Chapter VI: The Tickfall Tiger Strikes

Hitch sat down upon the lumber-pile and slipped quietly over the edge, preparing to descend.

He hung the seat of his trousers upon a splinter and lunged forward in a sudden panic, tearing the garment almost off his body.

As he climbed quietly down the side of the pile, he hung the leg of his trousers upon a projecting stick and ripped the leg almost up to the waistband. Dropping down upon the sawdust path, he took a step or two and found that his torn pantaloons hindered his progress, and might afford his pursuers a hand-hold for his capture.

Sorrowfully he took the garment off and stood in his giant strength, panoplied in his red underclothes!

“There he goes!” a voice called in the dark.

Clenching his iron fists, Hitch started at full speed. Ten men blocked the entrance before him. He went through them like an express-train, rolling some of them heels over head.

A man ran out of a by-path, and his head collided with Hitch’s fist like a punching-bag. As the negro ran another, another, and another came out of the little pathways, and each one went down like a bag of salt. Thus Hitch arrived at the main passageway.

Then he found every by-path pouring forth its quota of men, every thoroughfare contributed its number, and every man upon the lumber-piles ran toward one spot to illumine the passage with their dark lanterns.

“Lawdymussy!” Hitch sighed. “Ef I don’t mix wid ’em, dey’ll shoot me!”

To the end of their lives, those powerful, husky sawmill men told with awe-stricken voices of the fight of that giant black in the lumber yard. Hitch mixed with them. No man dared to use his pistol for fear of killing a friend. It was a hand-to-hand battle, one negro against forty mill-hands.

With a wild, insane bellow Hitch hurled himself upon that mob of cursing, shrieking, clambering, clutching men, and they set upon him like ravening wolves.

The confusion was terrible, the noise was deafening, the shout and the tumult of the battle echoing back from the mountains of lumber. Hitch alone seemed to have a clear idea of his battle--he knew that every man was against him. The others hindered each other, but Hitch knew that he was free to knock any nose and pound any head and butt any stomach.

The proximity of the lumber on each side of the thoroughfare was an aid to Hitch. When he hurled his mighty body into a crowd of his opponents, and they reeled back from the impact and struck the backs of their heads against the wood, it took them a few minutes to recover from the shock, while Hitch gave his attention to others.

His giant fists pounded heads as though they were egg-shells; his ponderous bare feet landed with mighty kicks in the stomachs and the backs of men; his long, iron arms whirled like the wings of a windmill, mowing them down, every man who was touched falling unconscious or helpless.

Four men clung to him like cockleburs to a sheep’s wool, trying to drag him down by their weight. Hitch scooped them up in his mighty arms and fell with their combined weight against a pile of lumber, crushing them and breaking their holds.

An excited watchman on a lumber-pile above him sought to contribute a share to the battle by dropping upon Hitch’s head a girder or joist such as is used in constructing the framework of houses. The piece of timber fell ten feet from Hitch’s struggling body, and he set his hand upon it with a bellow of joy.

In that moment Hitch became another Goliath, the staff of whose spear was like a weaver’s beam, and whose spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron.

When Hitch began to lay about him with that joist the battle was won. The foolish watchman who had contributed such a mighty weapon to the enemy was so astonished that he fell, clattering, off the lumber-pile and broke his arm.

The men charged him once more, but Hitch waved his big piece of timber from side to side, mowing them down. A pistol-shot from the top of the lumber warned Hitch that it was time to leave.

A loud, disappointed wail sounded from the top of the lumber, where the men were operating the dark lanterns, and instantly began the crack, crack, crack of the pistols, shooting at Hitch as he ran down the corridor.

Men still arriving, coming in from other by-paths and avenues between the lumber, scrambled out of Hitch’s way, fearful of being shot from above.

Hitch found a clear path and took it. In a little while he was out of range of the bullets and out of the glare of the lights. He scrambled over a low fence, and found himself in a side street outside of the lumber yard.

“Hey, men!” a triumphant voice shrieked. “Here he is! We’ve got him! Come on! We’ve caught him!”

