conko’s mind. All faces vanished for a second; even Hitch Diamond disappeared; then when Hitch reappeared, Conko pecked savagely at his stomach.

Hitch panted like a winded dog; they clinched, and Hitch, with his gorilla reach, pounded his enemy over the kidneys.

“Hey, dar! Break ’em! No fair hittin’ in clinches!” the crowd of Conko backers yelled.

Vinegar Atts grinned, yanked the pair out of the clinch, and a wolflike howl rose from the crowd. Hitch Diamond had landed a mighty blow in Conko’s stomach, and the Georgia Cyclone had fallen to his knees!

Vinegar Atts began to count:

“Fo’—five—six—seben—eight——”

“Git up, Conko!” Skeeter Butts screamed in agony. “Fer Gawd’s sake——”

“Nine——”

Conko’s leap upward at this word carried him within striking distance of Hitch Diamond, and the crowd yelled wildly at a whirlwind rush which sent Hitch slipping and leaping like a flying shuttle to guard himself from the wild insurgence of that furious onslaught.

The end of the round found both combatants laughing.

Skeeter Butts, for his part, was alternately sweating cold and hot, and as nervous as a cat amid a pack of pop-crackers.

The two men sat down in their corners, lying back with outstretched legs, resting their arms outstretched upon the ropes, gulping in the air fanned at them from the towels of the seconds. Their eyes were closed, and the roar of the crowd was a mighty thunder in their ears.

The gong struck, and Conko Mukes stepped to the middle of the ring.

“I done got dis here Hitch Diamond’s number!” he bawled. “Hitch ain’t nothin’ but a big gob of meat, an’ I’s gwine fry him in his own grease! Ef you got any money to bet, bet it all on me. I’s de wild ole ram of de Georgia swamp, an’ no nigger cain’t pick de cockle-burs outen my wool!”

He bent his huge body, ducked his head in excellent imitation of a sheep, and bleated loud enough to be heard a mile.

Hitch Diamond sprang to his feet and whooped:

“I’s de swamp wildcat whut kin claw de cockle-burs outen dat ole buck’s wool!”

He screamed in perfect imitation of a Louisiana panther and met Conko Mukes in the middle of the ring.

Then Hitch Diamond presented a wonderful exhibition of skill and quickness, going in and out again, landing a blow to the eyes, to the jaw, to the ribs, ducking a counter, dancing lightly away, dancing lightly in, with quick, deft, dangerous blows, rushing things, and waiting for an opening left by that slow-moving man before him.

That opening came, and Hitch’s right arm flashed into it, a right hook with all the weight of his pouncing body behind it. Conko Mukes fell like the rotten trunk of a tree falls in the forest. The crowd sighed like a great furnace, and a ripple of awestricken applause began close to the ringside and rolled like a wave to the edge of the amphitheater.

As Conko took the count, a golden-brown girl with large, bold, black eyes and long, straight, coal-black hair which made her octoroon complexion appear almost white, walked up close to the ring. The hands clasped over her full bosom were trembling, and her eyes glowed like coals of fire.

It was Goldie, Hitch Diamond’s wife.

“Look out, Hitchey!” she exclaimed. “Don’t let dat Conko Mukes git too close to you! Knock him out in dis round! I knows somepin ’bout him dat you don’t know!”

“He don’t look so awful dangersome now, Goldie,” Hitch replied, grinning at his wife, as she stood by the ropes.

Conko Mukes had rolled over and knelt on one knee, listening as Vinegar Atts stood over him counting in a loud voice. At the ninth he arose.

Springing across the ring with lightning quickness, Conko landed a blow on Hitch’s jaw just as he turned away from his wife; with a grunt, Hitch fell flat to the ground within reach of Goldie’s hand. But the blow had been too hastily delivered and missed the point of the jaw by an inch. In an instant Hitch was up and fighting like a panther.

The rest of the round was a nigger whirlwind finish. The darkies grappled like clumsy grizzlies, punching, biting, wrestling, growling ferociously. Around and around, they butted and pushed, bellowing and braying, striking any sort of blows, landing them everywhere they could, while the crowd cheered each man as he gained a slight advantage without partizanship.

When the men retired to their corners the crowd went mad, and the voices were yelling: “Go it, Hitch!” “Knock his block off, Conko!” “Kill him dead, Hitch!” “You’ll git him in de nex’ round, Conko!”

As for Skeeter Butts, he could have qualified for the lunatic asylum.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, Conko,” he chattered, “ef you got any hoodoo stunts to wuck on Hitch, you better wuck ’em. Dat nigger’s done had you down two times——”

“Aw, shut up!” Conko rumbled as he breathed in the air from Skeeter’s flapping towel. “I’s gwine pull dat stuff in de nex’ round. I’s savin’ it fer de third, because de third time is de charm.”

“De Lawd’ll shorely bless you fer sayin’ that, Conko,” Skeeter panted, with tears in his eyes. “My Gawd, ef us don’t win, I’ll sho’ wish I’d been borned a corn-field mule!”

The gong sounded for the third round.

Conko Mukes stepped in the middle of the ring and howled:

“In dis here nex’ roun’ I’s gwine win out. I’s gwine hypnertize dis here Hitch Diamond an’ put him to sleep. I’ll take one look at his ugly mug wid my right eye, an’ he’ll stan’ up in dis ring like a dead man on his foots——”

“My Gawd, Hitchey!” Goldie screamed as she pressed through the crowd and grabbed the ropes by Hitch. “Look out fer dat nigger! He’ll git you hypped, an’ he cain’t unhyp you!” Then she turned and ran toward Tickfall like a yellow streak.

“Dat’s right, sister!” Conko Mukes bellowed as he watched her departure. “You don’t ’pear to be anxious to stay an’ see it done, but dat’s yo’ Uncle Conko’s little game! Dis here Hitch Diamond is gwine to sleep, an’ I don’t keer ef he never wakes up!”

As Conko sat down Hitch arose and smiled at the crowd.

“I never goes to sleep till I wins!” he bawled. “Conko is done made a miscue ’bout who is gwine take a nap. I’s de real old fat mammy whut’ll sing li’l’ baby Conko to sleep!”

Thereupon Conko Mukes performed a stunt which had never before been witnessed in a pugilistic ring, and which Conko in his subsequent career never attempted to duplicate.

He sprang toward Hitch Diamond, sparred for a moment, clinched, and shrieked like a calliope:

“Sleep! Sleep! Sleep, Hitch Diamond—go to sleep!”

This wonderful performance scared Hitch Diamond nearly out of his wits.

He broke from the clinch, smashed Conko against the ropes, and then began hooking and driving all sorts of blows against him, tearing himself out of Conko’s frenzied clinches, punching him, shoving him against the ropes again and again until the cypress saplings to which the ropes were attached bowed beneath the storm and weight of human contestants.

Through it all, like some mighty chant, the stentorian voice of Conko rumbled the dreadful malediction:

“Sleep! Sleep! Go to sleep, Hitch Diamond—sleep!”

