Chapter VII: Going Home

He climbed down the levee, after battling his way across the river, found a public highway on the other side, and stepped into the middle of the road. Looking about him cautiously, he inflated his lungs with air. After that he dropped his hands to his sides and began a steady and persistent trot, his feet striking the sand with the monotonous regularity of a ticking clock, each stride carrying him away from the scene of his adventure.

Hour after hour, as persistent as a desert camel, Hitch moved ahead, his breath like a husky bellows, his body pain-shot from his many wounds.

By early dawn he was miles away, tortured by hunger and compelled to face the fact that he could not go to a house and beg for food, nor could he forage in the daylight for lack of clothes.

“Lawd,” Hitch mourned. “Ef I ever git back to Tickfall, I’s gwine git on de water-wagon, an’ cut out de booze. I’ll cut out prize-fightin’, cussin’, an’ trabelin’ aroun’. I’ll git me a good, easy job ’thout much work to do, an’ rest my bones till I die!”

As the first faint streaks which marked the rising of the sun shot across the sky, Hitch left the road and walked toward the river.

He entered some deep woods and crawled into a thicket of small trees which were heavily draped with muscadine vines. Dragging these vines down and packing them around him so that they made a complete covering, he lay flat on the ground and slept like a dead man until darkness came again.

When Hitch awoke he could see the dim outlines of the river levee, and he started toward it, every muscle stiff and aching and crying for more rest.

“I’s gwine git over on my own side of dis river befo’ I fergits whut side I b’longs on,” he soliloquized. “Bad luck is hittin’ me too fast fer me to take any chances!”

Weak from hunger and weariness, with his strength bound by his stiff and aching muscles, the current carried Hitch almost a mile down the stream before he could battle his way across.

When he landed he lay for an hour upon the shore, hardly able to move. At last he started, going away from the river until he found the public road, then turned to the right and started forward on a steady trot.

Daylight found him twenty-seven miles nearer Tickfall, and the third day had begun for him without food. Hunger gnawed at his stomach with the teeth of death.

As he approached the woods where he expected to hide for the day, he noticed a thin column of smoke rising above the branches of the trees.

“Ef I kin find dat fire in de woods, an’ some nigger is watchin’ it, I won’t hab no trouble,” Hitch muttered. “Dey’ll onderstan’ dat I’s done had troubles an’ dey’ll git me some pants an’ somepin to eat.”

He crept into the timber and began to walk slowly and cautiously toward the place where he thought he had located the smoke.

It was much farther than he had estimated, and he crawled and crept for a long time before he reached it.

Some one had cooked food there, for an old tin can was still redolent of boiled coffee; there were the feathers of a chicken, and the scales of a fish, and the crumbs of bread.

Moaning to himself like a wounded animal, Hitch dropped upon all fours and picked up every crumb of bread, and sucked the remaining sustenance from every chicken and fish bone which had been cast aside, and drained every drop of coffee from the empty can.

Then he heard a noise behind him and turned to gaze into the scarred, black, masklike face of Dinner Gaze.

Hitch was not at all surprised to see some negro from Sawtown hiding in the woods. In fact, he knew if the negro who built the fire was a traveler he had very likely come from that mill town.

The proverb that the wicked flee when no man pursueth does not apply to the negro in the South. However innocent he may be of crime, he desires to depart from a place where there has been trouble between the negroes and the whites. If he is a transient like Hitch Diamond, or his occupation is rather questionable, like the gambling-house of Dinner Gaze, he is sure to leave at the earliest opportunity and go where he has friends or where the white people who know him will defend him from harm.

“Hello, Dinner!” Hitch exclaimed.

Dinner’s black, beadlike eyes glowed unwinkingly.

“I thought they kilt you in de river, Revun,” he muttered in his soft, easy voice.

“Naw, suh, dey wusn’t atter me,” Hitch said with difficulty, feeling a great weakness and nausea come over him. “Dey kotch Dude Blackum an’ Dude escaped away. He sunk while he was swimmin’ in de river.”

“Did de mob tear all yo’ clothes off?” Dinner Gaze asked.

“Naw, suh; I had bad luck an’ loss all my clothes befo’ dat happened. Dat’s how come I got to trabbel at night.”

“Is you hongry?” Gaze asked.

“Ain’t had nothin’ fer two days, an’ dis is de beginnin’ of de nex’ day,” Hitch told him.

Dinner Gaze picked up a small handsatchel which he had set down at his feet and prepared to leave.

“I’s sorry you didn’t git here in time fer breakfast, Revun,” he said. “Ef you’ll stay right here I’ll go git you some ole clothes an’ a little vittles. I kin beg ’em from some white folks’s house.”

“I’s mighty nigh dead wid bein’ so hongry, Dinner,” Hitch pleaded. “Ef you’ll he’p me outen dis scrape I’ll shore love you ferever.”

“Don’t be oneasy,” Dinner grinned. “I’ll he’p you as much as I kin.”

Dinner may have intended to aid Hitch, but that portion of Tickfall Parish was scantily inhabited. He walked several miles before he came to a human habitation, and there he was refused both food and clothes.

Furthermore, Hitch had said enough to cause any man to suspect that he was implicated in the Sawtown murder, and negroes are afraid to render aid and comfort to criminals, even of their own race.

Hitch waited for several hours, and finally fell asleep, dreaming of all the things he had ever seen or heard of that were good to eat. He awoke at nightfall, famished. Dinner Gaze had not returned.

“Dat nigger lied to me!” Hitch exclaimed desperately. “Ef I had him here I’d kill him wid my bare hands. Ef I ever git de chance to even up, I’ll do it ef I die!”

Cursing his misfortunes, he arose and stumbled weakly forward.

Two days later Hitch Diamond stumbled up the steps of the little cabin at the Gaitskill hog-camp, seven miles from Tickfall. He fell unconscious at the feet of old Isaiah Gaitskill, the negro overseer.

“My Lawd!” Isaiah exclaimed, clawing at his white wool. “Wharever Hitch has been at, he comed away so fast dat he runned out of all his clothes!”