Chapter VIII: At the Gaitskill Hog-Camp

The next morning fifty-five negroes mounted on mules and horses waited at the cotton-shed for Colonel Tom Gaitskill. Their only theme of conversation was Diada.

“Revun Atts,” Mustard demanded of the pastor of the Shoofly church, “when you got shet up wid dat wild woman in de hawg-camp, why didn’t you ax her ’fess religion?”

“I did make a riffle,” Vinegar Atts responded, “but I couldn’t git my mouf set right fer preachin’ de Word.”

“He seen his duty but he done it not!” Hitch Diamond bellowed.

“I didn’t had no light on _how_ to do it,” Vinegar said defensively. “Excusin’ dat, I warn’t studyin’ how to save by grace; I wus ponderin’ how to save my grease.”

The conversation ended by the arrival of Colonel Gaitskill, dressed in a hunting suit and riding his favorite black horse.

The negroes grouped their mounts close around him to hear what he had to say.

“I want you niggers to ride out to the hog-camp with me and help me bring Diada back to my house. All this talk about Diada being a cannibal is a lie. She ain’t a pretty nigger woman, but she’s just like other black folks. She won’t hurt anybody. When you find her, go right up to her, just like you would to any other nigger woman. Hear me!”

“Yes, suh!” the voices answered.

“Marse Tom,” Hitch Diamond asked, “who’s gwine lead dis here peerade?”

“I am.”

“I’s powerful proud to hear dat, kunnel,” Hitch declared. “An’ please, suh, kin I fotch up de rear an’ keep dese niggers from laggin’ back?”

“Yes, if you prefer that place.”

“Hitch needs he’p, kunnel,” Vinegar Atts declared promptly. “I’ll fetch up behine wid Hitch.”

“All right,” Gaitskill agreed, stifling a desire to laugh. “Of course, if Diada should attack us from the rear----”

“Huh!” Vinegar Atts interrupted him. “I’s gwine fetch up de exack middle of dis here peerade.”

“Now, listen!” Gaitskill commanded in a loud voice. “I don’t want Diada hurt in any way. Don’t use any clubs or guns or knives. Catch her with your hands. Come on, men!”

The posse pounded down the swamp road for four miles, then started in single file along the narrow bridle-path which led to the hog-camp three miles distant in the center of the swamp.

From the moment they entered the swamp the shouts and laughter of the negroes ceased.

They had all spent their lives within sight of that jungle and knew well its fearful menace and entertained toward it a most wholesome fear. They knew that three deep, broad bayous flowed into it, widened into an enormous mud-puddle and disappeared, swallowed up by rank, encroaching vegetation. They knew that the slow-moving, slimy water was a breeding place for countless insects which stung and bit and poisoned, and inhabited in pestilential swarms the only open breathing spaces reserved amid the vegetation, and they had seen cattle stagger out of that swamp, their nostrils, throats, and ears filled with tiny insects, fall to the ground in convulsions, and die.

The ground around them was covered with vegetation, so ropy with vines that a raccoon could not penetrate it; the branches of the immense trees hung downward, and were draped with long, ropelike funereal streamers and festoons of Spanish moss, so that it seemed that half the vegetable world was growing from below upward and the other half was growing from above downward, making a hot-house purgatory, shut off from the sky above and the earth below, and enclosing the men who rode that narrow path like a trap.

The dim ridge which their horses trod was the one route of ingress and egress through that obscure, uncharted morass reeking with poison and choked with a growth which seemed coeval with the dawn of creation itself.

Gaitskill, noting the sudden silence of the negroes, became uneasy. He knew that if the darkies were thrown into a panic they would spur their mounts into the jungle to hide, and that would be the end of both the horse and his rider.

“Marse Tom,” old Isaiah said in a trembling tone, “My hoss is a walkin’ lame.”

Gaitskill stopped and stood facing the long line of frightened negroes.

“All you niggers pull to one side and let Isaiah ride back to town!” he called.

“Who? Me?” Isaiah bawled. “Naw, _suh_! Dis hoss ain’t so powerful lame--not as much as he wus when I fust spoke. An’ even if his behine leg wus twisted plum’ off, I’d shore make him hop along wid you-alls.”

“Any of the rest of you niggers got lame horses?” Gaitskill laughed.

“Naw, suh, kunnel,” Hitch Diamond yelled, the last man in the line. “My hoss is walkin’ so spry I cain’t keep him behine by hisse’f. Lemme ride up dar close to you!”

“Stay where you are, Hitch!” Gaitskill laughed. “You asked me to let you ride behind. Come on, men!”

The path widened and the horses struck into a trot which brought them to the hog-camp in half an hour.

Throughout the length and breadth of this swamp, about a mile apart, there were curious mounds rising ten or twelve feet above the surrounding marsh. All these mounds were round in shape and flat on the top.

Some of them were not more than a hundred feet in diameter, while others were large, containing half an acre of land. They had been built a hundred years before by the Indians--and served a very practical purpose. When the water flooded the swamp in the autumn the wild animals took refuge on these mounds. The Indians penetrated the jungle in their canoes and visited each mound, easily slaying the deer and bears, and thus procuring their winter supply of meat.

The Gaitskill hog-camp occupied the largest of these mounds, the cabin standing in the center of a two-acre plot. The flat top of the mound had been kept cleared of timber, but the jungle encroached to the very edge.