But Hitch never rested a moment, and Conko, looking for an opening to get in his hypnotic eyework, let Hitch chase him all around the ring a dozen times.

There were three minutes of this screaming farce, and when it ended, Hitch Diamond was reeling and staggering from his wild chase around the ring, and his legs were cramping under him and felt like lead.

Without knowing it, Hitch had spun around like a top for three minutes, and a natural dizziness was upon him, and before his bewildered eyes the crowd of faces sagged and swayed, disappeared and reappeared.

Again and again he had struck at Conko and missed. When the round had ended, Hitch found himself swinging on to Mukes with all his weight to keep from falling to the floor, while Conko’s bellowing was like the distant thunder of the surf in his ear, sounding afar off:

“Sleep! Sleep! Sleep, Hitch Diamond, go to sleep!”

When Conko Mukes walked to his corner he was jubilant. He faced the crowd of wondering coons, placed his gloved hands to the side of his face, and crowed like a rooster.

“I got him goin’, niggers!” he squalled. “He’s wabbly on his foots! One mo’ roundance, an’ dat big fat stiff will go to sleep an’ never wake up no mo’!”

He sank down upon his camp-stool, and his heaving chest and abdomen sucked in the air in great, hungry gulps.

Skeeter Butts worked like an engine, cackling his delight at his hero’s wonderful pugilistic ruse.

“You got him skeart, Conko,” Skeeter squawked in a voice hoarse with excitement. “One mo’ roun’ wid dat hypnertize-eye, an’ dat’ll be his finish. Don’t let him bat yo’ hoodoo-eyes out!”

At the beginning of the fourth round Conko Mukes proceeded to steal some of Professor Dodo Zodono’s thunder.

“Feller cit’zens,” he howled, “I’s gwine gib you a little demerstration of my powers.

“In dis nex’ roun’, you’ll see wonders whut no man cain’t account fer! You-all will hear noises whut defy all de laws of soundance! You gwine behold appearances whut fly in de face of scrutination! Us is gwine demerstrate effecks whut ain’t got no resomble cause—all free-fer-nothin’!”

He sat down with a happy grin on his horrible face, and Hitch Diamond stood up to proclaim:

“I ain’t never fit in de ring wid no lunatic befo’. I ain’t gwine waste no time gittin’ done wid dis fight, neither. While Conko Mukes is pullin’ all dem stunts he’s braggin’ ’bout, I’s gwine knock de stuffin’ outen his black hide!”

The two men advanced to the center of the ring, circled slowly around while Conko began his monotonous, bellowing chant:

“Sleep! Sleep! Sleep, Hitch Diamond—sleep!”

Still keeping well out of reach of Hitch’s punch, Conko waved his right hand slowly in front of his opponent’s face, as if he were stroking invisible fur with his glove. Hitch followed him slowly, waiting for a chance to land a knock-out blow.

Then upon Hitch Diamond’s slow mind there slowly dawned the meaning of all this.

He had witnessed the hypnotic exhibition before the drug-store earlier in the day, and recognized portions of the speech which Conko had recited, and noticed a similarity between Conko’s gestures and the actions of Professor Dodo Zodono.

Then Hitch’s dull eyes began to glow with strange interior fires.

With the negro’s knack for imitation, Hitch’s gloved hands dropped, his giant arms dangled at his sides, and he began to move toward Conko Mukes with stiff legs, as if someone had him by the shoulders leading him forward, as if the hinge joints of his hips were rusty, and hurt him when he walked.

The crowd gasped and uttered awe-stricken exclamations.

Slowly Hitch advanced until he was well within reach of Conko Mukes’s protruding jaw.

Then the sleepy lion suddenly thrust out a raging paw—there was the sharp snap of leather against human bone—an electric globe burst in Conko Mukes’s puny brain, and darkness enveloped the great originator of the pugilistic hoodoo-eyes!

“I knows whut I done to dat big stiff!” Hitch grinned as he turned to walk back to his corner.

Then a loud shout arose from the crowd and Hitch whirled and looked behind him.

In spite of that terrific blow, Conko Mukes was on his feet again!

The ropes around the rudely constructed ring had been under such a strain during the fight that when Conko Mukes reeled back against them they broke, and the inert body of the pugilist rolled into the ice-cold waters of Dorfoche Lake!

At the moment, when Conko rose and stood waist-deep in the water of the little lake, he heard a woman’s voice, screaming like a swamp panther:

“Run, niggers, run! De white folks is comin’!”

Conko looked up and beheld a hundred white men following close behind Goldie Diamond, as the girl ran toward them like a yellow streak, proclaiming with a Gabriel-trumpet tone:

“Run, niggers, run! De white folks is comin’!”

For one tense moment the crowd of blacks huddled together like quails bunch before a windstorm. Then, with one voice, a squall of fear split the sky, and the mob whirled like Dervishes and bumped into each other like blind bugs in a tin can.

After that, with one accord, they went into the woods, leaping stumps and logs, tearing their garments to shreds upon the snags and vines, falling and rising again, miring themselves in the muck of the swamp, howling like a wolf-pack, their voices echoing through the forest with terrifying reverberations.

Conko Mukes dived back into the lake, swam across it, and hid in the deep marsh-grass on the other side until after dark.

The next morning, Sheriff John Flournoy met Skeeter Butts and inquired:

“Skeeter, what made you niggers run off yesterday when we came out to see the fight?”

“Dunno, Marse John,” Skeeter grinned. “You know how niggers is. We figgered mebbe you white folks didn’t favor prize-fights.”

“That’s what I don’t understand,” Flournoy replied. “Goldie Diamond came running to town and told us the niggers were having a prize-fight, and when we went out to see it, she raised a whoop and scared all the niggers away.”

“Yes, suh,” Skeeter grinned. “Dat’s whut she done.”

“Why did she do it?” Flournoy persisted.

“Well, suh, I s’pose Goldie thought Hitch wus gwine git knocked out. Anyways, I’s powerful glad it happened, Marse John. Ef dat hadn’t come to pass, Skeeter Butts would be bankbust by dis time in de mawnin’.”

Flournoy turned away by no means satisfied, but confident that there was some nigger secret in the matter which the darkies would never reveal.

Skeeter left him and hastened down to the Hen-Scratch saloon where he found Hitch Diamond and Conko Mukes waiting for him.

The two pugilists and their seconds had spent nearly all night straightening out their finances after the bets had been declared off, and the fight had run off.

Conko Mukes had been drinking heavily and was in a bad humor.

“I got jes’ one thing ag’in’ you, Hitch,” he growled, “an’ dat is dat las’ punch you gib me on de jaw. You acked like you wus hypnertized, an’ I wusn’t lookin’ fer no punch. I don’t think dat wus plum’ fair.”

“Dat shore wus a jolter, Conko,” Hitch grinned. “Lawd, I’ll remember dat after I’m done dead!”

Conko Mukes’s eyes glowed with evil intent as he listened to Hitch’s delighted chuckles. Finally Conko said:

“But I fooled you ’bout dat hypnertize, Hitch. You thought it wus my eyes, an’ I didn’t hyp you wid my eyes.”

