第 18 页

There rose a bit of a knoll by the wayside, and on it I climbed and sat down. On one hand of me was New Orleans, with its many hideous, straddling Eiffel towers, built to carry the electric wires; in front, the blistering silver of Lake Pontchartrain; on the left hand, forest and swamp, and still more swamp.

Sitting still in the glare of the sun brought out perspiration afresh. A hundred yards away a man was stretched out under the shadow of a white oak. The grey straggles of Spanish moss with which the tree was hung dangled lankly in the moist heavy air; but the shade looked cool. I went towards it.

A few sunbeams stole through the upper branches on to the turf, and in these a pair of purple-black butterflies flashed and reflashed, vanishing when they entered the flanking shadows. The theatre of their dance was just above the head of the man who lay upon the ground, and though they seemed disturbed by his presence in no whit, on my approach they flitted cautiously behind the clump of palmettos in the background. It seemed to me that the man was very fast asleep, and I envied him. He, at least, was beyond the discomforts of that glaring day.

I sat me down at the opposite rim of the white oak's shade, with hands locked round my knees, and looked upwards at the hot sky. A foul, ragged bird, with red, bare head, was sailing in small, slow circles directly overhead. I looked again, and in the depths of the gleaming blue saw other specks of black, which grew as I watched. They were other birds coming off their distant beats in answer to some signal from the first. The birds were turkey buzzards.

Involuntarily I shuddered, surprising myself by the action, and then lowered my eyes from the carrion fowl to see if I could make out what dead thing it was which had lured them from their patrol. My glance ran round the space in front without seeing any matter to fill the question, and fell on the figure of the sleeping man in the shade beside me. He had not moved since I came. Watching more closely I could see no tremor of his body, not even the gentle movement of breathing. He was sleeping like a figure cast in metal. Upon his white, upturned face mosquitoes were feasting unchecked: a great, bloated horse-fly had lodged itself in the fork of one of his thumbs.

"My friend," thought I, "you must have an extraordinary amount of liquor on board to stand so much. You'll be in torment when you wake if this goes on. Let me drive that horse-fly away."

I tore down a green palmetto leaf for a fan, and walked across. The insects rose in a buzzing cloud, but the man never moved his skin.

Something in his apathy moved me like a blow, and I started back, dropping the fan on to the short scrub grass. Then leaning over, I took the hand which lay on his breast, and lifted it. The joints moved harshly; and when I let go it sprang back with a stiff-fingered thud on to his breast.

"Dead!"

Yes, dead beyond a doubt; and after the first shock of discovery, one's impulse was to seek for the cause. My eyes roved curiously over his figure from head to toes, and from toes to crest again. Then I began to understand the matter. On the ground beneath the left ear was a squat, dark brown cone as high as a shilling's worth of pence. It was coagulated blood.

The sense of the day's heat went from me. My damp clothes hung upon me cold and clammy.

After a pause I knelt; then raised the head, and peered beneath it. At the back was a ghastly hole, ringed round by charred flesh and burnt hair. The man must have been shot at hand-grips. He was dead as an axe.

I started back to my feet, and stood with shaking knees wondering what ought to be done. Help to the man himself there was none to be given. The position of the wound and the absence of a weapon precluded the idea of a suicide. Clearly he had been murdered.

My life had been lived on humdrum office stools, and in my daily newspaper I had always skipped anything approaching to tragedy. These things filled me with physical nausea. And here I was thrust by the shoulders into the inner chamber of horrors. My first idea was to bolt incontinently: my second, to go forthwith and lay information with the police: it seemed best to me that I should act upon the second. But, thought I, it would be better to learn first the victim's name.

Yes, this last amendment appeared unanswer able.

With infinite loathing I reached down to take a handkerchief from his breast pocket. My eyes swam, and my fingers trembled like a palsied woman's, as I plucked it away. It seemed to come with reluctance. It was of fine linen, hem stitched round the borders, and of clammy wetness. I spread it out against the sun, and because of my dazed eyes could see no name; and then was about to examine each corner separately when a startling thing happened. A pistol shot rang out into the hot air, and then another, and then what seemed to be a whole platoon. I heard the bullets whisp past me and patter against the lower branches of the white oak and the leaves of the palmettos; and one hit my straw hat in the brim and spun it a fathom away on to the coarse turf. Looking up, I saw two men reloading smoking revolvers.