Shriek after shriek arose from the middle of the lumber yard, accompanied by the triumphant voices repeating:

“We’ve got him!”

“Dey ain’t got me!” Hitch grinned as he looked over his shoulder at the flashing lights which were converging at another point on top of the lumber. “I’s gwine drap down an’ rest a minute; den I’s gwine take dis red suit of underclothes to Tickfall, an’ git some pants an’ a coat to put on over it.”

He dropped down in a thicket of plum-trees, completely exhausted. While he rested he listened.

“Kill him!”

“Befo’ Gawd, white folks, I ain’t done nothin’, nothin’!”

“Knock him over the head with that jug and make him shut up!”

A loud scream and silence!

“I wonder whut road goes back to Tickfall?” Hitch whispered with fear-stiffened lips. “One dead nigger is more’n a plenty!”

Skirting the edge of the town to be out of the electric lights, Hitch Diamond sought the way to the river. With him every place was either up or down that great stream, and he remembered that Tickfall was up the river.

When he found the levee and stood looking out upon the dark water so great was his confusion that he was unable to tell which way the stream was flowing.

He heard behind him the shouts of the approaching mob, punctuated now and then by the terrible screams of a man being led out of the woods to suffer death. He shuddered and wondered that any man could make as much noise with his throat as did this terrified negro in the hands of the mob.

A moment later there was no question in Hitch’s mind which way the Mississippi River was flowing, for Hitch was swimming noiselessly across the current toward the opposite shore. But the Father of Waters is no quiet mill-pond. The pressure of its mighty current is the push of every drop of water falling between the Rockies and the Alleghanies and the inflow of the rivers between. That current carried Hitch down the stream, in spite of his most powerful efforts to resist it.

Several men ran out on the levee and threw their lantern rays across the water.

Hitch promptly turned on his back and floated, riding the current as motionless as a log. When the light left the water, Hitch struggled on, fighting the dark, muddy stream.

Suddenly the water swept him against one of the immense cypress braces of the revetment levee. He seized it, almost dead with weariness. He realized that he was not twenty feet from the shore he had left, and but a short distance from the mob. But this revetment offered a hiding place, and he grasped it eagerly.

The voices of the mob came to him distinctly across the water.

“Befo’ Gawd, white folks, you-alls ain’t got me right!” the hopeless captive wailed. “I ain’t done nothin’ a-tall! All you white mens knows Dude Blackum--dat’s me! I lives in de cabin jest up ferninst de mill-pond, an’ wucks on a farm fer my livin’!”

“Shut up!”

The crowd which had fought and been defeated by Hitch Diamond was in no mood to listen to the explanations of another negro. A long, wailing cry was Dude Blackum’s answer, and the mob moved on.

Suddenly there was a whoop, a clatter of pistol shots, a howling mob swarming over the levee, a splash of water, and a number of voices:

“Catch him! Head him off there! Kill him!”

A number of flash-lights whipped the water, and one big lantern shot a broad, blinding, dangerous streak. That flare of light caught the round, black head, swimming, struggling in the current, and held it.

“Now, men!” a voice called. “There’s your mark--shoot straight!”

There was a fusillade--Hitch Diamond noted with elation that the black, woolly head bobbed on.

“Fer Gawd’s sake!” Hitch murmured. “Why don’t dat coon dive an’ float?”

Suddenly an authoritative voice cried:

“Stop shooting, men! Get in your skiffs and row out there and catch that negro! It’ll take him half an hour to swim the river!”

“My Lawd!” Hitch Diamond moaned. “Little Hitchie is shore up ag’in it now!”

“Hurry, men!” the same authoritative voice called.

There was the sound of running feet along the levee, then a moment of breathless silence while the flash-lights lashed the water.

Then far out into the stream there was a loud scream, a loud splash, and silence!

“Dar now!” Hitch mourned. “De water cramps got him! He’s dead!”

The lights of the lanterns searched everywhere. No black object floated, nothing at all was seen.

The same clear, authoritative voice spoke again, and a tone of sadness softened it:

“I guess that’s all, men! We may as well go home now!”

“I’s gwine home, too!” Hitch Diamond whimpered piteously.