“Dat’s a fack,” Hitch chuckled. “Whut did you aim to use on me?”

“I hypnertized you wid my wavin’ hand, like dis—” Conko explained as he rose to his feet to illustrate. His right hand began a slow chopping motion in front of Hitch’s face, and he continued: “You gotter git up real close and wave slow—slow—slow——”

Suddenly Conko’s fist shot out with a blow like a trip-hammer.

The punch would have broken his jaw—only the jaw was not there.

Hitch ducked with lightning quickness and rose to his feet ready for business.

Conko sprang toward the door, but tripped over Hitch’s extended foot, and fell on his head with a jar which shook two bottles off the shelf behind the bar.

Hitch stooped and raised Conko to his feet, backed him to the far end of the saloon away from the door, and shoved him against the wall with such force that a picture of Abraham “Lincum” was dislodged from its nail and fell clattering to the floor.

“Ef you wasn’t drunk, I’d kill you!” Hitch bawled, while Conko stood looking around him like a man in a dream. “As ’tis, I’s only gwine put yo’ hoodoo eyes on de bum!”

The job was quickly, neatly done—two slight taps on each side of Conko’s nose.

“Now git!” Hitch commanded, pointing toward the door.

Conko Mukes did not linger. When the swinging doors of the Hen-Scratch saloon closed behind him, Hitch and Skeeter walked out to the street.

Far down the road a streak of flying dust marked the route Conko had chosen as he left Tickfall forever.

The Art of Enticing Labor.

“What are you doing here, nigger?”

Colonel Tom Gaitskill’s voice cracked like a whip beside the ear of Pap Curtain.

Pap had three baseballs in his hand for which he had paid a nickel, and which he intended to throw at a row of nigger babies about forty feet away. The tall baboon-faced negro, with shifty eyes, furtive manner, and lips that sneered, started like a frightened animal. The balls dropped from his nerveless hands and he turned away.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, Marse Tom,” he chattered, speaking under a visible strain, his eyeballs nearly popping out of his head. “I shore didn’t soupspicion dat you wus snoopin’ aroun’ here nowheres.”

Gaitskill’s face grew red with annoyance. The veins in his neck swelled and his eyes snapped.

“Where are all those other coons?” he demanded. “Did they run off too?”

“Yes, suh; dey said dar wus plenty time to pick dat cotton an’ de trouts wus bitin’ fine down in de bayou, so dey all hauled off and went fishin’. Dey sont me to town fer some mo’ fishin’ lines, an’ I jes’ stopped here a minute to throw at dem rag dolls——”

“I’m going out there and beat some sense into those niggers with a black-snake whip,” Gaitskill told him in a dangerously cool voice. “If you don’t want some of it you’d better stay away, understand? And if you ever put your foot in my cotton-field again I’ll break your dashed neck! Hear me?”

Pap Curtain stepped back and his voice became a pleading whine. He glanced behind him to assure himself that the road was clear for flight, and began:

“Don’t do dat, Marse Tom. You know how niggers is. Eve’y day is restin’ time an’ Sunday fer a nigger; an’ when de trouts is bitin’ a nigger jes’ nachelly cain’t wuck. It’s ag’in nature——”

“Aw, shut up!” Gaitskill snarled in a savage tone. “If a rain should come it would beat every bit of my cotton off the stalks and bury it in the mud, and you know it——”

“I tell you whut I’ll do, boss,” Pap interrupted. “You know I is always done jes’ whut you tole me—because why? You is a powerful good white man, an’ I ain’t nothin’ but a poor igernunt nigger. Yes, suh, dat’s right.

“Now, ef you says de word, I’ll hike back to de Niggerheel an’ tell dem niggers dat deir lives ain’t fitten to last no time onless dey draps dem fish-poles an’ drags dem cotton-sacks down de row like de debbil wus bossin’ de job. Dar’s fawty of ’em, Marse Tom—fawty, wuthless, no-’count, good-fer-nothin’ coons done laid down deir wuck an’ gone fishin’—dat’s whut dey done——”

Pap stopped. Keenly watching the tense lips and the white, angry face of Gaitskill, he saw that no nigger talk would placate the owner of the Niggerheel. He stood shuffling his feet in the dirt for a full minute before Gaitskill spoke.

“Now, Pap, I want you to get this: I have trouble every year to get hands to pick my cotton. The worthless niggers loaf on the banks of the bayou until winter catches them with nothing to eat, nothing to wear, and not a dollar. Then the white folks in Tickfall have to support them.”

“Yes, suh, dat’s a shore, certain fack——”

“Shut up, you crazy buck!” Gaitskill snarled. “When I talk—you listen. You are the worst idler and loafer in this town, and I tell you right now that you had better leave this town. Hear me? Pack up your rags right now and leave Tickfall, and don’t ever come back again. If you do I’ll have you arrested for vagrancy. Hurry now! Get out before night!”

“Oh, Lawdy, Marse Tom, I been livin’ in dis here town fer sixty year—I’s dug all de water-wells fer de livin’ an’ all de graves fer de dead—you an’ me is always got along peaceable ’thout no hard feelin’——”

“Go on off!” Gaitskill commanded in hoarse tones. “Hike!”

Gaitskill turned away, walked rapidly up the street, and stepped into his automobile. There was an explosive sound, a cloud of white smoke hid the rear wheels for a moment, then the big car swept into a side street, going toward the Niggerheel plantation.

“Lawdymussy!” Pap Curtain sighed, as he walked slowly down the street toward his cabin. “De kunnel done gimme my good-riddunce papers an’ axed me good-by!”

Pap sat down on the rickety porch of his cabin and gazed for a long time with unseeing vision straight before him. Half an hour passed, an hour, and still he looked into the thick branches of an umbrella china-tree without seeing it.

No white man can equal the absolute absorption in thought, the intense concentration of attention and interest which a negro displays when he comes face to face with a crisis in his career. And no white man can foretell a negro’s mental conclusions in that hour of stress and need.

Pap did not want to leave Tickfall, yet he knew he had to go. Marse Tom’s word was law just as much so as if the big, red-brick court-house had suddenly formed a mouth and had spoken.

Pap rose from his chair, gave his shoulders a vigorous shake, lit a vile-smelling corn-cob pipe, changed the location of his chair from the porch to the shade of the chinaberry tree, and began to talk aloud to himself:

“Dat white man shore knifed me right under de fifteenth rib! Treated me jes’ like I wus a houn’-dawg—‘git outen dis town!’ Mebbe it’s all a play-like an’ he didn’t mean nothin’——”

But the more he thought about the manner and the speech of Colonel Gaitskill, the more the facts compelled the conviction that it was his move. Then the thought occurred to him:

“I wonder if dese here town niggers tipped Marse Tom off ’bout me? A whole passel of ’em hates me—I beats ’em gamblin’, an’ I beats ’em tradin’, an’ dey all knows dey ain’t vigorous in deir mind like me——”

Pap pondered for many minutes, his thick lips pouting, his protruding eyes half closed, great drops of sweat rolling down his face. His pipe went out, the bowl became loosened and fell from the stem, but he took no notice.

