Chapter XIV: Skeeter Starts a Blaze

For the next four days Pap Curtain and Dinner Gaze tended bar in the Hen-Scratch saloon for Skeeter Butts.

Vinegar Atts and Tucky Sugg started a protracted meeting in the old Shoofly Church which was attended by throngs who listened with bated breath to Vinegar’s bawling exhortations to righteousness based upon the horrible example of Hitch Diamond, who found himself in a predicament where there was “no hope.”

Meanwhile Skeeter went to New Orleans, and to Sawtown. He tracked Hitch Diamond from the moment he left Tickfall to go to the prize-fight until he returned to Tickfall, bareheaded, barefooted, with his hands manacled behind him, and under the escort of the officers of the law.

In both places he dodged Sheriff John Flournoy, who was also conducting an investigation. Both were on the same mission, and Skeeter saw Flournoy a dozen times at different places.

Skeeter and Flournoy returned to Tickfall, crushed and hopeless, appalled at the array of evidence which Hitch Diamond had to confront at his coming trial. It was not a pretense, but a fact, that Hitch Diamond had no hope.

It was almost dark when Skeeter climbed wearily off the train at Tickfall and started up the street toward Dirty-Six. He overtook Sheriff John Flournoy walking slowly up the street.

“Whut is Hitch’s chances now, Marse John?” he asked.

“He has none,” Flournoy replied. “There is no longer a shadow of doubt in my mind that Hitch Diamond committed the crime with which he is charged.”

“Yes, suh, dat’s de way it looks,” Skeeter agreed sadly. He dropped behind, stopped, and let the sheriff go on alone. He stood leaning against a fence for a while, wondering what to do next. Finally he said to himself:

“I’s gwine to Ginny Babe Chew’s cabin an’ narrate her all I is found out. Mebbe dat ole hoodoo face kin see mo’ hope dan I kin.”

He passed the Hen-Scratch saloon and peeped into the window, where he saw Pap and Dinner Gaze playing cards at a small table. He passed the Shoofly Church, where he heard the voice of Vinegar Atts bellowing like a lost cow. On the edge of the settlement he entered the yard of Ginny Babe Chew’s home, and found Dainty sitting alone upon the porch.

Ginny Babe was in the hen-house rendering profane ministrations to the same old hen which was still of a mind to brood, whether there was anything to hatch or not.

That hen had entertained Ginny Babe for a week. She had exhausted every known method to break up the fowl’s desire to “set,” dousing it in water, ducking it in ashes, tying a long red trailer of wool to its feet, and other things of that general nature. Now she stood growling profanity, wondering what else she could do to the obstinate old biddy.

Suddenly she thought of the suggestion made by Skeeter Butts: “Pour coal-ile on her tail an’ sot her on fire!”

She picked up an old rag lying in the yard, wrapped it around the squawking hen’s tail, carried the fowl to the back porch, where she found an oil-can, and saturated the rag well with the petroleum.

Then she struck a match and set the rag afire.

The startled hen fluttered out of her arms, ran straight into the hen-house, shed the oil-soaked, blazing rag with most of her tail feathers, and ran out of the hen-house into the high weeds.

But the burning rag left in the hen-house got busy with the loose straw and the other dry trash, and in a moment the whole house was in a blaze!

Ginny was famous for the noise she could make with her throat. Her very name was a perversion of the word for that noisy hen the guinea, and from her earliest childhood this word had been indicative of her chief faculty. But on this occasion she broke all previous records for racket.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” she began.

What she said after that and the noises she made cannot enter into this narrative because they cannot be reproduced in print.

The dry grass, the straw, the inflammable trash, the dusty accumulations of years, due to Ginny’s idea that the way to clean up her yard was to sweep everything inside the hen-house--all was afire and blazing merrily.

Skeeter and Dainty heard her wails and ran around the house. Then Skeeter grabbed a tree with both hands, spread his alligator mouth to its utmost limit, and laughed himself into hysterics.

