Chapter XVII: Smoke of Battle

By terrible and evil ways, the reckless feet of Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg had come to that cleared space in the Tickfall court-room. In the next few minutes, they were going to make Tickfall history.

No man knew this better than the sheriff, the district attorney, the judge of the district court, and the jurors, as each man stood in his place and planned his part in the coming battle. The negro is the deadliest fighter on earth--when he makes up his mind to fight.

Sheriff Flournoy raised his gun--and the fight was on. With a motion as easy and as mechanical as the gesture of a man flecking a speck of dust from his cuff, Dinner Gaze turned his hand and shot back. The two guns spoke simultaneously.

With an oath, Sheriff Flournoy dropped his useless gun at his feet--the bullet from Dinner Gaze’s pistol had struck it and put it permanently out of business.

Hitch Diamond snarled like an angry beast. By a thrust of his foot, he turned over the table before which Skeeter Butts sat, making a barrier for himself. At the same instant of time, he hurled a heavy chair straight at Dinner Gaze, who stood grinning, leering at Sheriff Flournoy, who was now weaponless.

Hitch dropped down behind the table as a bullet splashed through the wood two inches above him, and also splashed every juryman out of the box like a big flat rock falling in a puddle of mud!

Skeeter Butts jerked a pistol from his coat pocket and tossed it to Hitch Diamond. Lifting with his powerful left arm, Hitch held up that heavy table as a shield between him and his enemies, and crashed forward toward Gaze and Sugg, shooting as he went. Falling, he shot again; sprawling upon the floor, he raised himself above the table and shot still again.

Once more Hitch Diamond charged forward, drawing closer to the fighting pair, staggering with his heavy table as a shield, economical with his gun-fire, waiting for a chance to kill, blazing, terrible, alone, moving toward the flash and smoke and rattle of the two guns barking from the hands of the two men who stood with their backs against the wall with leering grins upon their faces.

The unarmed men in the court-room dodged behind the furniture and crawled under the seats, shuddering at the fury of battle, as the bullets tore the plastering from the ceiling and the walls, splintered the furniture, ricocheted around the room, smashing windows and the glass globes of the electric lights.

In less time than it takes to tell it, Hitch’s last bullet was fired and he snapped his empty gun into the faces of his enemies. At nearly the same moment Dinner Gaze and Tucky Sugg threw aside their own empty and useless weapons.

With a loud bellow, Hitch Diamond tossed the table from him, breaking off the two legs on one side. He sprang around, and in and out, striking blows which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring all over the State. He struck and parried and struck again, pounding, pounding at the faces of the two shrieking men who fought at him with weapons mightier than their fists, for they were fighting with the legs of the table which Hitch had broken off when he tossed his improvised shield aside!

There was a rush of help coming to the aid of Hitch Diamond--Sheriff Flournoy, the district attorney, the two mill owners, a court-clerk, twelve jurors, Skeeter Butts, and Vinegar Atts.

Then began a noise of shouting and tumult, oaths, curses; shrieking, horrible, blood-stained faces, snarling lips and gnashing teeth, and Hitch Diamond fought on, leading the hosts who stood for law and justice. Pain tore at his bruised and bleeding face, blood streamed from his hands and arms, his mighty, heaving chest left stains of red upon his white shirt bosom.

Men fell, and Hitch stepped on them. Hitch fell, and men stepped on him. All men slipped and slid in blood, crushed each other, dragged each other down, struck each other--and all heaved and cursed and shouted and hammered and tore at the shuddering tangle of human flesh and bone.

Standing on a chair close to the struggling men was a woman--a woman of wicked, half-caste beauty, her long Indian hair streaming down her back, her golden-colored hands weaving to and fro with clenched fists, her golden face blazing with hate and fury--fit mate for Hitch Diamond, whose wife she was.

Her voice rang like a trumpet:

“Kill ’em, Hitchie! Kill ’em! Kill ’em! Kill ’em!”

Such a brutal, demoniacal struggle could not endure long. Vinegar Atts was senseless. Skeeter Butts lay flat on his back against the wall with the blood streaming from an ugly cut upon his head. Three of the jurors nursed broken arms, and several more had retired from the fray disabled by their injuries.

Sheriff Flournoy lay on the floor with the blood flowing from a wound on his neck. He crawled over and picked up the pistol which Skeeter Butts had given to Hitch Diamond and which Hitch had discarded. He extracted the cartridges from his own useless pistol and slipped them into Skeeter’s gun, for he had given that weapon to Skeeter and they were of the same calibre.

Just at that moment Tucky Sugg fought his way through the tangle of human arms and legs and sprang into the open window. Then he went screaming downward to his death as a bullet from the sheriff’s pistol went with him, pocketed in the murderer’s heart!

Then, as if the crack of the sheriff’s pistol was her cue to enter, another woman came up-stage and stood in the blazing light of battle. She weighed four hundred and ten pounds, and resembled a balloon divided in the middle by an apron string. She was conducted by Dainty Blackum and a strange young negro man, and her name was Ginny Babe Chew.

Inside the railing, she picked up a heavy iron cuspidor, and walked over to the table where, earlier in the morning, the district attorney had sat.

“He’p me up on dis here table, honey!” she grunted, hugging the heavy cuspidor in her arms.

The district attorney lay unconscious under the table on which Ginny stood.

Ginny announced her position by a loud bellow. She raised the large iron cuspidor above her head with her fat arms, and every pound of her monstrous weight was quivering with unspeakable hate.

“Git outen my way, Hitchie!” she whooped. “Gimme room accawdin’ to my fat, sonny! Let yo’ mammy put somepin acrost!”

For more than a minute Sheriff Flournoy had been fingering his pistol, waiting for a chance to shoot without killing Hitch Diamond. Ginny Babe Chew’s remarkable stunt gave him pause and caused him to lower his gun with astonishment.

Hitch reeled and stumbled backward. His eyes were glazing, his right arm hung broken and useless at his side, he was one bloody mass of wounds.

Dinner Gaze, his clothes torn from him until he was bare to the waist, his whole body screaming with pain from countless injuries, slowly followed Hitch in his retreat, chopping at him with weakening arms, still fighting with the broken table-leg.

“Look up, Dinner Gaze!” Ginny Babe Chew bawled. “Dis is yo’ la-ast time to see de hoodoo face!”

Unconsciously responding to the command, Dinner Gaze raised his pain-shot eyes upward, and looked into the fat face, through whose rolls of flesh two green pig eyes gleamed upon him with a serpent’s venom and deadly malignity.

The heavy iron cuspidor came down with a crash. It crushed the criminal’s head like an egg-shell. It bounced, fell on its rounded edge, and rolled slowly across the floor.

Dinner Gaze fell face downward, kicked the floor three times with the toes of his shoes, and died.

“Dar--_now_!” Ginny Babe Chew whooped.

Then she held out a fat hand to the slim young girl standing beside the table and said:

“Gimme yo’ hand an’ he’p me down offen dis table, honey! Dis here duck is too dang fat to be roostin’ so high!”