“Mebbe dem niggers is wucked a buzzo on me, an’ mebbe dey ain’t,” he declared at last. “I cain’t seem to make up my remembrance ’bout dat. But I done decided on one fack: ef ole Pap Curtain is gotter leave dis town, he’s gwine gib dese here nigger bad-wishers of his’n a whole lot to remember him by!”

He rose and walked down the street to the Hen-Scratch saloon.

In the rear of the building he found Figger Bush. Walking up to him with an air of great secrecy and importance, Pap inquired:

“Figger, is you de proud persesser of a silber dollar?”

“Sho’ is!” Figger grinned. “I gwine keep on persessin’ it, too!”

“I sells tips!” Pap announced, taking a chair beside Figger. “One dollar per tip per each!”

“It muss be wuth somepin’ ef it comes dat high!” Figger exclaimed with popping eyeballs.

“Yes, suh; Marse Tom Gaitskill gimme de word dis mawnin’, an’ tole me I could pass it on to a choosen few—ef dey had a dollar!”

Figger Bush puffed nervously at his cigarette and waited anxiously. Colonel Tom Gaitskill’s name was one to conjure with, and Figger knew that Curtain had been working on the Niggerheel plantation.

“Whut’s de tip about, Pap?” Figger asked eagerly, fumbling with the lonesome silver dollar in his pocket.

“Dat would be tellin’,” Pap grinned, as he leaned back and watched a tiny tree-spider floating in the breeze on the end of its web.

Figger puffed unconsciously on his cigarette until it burned down to his lips and scorched them; he snatched it out of his mouth and blistered his fingers; he slapped his foot upon it as it lay on the ground, then sprang up with an exclamation and nursed a bare spot on the side of his sockless foot where the stub had burned him through a hole in his shoe.

“Good gosh, set down!” Pap Curtain howled as he watched Figger’s gyrations. “You gib me de fidgets cuttin’ up dat way!”

Figger sank back in his seat, and Pap again directed his attention to the operations of the little spider, and waited.

“Cain’t you gimme no hint about de tip, Pap?” Figger asked at last. “I wants to git in on somepin good, but I cain’t affode to waste no money.”

“Cross yo’ heart an’ body dat you won’t tell nobody an’ gimme de dollar. Den, when I tells you de secret, ef it ’tain’t wuth a dollar, I’ll hand you de loose change back.”

“Dat sounds resomble,” Figger declared, and the silver dollar changed hands.

“Now, Figger, you listen,” Pap began in a mysterious tone. “Don’t you tell nobody, fer Marse Tom swore me dat he didn’t want nobody to know but a choosen few. Marse Tom is gwine gib a great, big, cotton-pickin’ festerble out at de Niggerheel. He pays de best wages, an’ he wants de bes’ pickers in de parish. De tickets is one dollar, whut I collecks when I gibs de tip. All de niggers is to meet Marse Tom at de bank dis atternoon at three o’clock.”

“Huh!” Figger grunted. “Dat shore sounds good to me. Plenty grub, plenty wages, a barrel of cider at de eend of de cotton-row, an’ all de coons on a cotton-pickin’ picnic! Keep de dollar, Pap. Me an’ Marse Tom is done made a trade.”

Enthusiastic over the idea, Figger sprang to his feet and started away.

“You kin succulate de repote dat somepin’s doin’, Figger,” Pap grinned. “But don’t you gib dat tip away. Marse Tom spoke me special ’bout dat, an’ say he gwine bust de head open of de nigger whut told de secret!”

Pap Curtain stepped into the rear of the Hen-Scratch saloon, invested a part of Figger’s dollar in a long, strong Perique stogy, and came out again. He sat for half an hour humming to himself, chewing the end of the stogy, smoking slowly, leisurely, and with profound meditation.

He was giving Figger time to circulate the report. He knew that the grape-vine telephone was already at work, and that the news of a big profitable deal would trickle and ooze into every negro cabin in all the negro settlements of Tickfall.

Prince Total was the first darky to make his appearance.

“Whar’s yo’ silber dollar, Prince?” Pap exclaimed with a broad grin before Prince had time to state his business. “No busted niggers needn’t apply—tickets is one dollar—Marse Tom’s own price.”

“Whut is dis doin’s?” Prince inquired. “Is Marse Tom gittin’ up a nigger excussion?”

“Dat’s de very game!” Pap snickered. “One dollar per each ticket. Marse Tom leaves me to pick de winners. Plenty brass-band music, plenty ice-water on de way; dancin’ on de deck eve’y night—all de real good arrangements whut niggers likes. You-all knows how Marse Tom fixes things up. Cross yo’ heart an’ body dat you won’t tell an’ gimme one round silber dollar fer de tip!”

Prince crossed Pap’s palm with silver and listened to his instructions:

“Go see Marse Tom at de bank at three o’clock dis atternoon!”

“Excussion!” Prince panted. “My, dat’s a shore ’nough word to ketch a nigger by de year. Gib ’em somewhar to trabbel an’ a crowd to go wid—Lawd, dat’s real good luck! I’s gwine out an’ succulate dem repote!”

By high noon Pap Curtain’s pockets were weighted with silver and he had revealed the magical tip to over one hundred negroes.

“Dis here is suttinly a good joke,” he snickered; “but ef I keeps it up too long I’s skeart I’ll laugh myself to death. I got a hunch dat I better mosey along todes de depot. Marse Tom done advise me to leave dis town.”

When the slow accommodation train pulled into the depot, Pap Curtain boarded it from the side farthest from the station, took an obscure seat in the negro coach, and did his best to attract no attention as the train conveyed him away from Tickfall.

Only one negro saw him go.

At three o’clock one of the clerks closed the big glass doors of the Tickfall National Bank and went back to his desk.

Ten minutes later there was a loud knock upon the glass door, and the clerk looked up. What he saw caused him to spring from his stool, overturning it with a loud clatter upon the marble floor, and go running down the corridor to the president’s office.

“Come out here quick, Colonel!” the clerk exclaimed, his hair standing on end and cold sweat dampening his forehead. “God only knows what has got into the heads of our negro depositors! Every nigger buck in Tickfall is lined up in front of the bank, and the leader is knocking on the door, trying to get in!”

Gaitskill jerked open a drawer, slipped a heavy revolver in his side coat pocket, and stepped toward the front.

Figger Bush’s shoe-brush mustache was pressed close to the glass, his hands were cupped around his eyes, and he was peering in to catch the first glimpse of Marse Tom as he came out of his office.

“Here he am, niggers!” he bawled as the colonel fumbled with the fastening of the door.

“Howdy, Marse Tom!” the greeting ran down the line with every variation of tone like a child playing a scale on the piano with one finger.

“Well?” Gaitskill demanded in a loud tone. “What in the name of mud is the matter now?”

“Us is all come to git in on de picnic, Marse Tom,” Figger Bush announced as spokesman. “We all paid our dollar an’ Pap tipped us off to come to de bank at closin’ time!”

