Chapter IX: “dese Here Is Turr’ble Times”

Fifty-five terrified negroes galloped wildly into Tickfall, distributed themselves in the various negro settlements of the village, and told fifty-five separate and distinct tales of horror about the fiasco at the hog-camp.

One half truth ran through all the narratives, holding them together as vari-colored beads are held upon a string:

“Marse Tom Gaitskill bragged his brags at de cotton-shed dat he wus gwine walk right up an’ put his hand on dat wild woman. But he never done it a-tall--naw, suh.”

“He didn’t git no nigher dat woman dan de eend of a lassoo, an’ when she snuck up behine him wid dat big butcher-knife in her han’, dat white man jes’ nachelly _’vaporated_! Yes, suh! Us niggers tried to keep up an’ go along home wid him, but we ain’t never got in sight of Marse Tom till yit--an’ us is plum’ back in town! Dat nigger woman run at us jes’ like a wild hawg--you-all knows how de hawgs pop dey jaws an’ says ’_Whoosh_!’ When a wild hawg does dat way, nigger, you better coon up a tree. Well, suh, dat’s jes’ whut she said to us--_’Whoosh_!’”

Thus the negroes walked from house to house telling their appalling stories to little groups of pop-eyed listeners, adding something more blood-curdling to the tales with each repetition, until the terrified inhabitants of Shiny, Shoofly, Hell’s Half-Acre, and Dirty Six were as uneasy and fearful as if they were standing in the crumbling crater of a rumbling volcano.

Then the grapevine telephone was put into operation.

There is nothing as mysterious to the white man as the negro’s method of communicating information for long distances and to the remotest cabins of his race. “Word wus sont,” is the negro’s only explanation of how he happened to know twenty minutes after it occurred that a murder had been committed in the woods twenty miles away.

Long before night the town began to fill up with negroes coming in from plantations ten and twelve miles away. They arrived unostentatiously, seeming to spring up from the very sand of the street. They seemed jumpy when they were spoken to, moved about not singly but in groups, and kept looking back over their shoulders.

The white people of the town noticed the anxiety and strain, and it became a contagion. They knew that a wild woman was at large, meditating they knew not what outrage.

The sun set as red as blood, and in a few minutes a heavy, smelly, yellow Gulf fog swept the town, making objects invisible at a distance of twenty feet, almost blotting out the little electric lights which had just enough candle-power to reveal where they were but not sufficient to show where anything else was.

The Reverend Dr. Sentelle stumped his way down to the post office upon his ponderous cane, mailed a letter, and stood for a moment in the doorway puffing a cigar. Several negroes passed, walking down the middle of the street just as the venerable preacher flicked his cigar-stump toward the gutter. The butt whirled round and round and struck the ground with a splash of fire from the lighted end.

What a howl!

The men ran down the street yelping like hound-dogs, their feet pounding upon the sand, their voices trailing off into less audible sounds of woe as they continued their rapid flight.

Wondering at the unusual occurrence, Dr. Sentelle felt his way back to his home through the thick fog, and stood leaning upon his gate gazing up the street.

An object approached him, loomed up with gigantic proportions through the fantastic exaggerations of the fog, stopped a few feet from where the preacher stood, and spoke one word in a thunderous tone:

“Whoosh!”

Dr. Sentelle’s heavy walking stick went clattering upon the ground, he reeled backward, struck his heels against the porch steps, and sat down with a violence which filled the dome of his cranium with bursting, falling stars.

“Heavens!” he exclaimed.

Diada stooped, picked up Dr. Sentelle’s stick by the little end, and, thus armed with a weighty club, she went loping onward.

A group of darkies sat in a negro barber-shop discussing the wild woman of the woods. Diada opened the door, entered as quietly and peaceably as she could, and remarked:

“Whoosh!”

The negroes disappeared as promptly and as completely as if that word were a cyclone puffing at a handful of feathers.

Diada trotted down the street in the direction they had gone and found herself in front of the Hen-Scratch saloon, where a house full of patrons talked in whispers and fortified themselves by indulgence in red liquor. Diada entered the swinging door and gave the pass-word: “Whoosh!”

The negroes whooshed. They went away from that place in every direction, exhausting the treasuries of their throats for sounds to vocalize their surprise and terror.