The portion of Tickfall occupied by the whites had water-works, and adequate fire protection. The negro settlement known as Dirty-Six had no water, but was protected from fire by a chemical engine. There was a fire-engine house, a pole beside it with a bell on top, and a rope suspended from the bell within reach of the hand.

When the engine-house was first erected four years before, the negroes had waited rather impatiently for some one’s house to catch on fire. They wanted to see their new engine in operation. Nothing caught fire, not even a chicken-coop. For four years the bell at the engine-house had not been rung.

Then, on some occasion which called for a celebration on the part of the negroes, they had asked and had been given permission to take the chemical wagon out, attach the hose, and sprinkle the street, merely to show that the hose would actually squirt water and the engine pump it.

After the celebration the apparatus was dragged back and placed in the engine-house, and the inhabitants of Dirty-Six resumed their watchful waiting.

Now the cry of “Fire!” echoed through the settlement.

It was caught up on every corner. Negroes seized their shotguns and pistols and ran down the street, firing them into the air--the fire-signal in all Southern villages.

Vinegar Atts, standing in the pulpit of the Shoofly Church, paused in the midst of a fiery exhortation, listened to the cry of “Fire!” ringing through the settlement.

“Fire!” Vinegar bellowed, and started in a lope for the street, leading all the congregation in the race. They, with the other inhabitants of Dirty-Six, gladly assembled, not at the scene of the fire, but at the engine-house!

“Ring de bell!” a hundred voices bawled.

The bell-rope was gone. Some little piccaninny had needed a rope to tie his dog and had helped himself.

Two or three boys tried to climb the post and ring the bell, but they could not reach it.

“Open de door an’ fotch out de engyne!” the crowd whooped.

Forty men ran their hands into their pockets and brought them out empty. They did not have the key to the door. They had never had the key. The action was mechanical and unconscious.

Who had the key? No one knew. It had been two years since any one had entered the building. The door was locked and the key was lost.

“Bust de door down!” was the next call from the crowd.

Strong shoulders were pressed against the fragile door, and the crash of its timbers was answered by the shouts of the people and the onrush of the crowd. They laid hold upon the rope and pulled the machine to the scene of the fire.

Down the alley by the side of the house they ran, broke down the fence and pulled the machine into the yard. With many shouts they unwound the hose, attached it to the engine, turned the faucets and began to pump.

From the hose came a long whistling sound of air:

“Whee-ee-ee-e!”

Not a drop of chemical water. The celebration two years before had exhausted the chemical, and the engine had never been recharged. The hen-house burned without interruption.

Ginny Babe Chew turned toward that crowd of heroic negro firemen, and the pumps of her profanity worked without a hitch as she poured out a stream of sulphurous and vitriolic language upon their luckless heads. Skeeter Butts still hung to the tree with both hands, laughing with whoops like a yelling Comanche.

The firemen laid hold upon their chemical machine and dragged it out of the yard.

Suddenly Skeeter’s laughter ended with a gurgle of choked surprise. With his mouth still open wide, he gazed upward at a little dormer window which looked out of the attic of Ginny Babe Chew’s home. Slowly his hair rose up on his head, and cold chills ran down his spine.

The light reflected from the burning hen-house clearly revealed a male human face at the dormer window!

The man was looking down into the yard, watching the crowd, watching the fire, and at times grinning at something he saw. Skeeter watched that face for two or three minutes; its clear outlines were stamped indelibly upon his mind. He had never seen the negro before!

Then he sprang to the side of Vinegar Atts and squalled:

“Come on up-stairs wid me, Vinegar--quick!”

The two ran into the house. Skeeter took his automatic pistol from his pocket, and leading the way, ran up the little, narrow stairs which led to the attic. They pushed open the door of the room and entered.

The room was empty!

Skeeter ran to the window and looked out, just as he had seen the strange negro do. Instantly the fat face of Ginny Babe Chew was raised to the window, her green pig eyes glowed malevolently, and her fat fists were clenched and raised in malediction.

“Come out of dat attic, you little yellow-faced debbil!” she whooped. “I’ll bust yo’ neck!”