“Pap did what?” Gaitskill snapped.

“He sold us a ticket to de excussion, Marse Tom,” Figger informed him. “Yes, suh, we is powerful glad you is gittin’ one up—peanuts an’ ice-water, an’ plenty brass-band music—all us niggers favors it fine!”

“What in the devil are you talking about?” Gaitskill bawled.

“Dunno, Marse Tom,” Prince Total spoke up. “Pap Curtain—he say you would tell us—it’s a plum’ secret.”

“It certainly is!” Gaitskill howled, glaring at the negroes with eyes blood-shot and apoplectic. “It’s a deep, dark, impenetrable secret! Where is that fool, Pap Curtain?”

“He went away on de dinner-time train, Marse Tom,” a voice informed him. “I seed him!”

Gaitskill stood in the door of the bank in absolute ignorance of the whole business, wondering what to do. Finally he went back to Figger Bush’s first statement:

“What did you say about a dollar?” he demanded.

“Us paid a dollar fer de tip, Marse Tom,” Figger replied.

Gaitskill’s eyes ran down the line as he counted the negroes.

“Did all you darkies give Pap Curtain a dollar?” he asked in a loud voice.

“Yes, suh!” one hundred and eighteen voices answered in a mighty chorus.

“Good Lord!” Gaitskill snorted, as he gazed into their simple faces, marveling at their credulity.

Every merchant in town had closed his store to see the fun. Nearly every white male inhabitant of Tickfall was lined up across the street. The crowd grinned its delight, and watched with breathless interest while Gaitskill fumbled with his problem in confusion and perplexity, and an ignorance which the negroes would not enlighten.

Nothing tickles a Southern white man more than to see another white man all snarled up and in a jam of negro inanities. A fly in a barrel of molasses has about as good a chance of getting out of the mess.

“What did Pap Curtain tell you bucks?” Gaitskill bellowed.

There was a mighty clash of voices:

“He specify excussion——”

“Dancin’ on de deck eve’y night——”

“Music an’ free vittles——”

“Festerbul an’ juberlo——”

“Picnic——”

Then a loud voice inquired in a wailing whine:

“Marse Tom, ef us don’t git all dem things Pap promised us, does us git our dollars back?”

Gaitskill did not reply. Instead he took out his watch and studied it carefully.

He was thinking: the old combination freight and passenger train had left Tickfall at noon; it had traveled for three hours and twenty minutes at a speed of fifteen miles an hour. The train was not yet out of Tickfall parish. Then Gaitskill spoke:

“All you niggers listen to me: Go down to the old cotton-shed back of my house and wait until I come. Hurry, now!”

He turned, entered the bank, locked the door behind him, and strode to the telephone.

“Hello, Susie!” he said to the operator. “Gimme the station-agent at Tonieville—quick!”

There was a nervous quiver in his strong voice, and as he waited he drummed with his fingers on the table, tapped the toe of one foot on the floor, then snatched up a paper-weight and began to grind it savagely into the blotter on a desk.

The coons had exasperated him often enough, he thought; but Pap Curtain had gone the limit. He would catch that nigger and wring his fool neck.

“Hey—hello!” he bawled through the speaking-tube. “Is that you, Bill? This is Gaitskill—Say, has No. 2 passed through Tonieville yet? Coming now? All right, listen: tell the constable to board the Jim-Crow coach on that train and haul off a nigger—a yellow nigger with a baboon face and shifty eyes and a mouth which sneers. Yes! his name is Pap Curtain. He’s got a pocketful of money. Sure! Haul him off. Tell the constable to bring him back on No. I! Good-bye!”

Gaitskill hung up the receiver, wiped the sweat from his face, and walked out of the bank, pausing at the door long enough to inform the clerk:

“I’m going down to the cotton-shed, Frank. Got to hold an executive session with those coons!”

Pap Curtain had the negro-coach all to himself. He leaned back and sighed with a vast content.

“Dem coons tried to knife me, but I beat ’em to it!” he snickered, as the train puffed slowly along. “One hundred an’ eighteen dollars is shore good wages fer a day’s wuck.”

He planned his expenditure of the money: first a visit to New Orleans, and a happy time in the negro resorts of that city. After that a job on a steamboat which traveled down the river. After a long time, a return to Tickfall and a renewal of friendships with his negro neighbors.

“Niggers don’t hold spite long,” he grinned. “An’ money don’t bother ’em hardly at all, whedder he makes it or loses it!”

The train stopped at Tonieville and Pap stuck his head far out of the window to see who he would know at the station.

He felt a sharp tap on his shoulder, pulled his head in, and looked behind him.

A tall white man with tobacco-stained whiskers and a deputy-sheriff’s badge pinned to a strap of his suspenders spoke:

“Climb off peaceable, Pap Curtain! Colonel Tom Gaitskill wants you back at Tickfall on the next train!”

“Naw, suh, white folks,” Pap protested earnestly, his intense fright making him stammer. “Marse Tom done run me outen Tickfall dis very mawnin’. He tole me ef I didn’t leave town he would bust my haid open. You done cotch de wrong coon!”

“Git off!” the deputy commanded shortly, waving his stick toward the door.

The train went on and left Pap Curtain at the station in the care of the constable.

“You is shore made a miscue dis time, Mr. Sheriff,” Pap declared. “Marse Tom is always b’lieved in me an’ trusted me—Gawd bless his heart! You cain’t make Marse Tom hear nothin’ bad ’bout me—naw, suh, you couldn’t bawl it inter his year wid one of dese here Gabriel trumpets. I’s a good nigger—a powerful good nigger!”

The grinning constable reached out with the end of his stick and struck it sharply against one of Pap’s bulging pockets. There was a pleasant clink of much silver in response.

“Colonel Gaitskill telephoned that your pockets were full of money,” the constable told him. “I’ll let you pack it until we git back to Tickfall—then you can tell your Marse Tom where you happened to get it all.”

Pap Curtain’s legs suddenly grew weak, and he sank down upon a depot truck and became silent.

He set himself to light a Perique stogy—one of the two which he had bought from Skeeter Butts for five cents—bought with Figger Bush’s money. He broke three or four matches before he got a light, and then repeatedly forgot to draw upon his cigar.

It went out again and again, and he always had trouble in relighting it. His hands trembled more and more with each successive attempt.

“Lawd!” he sighed to himself. “Dey shore got me now!”

The niggers had trusted him, and he had buncoed them all. The place where his foot had slipped was when he told them to go the bank to see Marse Tom.

“White folks always gits nigger bizzness in a jam,” he thought tearfully. “Dem niggers wus suckers, but lawdymussy, I wus shore one big whopper of a fool!”

The sweat stood in chill beads on his face. He knew what the inside of the penitentiary looked like—he had served a brief term in prison. He had tried to make friends with the “nigger-dogs”—bloodhounds—but it could not be done. He had tried to escape; that, also, was a failure.

Drawn by E. W. Kemble.

“Colonel Gaitskill telephoned me that your pockets were full of money.”

“Lawd!” he mourned. “Dey got me dis time!”