Suddenly from every negro section of the town there arose a wail which reverberated through the village of Tickfall and brought every white man to his feet white with fear:

“_Ah-ee!_ _Ah-ee!_ _Ah-ee!_”

Every white man seized his arms and ammunition and started for the front door; then the thought of his defenseless family stopped him, and held him there to patrol his yard and guard his own house from the unknown peril which threatened.

Everywhere could be heard this wild call of fear.

Horses and mules broke out of their enclosures and galloped wildly about the streets with a thunder of pounding hoofs, calling to each other with frenzied nickering. The cows began a ceaseless bawling, and the excited dogs ran madly up and down the premises of their masters, making a pandemonium with their furious barking.

At intervals the noise lulled for a moment; then invariably would be heard a wild scream, clear as the outcry of a panther, ending with Diada’s one word, divided now into two distinct syllables:

“_Whoo-ash!_”

Colonel Tom Gaitskill leaned against the white columns of his porch and listened to the weird sounds which came to him from every quarter. In one negro settlement the inhabitants were bawling a song at the utmost capacity of their lungs, drowning their fears with music.

In another settlement, with the regularity and drumlike throb of a mighty chorus of immense hammers pounding upon steel anvils, was heard the cry: “Ah-ee! Ah-eel Ah-ee!”

From the section of the town occupied by the whites could be heard the nickering and running of horses, the bellowing of the cows, the barking of the dogs, and now and then a fusillade of pistol shots. While in the negro section closest to his home, Colonel Gaitskill could hear the Rev. Vinegar Atts bellowing like a bull of Bashan, praying in a voice which could be heard a mile, while those who knelt with him backed him up in his stentorian implorations with responses which echoed like a roll of thunder:

“O Lawd, dese here is turr’ble times----”

(“Listen, Lawd, dat’s de trufe--turr’ble times----”)

“De sun is done turned inter darkness an’ de moon inter blood, an’ de drefful day of de Lawd am come----”

(“O-o-o Lawd, she sho’ am come----”)

“We done saw de woman clothed wid de sun an’ de moon am under her foots----”

(“Ah-ee! Amen!”)

“Accawdin’ to Dy Word she done flied out to de wilderness whar she done been nourished fer a time, an’ half a time, an’ yuther times----”

(“Ah-ee! Double time----”)

“Woe to de inhabiters of de yearth----”

(“Whoa!”)

“O-o-o Lawd, fotch down thy angel to tote dis nigger home----”

Not a man or woman, white or black, closed an eye in Tickfall that night.

The sheriff and a number of business men held innumerable conversations over the telephone and finally a company of them convened in the sheriff’s office in the courthouse to confer about what should be done to quell the panic. But conversations and conferences came to naught because they were afraid to go through the negro settlements in the dense darkness lest some panic-stricken negro fire upon them from behind the door or beneath some cabin.

At the first streak of dawn the negroes, with one accord, moved toward the business part of the town and assembled in a dense mass around the courthouse, looking to the white people for protection.

Sheriff Flournoy made them a speech telling them that the white people were their friends, that no harm could come to them, that there was no cause for uneasiness, and that he wanted them to stay around the courthouse all day.

At the conclusion of his speech, Flournoy started across the street to enter the Tickfall bank. There was a wild yell from the negroes and a mighty scramble among them to get around on the other side of the courthouse.

Diada came out of an alley beside the Gaitskill store and stood in the middle of the street. She was holding Dr. Sentelle’s ponderous walking stick by the small end like a club. She gazed, apparently in wonder, at the crowd of negroes and whites.

As the silent mob viewed her with alarm, wondering what outrage she would commit next, she caught the big stick with a hand on either end, raised it high above her head, and screamed:

“Whoosh! Whoo-ash! Whoosh!”

Flournoy drew his pistol and fired in the air above her head three times.

Diada ducked at each shot, then she stood upright, whirled the club around her head, and threw it at the sheriff. The missile curved like an arrow and went straight toward the mark. Flournoy avoided a crushed skull by falling flat upon the ground and letting the club pass over him.

When he rose to his feet, Diada was trotting down the road with the speed of the wind.

“Get your horses--everybody!” Flournoy shouted.

With that word of command began the greatest man-hunt that Tickfall Parish had ever known.