The posse galloped into this clearing, and Colonel Gaitskill dismounted from his horse.

“You darkies stay here!” he commanded. “I’ll see whether Diada is in the cabin.”

The cabin was empty. All of Isaiah’s smoked sausage and hams had disappeared. Little Bit’s mandolin, with the strings broken, lay in the corner of the room, and a part of Mrs. Gaitskill’s silk kimono hung from a splinter on the wall, showing how it had been torn off. From a nail on the wall hung a long lasso.

Taking down the rope Gaitskill walked out again to the negroes.

“She’s not here, men,” he announced. “We’ll have to hunt her in the swamp.”

Adjusting the rope to his saddle-horn he mounted and sat for a moment debating his next move.

Then Diada emerged from the jungle and stood at the edge of the clearing, looking curiously at the troop of men.

“Dar she!” the negroes howled.

Gaitskill rode slowly forward, holding out his hand in a gesture of friendliness about as one would approach to catch a horse. But Diada moved slowly backward, keeping in the cleared space, always just one leap distant from the jungle.

Twice they circled the clearing in this ridiculous fashion, Gaitskill repeating in most wheedling and coaxing tones every expression of fondness and endearment with which he was acquainted.

“Dat chin-music ain’t gittin’ Marse Tom _nothin’_,” Vinegar Atts declared, watching the elusive Diada. “Me ’n’ Hitch’s done tried dat!”

Finally Gaitskill abandoned that plan, and quietly loosened his rope and got ready to throw.

Riding back a few feet he gave the rope a quick swing, and the noose settled prettily around the arms of the giant woman just above her elbows. There was not a trace of fear in her face, and she moved slowly backward until the rope was taut. To the interested negroes it looked like the simple, peaceable game of “playing horse.”

Then Gaitskill spurred his horse to one side and gave the rope a sharp jerk. Instantly a long-bladed butcher-knife flashed in Diada’s hand, and the severed rope trailed loosely upon the ground, while the now harmless noose slipped down over her hands and was lightly tossed aside.

“Dar now!” Hitch Diamond exclaimed in tragic tones. “Dat fish is done unbit an’ div!”

Gaitskill slowly drew in the rope and was busy making another noose, when there was a warning shout from the negroes.

Diada was coming across the clearing toward Gaitskill, leaping like a deer. There was no trace of anger in her manner, and no sign of danger except the long-bladed knife in her powerful hand.

Gaitskill’s nervous horse shied at that monstrous woman with her fluttering, ragged garments, and wheeled and bolted, snorting with terror.

The jungle kept the horse in the clearing as effectively as a barbed-wire fence, but the animal had two acres of level ground to run on and he proceeded to cover that ground in record-breaking time. Gaitskill might have quieted the animal very quickly, except for the fact that this performance seemed to please Diada, and she continued her pursuit, chasing Colonel Gaitskill all around the lot.

“Look out, Marse Tom!” the negroes bawled, amid whoops of laughter. “Don’t let her ketch yer!”

The laughter of the negroes diverted Diada’s attention to them.

With a loud “_Whoosh!_” she sailed into that compact mass of men and horses, scattering them like a brick dropped into a pile of feathers. Horses nickered and plunged, mules squealed and kicked, and negroes screamed with fright, and in a moment the cleared space in front of the hog-camp was a circus-ring of panicky men and beasts performing every imaginable stunt, with Diada in the star rôle of circus-master and chief of clowns.

Colonel Gaitskill’s horse found the path which led back to Tickfall, plunged down the embankment, and ran away with his helpless rider. The negroes, seeing Gaitskill’s departure, followed at their swiftest gait, their shrieks and wails of fright and woe rolling through the swamp with hideous reverberations.

One mile from the hog-camp Gaitskill regained control of his horse, and turned to ride back.

Then he heard the thundering hoofs of the horses and mules coming down the narrow bridle-path toward him. The road was not wide enough to pull aside and let them pass; even if it were, in that moment of panic, the horses and mules might become frightened at him and plunge into the swamp.

Gaitskill regretted the necessity for his action, but there was nothing else to do; he led that column of wailing negroes in ignominious flight back toward Tickfall.

He kept ahead of them until he reached the main road, then turned aside and let them precede him.

As he sat watching that ludicrous procession of squalling blacks, his own horse suddenly snorted and bolted down the road at its wildest speed. Gaitskill looked back to ascertain the cause of the animal’s fright.

Lo, Diada was in full pursuit of the flying posse, trotting with the speed of a galloping horse, her tongue hanging out like a hot dog’s, Mrs. Gaitskill’s kimono trailing behind her like a torn battle-flag, her long, ugly-bladed knife clutched in her powerful hand. One word came from her throat with the explosive sound of a pistol-shot:

“_Whoo-ash!_”

There was no stopping his horse, so Gaitskill rode the four miles back to Tickfall in something like eight minutes. When he swung out of the swamp road into the town he looked back again.

Diada was half a mile behind him, trotting tirelessly, covering about ten feet of ground with each tremendous stride. Her farewell admonition came to him across the distance.

Softened by the intervening space, it seemed to contain a plaintive note of appeal; yet this impression was but momentary, for Gaitskill found too close a kinship between this outlandish expression and the snarl of the wolf, the hiss of the snake, and the scream of the jungle beast bent on blood and death.