The north-bound express whistled for the station. The agent ran out, flagged it, and the deputy helped Pap climb on. Pap had suddenly become an old and feeble man, broken, hopeless, forsaken, shamed, dreading above everything his return trip to Tickfall.

The deputy led him to a seat in the smoking car and offered him a cigar. Pap gazed at him as if he did not understand, then took the cigar and looked at it as if he did not know what it was. All the light had gone out of his eyes, and his face looked like a scarred and wrinkled shell.

Detraining at Tickfall, the deputy waited for Pap to get ahead of him. Pap, noticing his gesture, muttered in a far-away voice, as in a dream:

“Comin’, white folks! I’s right at yo’ hip!”

When Gaitskill, in response to a knock, opened the door of the Tickfall National Bank to admit them, he greeted the deputy in his strong, cordial voice, conducted the two back to his private office, and seated the sheriff and his prisoner in two comfortable chairs.

“You brought him safe back, Sheriff,” Gaitskill smiled cordially, as he seated himself. “Take a cigar. Take two—here! Hold your pocket open!”

He grabbed a handful of the cigars, slipped them carefully into the deputy’s pocket, and sat down again.

Pap Curtain watched them like a trapped wolf, breathing in deep, audible gasps like a man choking.

Gaitskill’s face was genial and humorous, his fine eyes twinkled, and he beamed upon Pap Curtain with a smile as cordial as sunshine.

That smile sent the cold shivers up Pap’s spine, and made the hair bristle and crinkle with terror on the back of his neck. He had had dealings with Marse Tom before, and he knew that Marse Tom had no patience with a crooked, tricky nigger.

“My Gawd!” Pap sighed. “Dat white man is gwine hang me shore!”

Gaitskill pulled out a heavy purse, laid two yellow-backed bills on the table in front of the constable, and said:

“There’s your pay, Bob. Much obliged for bringing my nigger back. I guess you want to run around town a little before you go back.”

Bob grinned his appreciation, pocketed his money, and strode out.

Gaitskill looked at Pap Curtain and broke out in a loud laugh.

Great tears rolled down Pap Curtain’s face and splashed upon the hands folded in his lap, but Gaitskill took no notice.

“Now, Pap,” Gaitskill grinned, “that was a great stunt you pulled off on me. What do you think I ought to do to you for it?”

“Dunno, boss,” the negro quavered, leaning over and resting his teary face upon his hands.

“How many of those niggers did you get?”

“I didn’t git any, Marse Tom,” Pap declared, hoping to build up some sort of defense. “It wus dat fool Figger Bush an’ Prince Total whut succulated de repote!”

There was a wild yell up the street and a rumble of wagon wheels.

Gaitskill sprang up and walked to the front of the bank, where he could look through the window.

Pap Curtain, trembling, horrified, followed Gaitskill because he was afraid to remain alone.

Ten wagons passed the bank, the teams going in a fast trot, each wagon containing ten or twelve squalling blacks, who waved their hands at the bank as far as they could see it.

Pap Curtain ducked behind the door and kept himself invisible—for each wagon contained a load of his victims!

“That’s your work, Pap!” Gaitskill grinned, when the wagons had passed.

“Yes, suh,” Pap answered in a weak, tearful, hopeless voice.

“If I had known about it when I telephoned the constable, I would not have had him bring you back, Pap. I thought you had robbed all those niggers of a dollar each.”

“Yes, suh,” Pap sighed, praying for more light.

Gaitskill took a ten-dollar bill out of his pocket, felt its texture with a banker’s expert fingers, then said in a voice which dripped with the sweetness of appreciation and praise:

“That trick was the real stuff, Pap! How did you ever think it up?”

Every pore of Pap’s body was spouting cold sweat. His eyes burned, his throat choked, his brain reeled, his limbs trembled—he was racked, tortured with fear and anxiety—and yet this white man seemed to be talking kind words.

“Oh, Lawd,” he prayed, “let a leetle sunshine in!”

“It certainly takes a coon to catch a coon!” Gaitskill laughed. “The idea of making a negro pay a dollar for the privilege of working on a cotton plantation when the white folks are begging for hands—think of it, Pap!

“One hundred and eighteen niggers gone off on a cotton-picking picnic to the Niggerheel plantation, paying a dollar each for the privilege of gathering a thousand bales of cotton, and swearing that they will stick to the job because they paid to get it! Say, nigger, you are the greatest coon in Tickfall!”

Pap Curtain straightened up; his shoulders came back with a snap; he drew a breath so deep that it seemed to suck in all the air in the bank.

“I’m certainly much obliged to you, Pap,” Gaitskill said earnestly. “I take back what I said this morning. You’re a good nigger. Here’s ten dollars for your trouble.”

Gaitskill opened the door.

Pap Curtain stepped out, holding the crinkling bill in his hand. He reeled down the street like a drunken man, staggered across the village to Dirty-Six, and sat down on the rickety porch of his cabin.

The Gulf breeze swept across his sweat-drenched face, cooling it like a breath from the land where angels dwell.

Slowly his shattered nerves were composed; slowly his trembling limbs were stilled; slowly his twitching muscles quieted. He felt tired. He breathed deeply, like a man who had emerged from the depths of great water.

Then he filled his mouth with chewing tobacco and grinned.

“Lawd!” he chuckled. “I’s powerful glad it come out de way it done.”

His mind quickly reviewed each incident of this exciting day, and as he watched the sun sink below the horizon, he announced his conclusion:

“When Marse Tom tole me to leave dis town, he jes’ nachelly overspoke hisse’f!”

The Cruise of the Mud Hen.

Unthinking people assert that negroes do not think.

Nevertheless, when Skeeter Butts, by methods peculiarly his own, became the high-proud owner of a good, cheap automobile, he permitted only three friends to ride with him,—Vinegar Atts, Hitch Diamond, and Figger Bush.

Figger was necessary because his superb voice added to the others, completed the most melodious male quartette in Louisiana. Hitch Diamond as a prize-fighter, Vinegar Atts as an ex-pugilist who had been called to preach, each possessed the physical strength of a forty-horse-power mule. Skeeter needed them to lift his automobile out of the mud and to push it through the sand.

Was not that a thoughtful selection of first-aids to the helpless?

Truly, that outfit was a fearful and wonderful thing.

When those four negroes climbed into that car and began to sing to the accompaniment of a mechanism which sounded like a saw-mill, a cotton-gin, and a boiler factory loaded upon a log-train chasing a herd of bleating billy-goats along the public highway, the effect produced made the pious cross themselves, the ungodly “cuss,” and the little children run to their mothers, whimpering with fright.

A white man might think a thousand years and never think up an arrangement like that.

Then to show that his mental incubator was still capable of hatching out little fuzzy, two-legged chicken-headed thoughts, Skeeter bought a steamboat!

“Whar is Hitch Diamond at, Kunnel?” Skeeter asked of a handsome, white-haired gentleman standing in front of the Tickfall post-office.

“He’s up at my house, unloading fireworks from a dray,” Colonel Gaitskill answered.