"Gentlemen," I gasped, "for God's sake what are you doing?"

"You bloody murderer," said one, "the law mayn't get you, but I guess we will."

"I'm innocent," I screamed. "I swear to you I know nothing about what's done here. I came up by accident, found by accident that he was dead, and was just looking for his name when--"

"Liar! The boy saw you shoot him down from behind, and ran for help. We were the first men he found heeled. You blasted nigger!"

"Nigger! I'm no nigger. I'm an Englishman."

"You may be a Liberian for anything I care; but nigger you are, because the boy saw your worsted hair as I see it now and the turkey buzzards are waiting for you."

The man lifted his pistol again as he spoke, and took a steady shot over the crook of his elbow. The bullet seared my ribs. I turned and fled like a frightened dog.

II

Into what wilderness that wild, mad flight took me I could not tell. The most abject fear blinded my eyes, even as it lent wings to my feet. The two men started after me on the instant. The lead from their weapons outstripped me in the race, but they themselves could not. I was unscathed by the first discharge, and when they slackened speed to reload I passed out of shot.

Panting, sweating, aching, my chest and fore head alike fit to burst, I held along my course, instinctively edging from the road and making for the dense cover of the forest ahead. The insensate fear of the animal possessed me wholly then, and, animal-like, it seemed to me that the recesses of the timber were my only harbourage.

They must have viewed me till I got amongst the trees, for nowhere did the bushes and grasses of the open rise more than shoulder-high. My movement in bird flight was necessarily slow, for there were deep black pools to skirt, and bosky swamps which clogged the footsteps. As I dived into the outskirts of the timber a great shout went up behind me, and for a moment I glanced back. The pursuers had been reinforced. Straggling away in a long tail, which reached up to the yellow streak of road behind, the hunt must have numbered a hundred souls. And all these would have killed me like a rabid beast did the chance come to them!

I turned and ran afresh, crashing through the undergrowth, threading my way through the clumps of cypress trees. The grey streamers of Spanish moss hung down from the branches and brushed my face as I tore past. Broken fragments entered my parched and gaping mouth.

Once I stopped at a pool to drink. The black water was rich with sulphur, but it tasted to me like the nectar of the gods. I started up from my knees with panic reawakened. The shouts of the pursuers came to me echoing down the tree aisles. They were still hot on the trail. I skirted the pool and plunged deeper into the welded masses of the forest. And so on, and on; and and for a space I recollect no more.

III

Yet, even after I lost my few scattered remnants of sense, I must have continued my flight. The flesh was stronger than the mind, and my feet carried me out at the further side of the forest and well into the marshy plain beyond, before they finally set me down senseless and well-nigh inanimate.

Night was advanced when I came to consciousness again, a heavy, dank night, with the darkness closing down on one in hot panting beats. The smell of the swamp around was thick with sul phurous fumes. The noise of the frogs and the crickets and the jarflies was almost deafening. Overhead not a star shone through the veil, but amongst the mists on either hand the fireflies spurted their tiny flames, and here and there shone the phosphorescent gleam of rotting wood. Occasionally a blink of summer lightning showed me things more clearly.

I knew not where I was. The wish for fur ther flight was still intense within me, but I knew not which way to turn, and accordingly cowered still in my form.

Morning came, and the foetid mists of the swamp were rolled up for the day. I stood stiffly up and looked around me. I was in the midst of a wet plain, cut by the railroad to Mobile. Only here and there a copse of trees broke the level. As I looked, I saw a man running.

He was coming towards me at a jog-trot, his head down like a dog following a scent. Occa sionally he stopped as if at fault, and peered about him. He was on my trail.

My first idea was to run; my second to stay. The pursuer was only one. Perhaps I could in duce him to listen to reason. Why should I, an innocent man, submit to be the quarry of this ruthless chase? If he attacked me, I would fight him with my naked hands; and let the sin of his blood lie upon his own head.

I ambushed myself behind a tussock of palms, and waited his coming. If he threatened me with any weapon, why then I should not hesi tate to act.

