Right nigh the crick they was another road come out of the woods to the left-hand side, and switched into the road we was travelling, and used the same bridge to cross the crick by. They was three or four houses here and there, with chimbleys built up on the outside of them, and blue smoke coming out. We stood and looked at the sight before us and forgot all the troubles we had left behind, fur a couple of minutes--it all looked so peaceful and quiet and homeyfied and nice.
"Well," says the doctor, after we had stood there a piece, "I guess we better be moving on again, Danny."But jest as Sam, who was follering along behind with that suit case, picks it up and puts it on his head agin, they come a sound, from away off in the distance somewheres, that made him set it down quick. And we all stops in our tracks and looks at each other.
It was the voice of a hound dog--not so awful loud, but clear and mellow and tuneful, and carried to us on the wind. And then in a minute it come agin, sharper and quicker. They yells like that when they have struck a scent.
As we stood and looked at each other they come a crackle in the underbrush, jest to the left of us.
We turned our heads that-a-way, jest as a nigger man give a leap to the top of a rail fence that separated the road from the woods. He was going so fast that instead of climbing that fence and bal-ancing on the top and jumping off he jest simply seemed to hit the top rail and bounce on over, like he had been throwed out of the heart of the woods, and he fell sprawling over and over in the road, right before our feet.
He was onto his feet in a second, and fur a minute he stood up straight and looked at us--an ashes-coloured nigger, ragged and bleeding from the under-brush, red-eyed, and with slavers trickling from his red lips, and sobbing and gasping and panting fur breath. Under his brown skin, where his shirt was torn open acrost his chest, you could see that nigger's heart a-beating.
But as he looked at us they come a sudden change acrost his face--he must of seen the doctor before, and with a sob he throwed himself on his knees in the road and clasped his hands and held 'em out toward Doctor Kirby.
"ELISHyah! ELISHyah!" he sings out, rocking of his body in a kind of tune, "reveal yo'se'f, reveal yo'se'f an' he'p me NOW! Lawd Gawd ELISHyah, beckon fo' a CHA'iot, yo' cha'iot of FIAH! Lif' me, lif' me--lif' me away f'um hyah in er cha'iot o' FIAH!"The doctor, he turned his head away, and I knowed the thought working in him was the thought of that white woman that would always be an idiot for life, if she lived. But his lips was dumb, and his one hand stretched itself out toward that nigger in the road and made a wiping motion, like he was trying fur to wipe the picture of him, and the thought of him, off'n a slate forevermore.
Jest then, nearer and louder and sharper, and with an eager sound, like they knowed they almost had him now, them hounds' voices come ringing through the woods, and with them come the mixed-up shouts of men.
"RUN!" yells Sam, waving of that suit case round his head, fur one nigger will always try to help another no matter what he's done. "Run fo' de branch--git yo' foots in de worter an' fling 'em off de scent!"He bounded down the hill, that red-eyed nigger, and left us standing there. But before he reached the crick the whole man-hunt come busting through the woods, the dogs a-straining at their straps.
The men was all on foot, with guns and pistols in their hands. They seen the nigger, and they all let out a yell, and was after him. They ketched him at the crick, and took him off along that road that turned off to the left. I hearn later he was a member of Bishop Warren's congregation, so they hung him right in front of Big Bethel church.
We stood there on top of the hill and saw the chase and capture. Doctor Kirby's face was sweating worse than when we first clumb the hill.
He was thinking about that nigger that had pleaded with him. He was thinking also of the woman.
He was glad it hadn't been up to him personal right then and there to butt in and stop a lynching.
He was glad, fur with them two pictures in front of him he didn't know what he would of done.
"Thank heaven!" I hearn him say to himself.
"Thank heaven that it wasn't REALLY in my power to choose!"CHAPTER XVIII
Well, we had pork and greens fur dinner that day, with the best corn-bread I ever eat anywheres, and buttermilk, and sweet potato pie. We got 'em at the house of a feller named Withers--Old Daddy Withers. Which if they was ever a nicer old man than him, or a nicer old woman than his wife, I never run acrost 'em yet.
They lived all alone, them Witherses, with only a couple of niggers to help them run their farm.
After we eats our dinner and Sam gets his'n out to the kitchen, we sets out in front of the house and gets to talking with them, and gets real well acquainted.
Which we soon found out the secret of old Daddy Withers's life--that there innocent-looking old jigger was a poet. He was kind of proud of it and kind of shamed of it both to oncet. The way it come out was when the doctor says one of them quotations he is always getting off, and the old man he looks pleased and says the rest of the piece it dropped out of straight through.
Then they had a great time quoting it at each other, them two, and I seen the doctor is good to loaf around there the rest of the day, like as not.
Purty soon the old lady begins to get mighty proud-looking over something or other, and she leans over and whispers to the old man:
"Shall I bring it out, Lemuel?"
The old man, he shakes his head, no. But she slips into the house anyhow, and fetches out a little book with a pale green cover to it, and hands it to the doctor.
"Bless my soul," says Doctor Kirby, looking at the old man, "you don't mean to say you write verse yourself?"The old man, he gets red all over his face, and up into the roots of his white hair, and down into his white beard, and makes believe he is a little mad at the old lady fur showing him off that-a-way.