“Hitch don’t go back to wuck to-day, do he?” Skeeter inquired in a shocked tone.

“Certainly not,” Gaitskill smiled. “This is a national holiday. I imagine Hitch has finished that little job now. Are you folks going off to make a day of it?”

“Yes, suh, us is fixin’ to cel’brate, too!” Skeeter chuckled.

“Do you know why we celebrate the Fourth of July, Skeeter?” Gaitskill asked with a smile.

Skeeter knew. He also knew that “Fighting Tom” Gaitskill stood before him, and this old soldier had not fought with the heroes of ’76. He tempered his answer to a hero of the Lost Cause.

“Shore, Marse Tom!” he chuckled. “Dis is de day dat our white marsters kilt all de dam-yanks!”

Gaitskill laughed.

“Your answer is a credit to your tact and diplomacy, Skeeter, but it certainly upsets the records of history. Where are you going?”

“We’s gwine down to de river.”

“I want you and Hitch Diamond to help me with the fire-works to-night,” Gaitskill said. “You get back by dark.”

“Shore, Marse Tom!” Skeeter cackled. “We ain’t gwine miss no free show. I’ll go git Hitch an’ de rest of de bunch now!”

The seven-mile road to the Mississippi River was smooth and level and was a favorite with Vinegar and Hitch, who preferred riding to climbing out to lift or push. So, one hour later, the automobile quartette stood beside a stump on the banks of that majestic stream and sang of the time “when de water’s so low, de bullfrog roll up his pants jes’ so, and wade acrost from sho’ to sho’; while over in de channel de catfish say: ‘We’s gittin’ plum’ freckle-faced down our way.’”

Six miles up the river at the bend, a little steamboat whistle squalled at them through the still July atmosphere. The quartette promptly sat down and watched the boat’s approach.

The boat was about thirty feet long and about eighteen feet wide, was built with a flat keel which made it float on the top of the water like a cigar box, and was propelled by a paddle wheel in the rear about as big as a barrel.

Some river fishermen own such boats, living in them, and peddling their fish to the negroes on the plantations along the river. The vessel could ride the current down-stream and make six miles an hour; going up-stream, it hugged the bank, navigated the slack water, and got there as soon as it could. Three miles an hour up-stream was going some.

As the boat drew near, the quartette noticed that the machinery was protected by a rudely-built roof, and the crew consisted of one man who sat on a three-legged stool, smoked a pipe, shoveled coal, steered, and pulled the whistle-cord, and still had plenty of time to watch the scenery.

“Dat’s de life fer me,” Skeeter Butts exclaimed. “Up ’n’ down de river, fishin’ an’ swimmin’ an’ sleepin’. Ef I owned a steamboat like dat, I’d go right back to Tickfall an’ ax all my friends good-bye.”

“Me, too!” Vinegar Atts rumbled. “Ef I had a boat, I’d trabbel dis river givin’ religium advices to all de niggers on de river plantations. I’d preach eve’y night an’ I wouldn’t fergit to ax some hones’ brudder to pass de hat.”

“Steamboats is got some good p’ints over autermobiles,” Hitch Diamond growled. “You don’t got to lift ’em outen de mud or push ’em up-hill through de sand.”

“Ef I had a boat,” Figger Bush cackled, pulling at his little shoe-brush mustache, “I’d buy me a derby hat an’ a grassaphome, an’ a long-tail prancin’-albert coat, an’—an’—I’d climb up on top of it an’ sing all de songs I knows.”

The whistle squalled again.

“She’s fixin’ to make a landin’!” Skeeter exclaimed.

The boat passed them on the current, then turned and puffed along the bank through the still water opposite to where they were sitting. A black, chunky, bull-necked negro, the whites of whose eyes shone across the water like china door-knobs, hurled a rope toward them.

“Gimme a turn aroun’ dat stump!” he bellowed, as he stopped the machinery.

While the quartet tied the boat the owner stepped into a little canoe and paddled ashore.

“Howdy, brudders!” he bellowed, as he sat down with them. “My name is Pipe Smash.”

“Us is got names, too,” Skeeter Butts proclaimed, as he introduced himself and his friends. “We been watchin’ you’ boat an’ wishin’ dat we had one.”

Smash hesitated just a second before answering. An eager look flashed in his eyes and vanished. Then he said:

“’Tain’t such a awful rotten dawg’s life fer a nigger—livin’ on you’ own boat. I’s jes’ mournin’ in my mind because I’s got to quit it.”

“How come?” Skeeter asked.

“I’s gittin’ married real soon an’ de gal specify dat she don’t want no home whut floats aroun’ permiscus so dat de chickens don’t know whar to come to roost. She wants me to sell out an’ sottle down on dry land.”

“Dat’s a powerful sensible notion,” Skeeter Butts proclaimed, as his appraising eyes searched the steamboat. “Is you foun’ a buyer yit?”

“Naw!” Pipe Smash said disgustedly. “White folks won’t buy no nigger’s boat, an’ niggers ain’t got no money.”

“How financial do a nigger got to be to pick up a good, cheap, han’-me-down boat?” Skeeter asked cautiously.

“Well, suh, I figger it out dis way,” Pipe Smash said, boring the middle finger of his right hand into the palm of his left hand for emphasis. “I bought dat whole boat jes’ as she floats from a white man whut picked a fuss wid de cote-house an’ had to run in a direction whar de river didn’t go. It costed me two hundred dollars ten year ago, an’ is some wore out. One hundred dollars in cash spondulix gits her now.”

Skeeter glanced at the faces of his three friends and each responded with a slight nod. Skeeter made a careful advance.

“Ef I jes’ knowed somepin ’bout how to run a steamboat—” he began.

“Don’t none of you niggers know nothin’ ’bout steam-engines?” Pipe asked, in a peculiar voice.

“Naw!” they said in a chorus.

A peculiar expression passed over Pipe’s face.

Skeeter’s quick eyes caught the look, and he rightly concluded that Pipe was going to take advantage of their ignorance to cheat them.

“’Tain’t no trouble to learn how to run ’em,” Pipe remarked. “All you got to do is to keep fire in de furnace an’ water in de b’iler, an’ hol’ to de steerin’-wheel an’ stay in de river.”

“Dat sounds easy,” Skeeter said, as he rose to his feet. “Less paddle out an’ take a look at dat boat.”

When they were all aboard and the engine was puffing laboriously up the river, Pipe Smash looked at the four grinning negroes with an air of triumph.

He knew his steamboat was sold.

They were traveling about as fast as a lame man could walk, but there was an exhilarating throb to the engine, and a cheerful slap-slap to the paddle-wheel, and the river went past them instead of taking them with it, and by shutting their eyes for five minutes and then opening them they could see that they were actually gaining on the scenery.

And the scenery would set an artist wild: a sky like a soap-bubble, and high in the dome a buzzard sailing like a speck of dust, a river like a broad, flowing ribbon of old gold, and close to the levees on each side the woods, dense, black, moss-hung and funereal, absorbing so little of the sun’s light that the negroes could hear the call of the night-owls and the voice of the whip-poor-will.