He trotted up to the place where I had slept, and halted, regarding it thoughtfully. He was a man of my own height, with white but slightly negroid features, and yellow, kinky hair. In his right hand he carried a Marlin repeating rifle. I stepped out and confronted him.

"Oh, this is where you have got to!" said he.

"This is where I have been driven."

"You ran well," he replied slowly, looking me up and down. " I ought to say that I am in debted to you. They mistook you for me."

"Then it was you who "

"Yes, I killed the man you found under the white oak. You're a stranger here, or you wouldn't have meddled with him, especially as you are "

He paused, and I asked him to finish his sentence. " A coloured man like myself."

"la nigger! Good Lord, what next?"

He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. I can see by your clothes that you don't class yourself as such. Perhaps colour don't count for so much your side. Have your own way about it, pardner. But say, what do you propose to do?"

"Make the best of my way back to New Orleans."

"Bah I You'll be shot on sight if you try coming out of this swamp. There are twentyfive hundred men round it. Cotton is slack in the city just now," said the fellow with bitter satire, "and so is sugar, and every man who owns a gun has come out for the sport. They've pickets everywhere. They're making a regular campaign of it."

"But I am an innocent man. You are the real "

"Murderer? If it pleases you to say so, yes. But what does that matter? Here, read."

He thrust a paper into my hand, and putting tobacco into his mouth, sat down upon the ground. I did the same, with the paper crac kling between my fingers. The flimsy news-sheet was given entirely over to the murder and the chase for the killer, full of sensational " scare " headlines, daubed with tawdry drawings. There were two horrid cuts of negroes hanging by the neck to trees; and I learnt with cold thrills that these were the cousin and brother of the mur derer. The lynchers had come upon them, could extract none of the information they desired as to the fugitive's whereabouts, either because these captives did not know or would not tell, and had incontinently strung them up to the nearest convenient place. " This action on the part of some of our citizens may appear high-handed," the reporter wrote, "but those who are disposed to judge them should remember that both of the deceased were bad niggers, and would certainly have come to grief sooner or later. A bad nigger on a telegraph post does less mischief than two bad niggers in the bush."

I let the paper flutter down amongst the reedgrass. " Chew?" said the man, offering me tobacco. I shook my head. I was dazed.

Then feeling that I must say something, I asked, "What did you shoot this fellow at all for?"

"Look here, siree," said the man, savagely, "did you kill him or did I?"

"You did."

"Very well, then, pard; you mind your own biz. I guess God's got him down to my account, and I've to settle it up myself. He'll know, and He'll see it isn't so bad of me as men down here might think. What we're talking about now is your fix. I'm sorry you're in dirty water through me, and I'm grateful to you for dividing the hunt till now. That's why I want to help. Are you heeled?"

"Am I what?"

"Bah! no, I see you aren't. Well, here's a gun for you. I've got the Winchester, and I guess that'll see me through." He drew a five-shot revolver from the back pocket of his blue cotton trousers and handed it to me. " And here's shells. Now she is loaded, and if you have the chance, pard, you shoot. I guess you'll be cornered sooner or later, and if you've got to go under, it's kinder satisfactory pumping lead into the crowd as you go. I reckon " here he patted the rifle "I reckon with luck I should have thirteen of 'em here."

"But is there no chance of slipping through this cordon? Once in New Orleans we should be all right."

"You would; not me. Man, even if I was in the city gaol they'd have me out to lynch. Prob ably " here he shivered " probably they'd burn me. No, I'm going to see it through in the open. But you're thinking of yourself."

"Of course I am."

"Right, why shouldn't you? You have served me a good turn, and I'd help you if I could. But I don't see my way. Yonder' s the lake (Pontchartrain), and yonder, and yonder, and yonder's all their pickets. They don't let a soul pass outer here without some one knows him. I tell you they've rubbed panic into all the cullered folk round this district. Cabins are deserted by the score. The niggers are going away in flocks. They know these murdering vigilants are out for sport, and for two pins would shoot down any poor devil with a touch of black in his hide, just as you or I would a rattle. Yes, siree, there's a big scare on. There's nothing for us to do at present but sit on our tails and wait. Here's victuals."