Suddenly Skeeter’s high soprano voice ran out across the water, the other voices joined, and the woods echoed back the music:

“When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrers like sea-billers roll—
Whutever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well, wid my soul.”

“Whut is de name of dis boat called, Pipe?” Skeeter asked at the end of their song.

“’Tain’t got no name,” Pipe answered.

“Dat won’t do,” Vinegar Atts bellowed, as he looked with proprietary eye upon the vessel. “Less call her by some high-soundin’ name.”

“Less call her de Skeeter Butts?” the little barkeeper promptly suggested.

“Naw!” the three other men whooped.

Skeeter giggled.

“I figger dar will be three votes agin any yuther nigger’s name in dis bunch,” he said. “Less call her de Hen-Scratch.”

“Naw!” the trio bellowed. “A saloom ain’t no fitten name fer a boat.”

“Less call her de Shoo-fly.”

“Naw!” the bunch howled. “We don’t name no boat after a Mefdis meetin’-house.”

Finally Skeeter said:

“I motions dat we leave it to Pipe Smash to name de boat fer us!”

“Dat’s right! Gib us a good name, Pipe!”

Pipe scratched his woolly head and thought. Then he said:

“Is you niggers made acquaintance wid a coot?”

“Suttinly.”

“Is you ever seed how a coot starts to fly? He leans fur back like he was restin’ on his tail den he takes a runnin’ shoot——”

“Shore! We knows!” the men interrupted.

“Dis boat gits its start by shovin’ wid its tail,” Pipe resumed. “Furthermo’, dis boat, like a coot, is a lan’ an’ water bird. Accawdin’ to dat notion, I votes dat we call dis boat after de nigger word fer a coot——”

“De Mud Hen!” the quartet whooped triumphantly. “De Mud Hen!”

From that moment our four friends were consumed with desire to own the boat which had received such a high-sounding and appropriate name.

Skeeter presided at a lengthy consultation, then came forward to the pilot-wheel and counted one hundred dollars into Pipe Smash’s greedy palm.

“Each of us chips in twenty-five dollars, Pipe,” Skeeter explained.

“Dat’s a fine way to do,” Pipe grinned. “Is you elected who is de head boss leader yit?”

“Naw,” Skeeter said. “We ain’t got dat fur.”

“Ef you ’vide up yo’ jobs an’ decide who is gwine be who, I’ll learn you how to run de boat an’ esplain each man’s job to him,” Pipe proposed. “Atter dat, I’ll step off.”

“I announces myse’f de captain of dis boat!” Skeeter Butts yelled. “Any objections?”

“I’s de commondore,” Hitch Diamond bellowed.

“I’s de skipper,” Figger Bush quacked.

“My job is cut out for me,” Vinegar Atts grinned. “I’s de fust high exalted chaplain.”

“Whut do de chaplain do?” Skeeter Butts wanted to know.

“He sets down an’ sings religium toons ontil somebody dies,” Vinegar informed him. “Den he gibs de dead man religium advices, ties a lump of coal to his foots, an’ draps him in de ribber.”

“Dat’s a easy job!” Figger cackled.

“’Tain’t so,” Vinegar growled. “Plenty accidunts happen on boats—de b’iler busts, de boat snags out de bottom on a stump an’ sinks, de boat ketches on fire an’ burns up, an’ niggers falls overboard an’ gets drowndead.”

“Shut up, Revun!” Skeeter Butts barked. “Dat kind of graveyard talk gibs me trouble in my mind.”

“Prepare to git ready to die!” Vinegar bellowed dramatically. “Dis river is ’bout fawty miles deep!”

“Whut you figger on doin’ as commondore, Hitch?” Skeeter asked.

“I sets in de middle of dis boat to balunce de load,” the giant prize-fighter announced. “I’ll watch you fiddle wid dat little steer-wheel, an’ between times, mebbe I’ll shovel a leetle coal.”

“Whut you gwine do as skipper, Figger?” Butts inquired next.

“I skips all de hard jobs, an’ all de easy wuck dat I kin,” Figger snickered. “I don’t mind standin’ up in front an’ watchin’ fer snags an’ allergaters. I’s gwine hab a fence rail tied under each arm an’ stan’ straddle of a log. Ef dis boat sinks, Figger figgers on floatin’ to land!”

“I’s gwine lay in some fence-rails, too,” Vinegar Atts declared. “I’ll need a whole wood-pile of ’em.”

“It’ll take a whole log-raft to float me,” Hitch Diamond decided. “I’ll fix it togedder as soon as I git back to land.”

“Whut good will a lot of fence-rails do you niggers ef dis old engine busts?” Pipe Smash inquired in a tone of comment. “When a steamboat blows up dar ain’t enough of it left over fer any fool nigger to set on.”

“Dat’s so,” Skeeter Butts replied uneasily, trying to grin with stiffening lips. “Does dey bust up pretty frequent?”

“Naw, suh, dey never busts up but once,” Pipe Smash grinned. “Once is a plum’ plenty fer any kind of boat.”

“I mean does pretty many boats bust up?” Skeeter explained.

“All of ’em—soon or late,” Smash chuckled.

“Mebbe I hadn’t oughter been so spry ’bout buyin’ dis boat,” Skeeter mourned, as he looked down into the muddy water and shuddered.

“I wouldn’t say dat till I learnt how to run de boat,” Smash responded. “Come here an’ take holt of dis wheel.”

Smash had shrewdly waited until the right time to give this invitation. They were now riding down the middle of the river on the current. The boat was still lacking in speed, but it moved as smoothly as a high-powered automobile.

“Huh,” Skeeter chuckled. “Dis here is a snap. I feel like I been runnin’ steamboats all my life. Gimme elbow room accawdin’ to my muscle, niggers, an’ watch Cap’n Skeeter Butts make de Mud Hen flit!”

Hitch Diamond, the commodore, reached for the coal shovel.

“Drap dat shovel, Hitch!” Pipe Smash grinned. “Coal costs a heap money an’ you don’t want to waste it goin’ down-stream. De time to shovel ain’t yit.”

“Dat’s right,” Hitch agreed. “It ’pears to me like we is all got a snap. I shore feels comferble.”

“I got a easy job, too!” Vinegar proclaimed. “’Tain’t no real trouble to set down an’ wait fer a corp’.”

“All you niggers, come here!” Pipe Smash exclaimed. “I wants to press somepin’ powerful heavy on yo’ minds, an’ ef you fergits it offen yo’ minds, I tells you right now dat Revun Atts won’t wait long to git a fust-rate corp’.”

“Whut’s dat?” Skeeter chattered.

“You see dat contraption up on dat engine whut looks like a clock?” Pipe Smash asked.

“Yes, suh!”

“Dat is called de steam-gage. Dat shows how much steam is in de b’ilers. Now dis engine won’t tote but sixty pounds of steam an’ be plum’ safe—you see dat indicator p’ints to sixty now.”

“Dat’s right!” Hitch Diamond corroborated.

“Whut do us do ef we git over sixty?” Skeeter asked tremblingly.