“Well, I was trying to,” I says. “Hit ain’t me that’s got them. I just thought, seeing as how you had done seemed to got to the place where couldn’t no white man help you. But hit ain’t no law making you go up there and get shed of them.” So I made like I was going away.
I went back around the corner of the kitchen and watched him set down on the steps again, going “Hic-uh! Hic-uh!” slow and quiet again; and then I seen, through the kitchen window, Old Man Ash standing just inside the kitchen door, right still, with his head bent like he was listening.
But still I never suspected nothing. Not even did I suspect nothing when, after a while, I watched Luke get up again, sudden but quiet, and stand for a minute looking at the window where the poker game and the folks was, and then look off into the dark towards the road that went down the bottom.
Then he went into the house, quiet, and come out a minute later with a lighted lantrun and a shotgun. I don’t know whose gun hit was and I don’t reckon he did, nor cared neither. He just come out kind of quiet and determined, and went on down the road.
I could see the lantrun, but I could hyear him a long time after the lantrun had done disappeared. I had come back around the kitchen then and I was listening to him dying away down the bottom, when old Ash says behind me:
“He gwine up dar?”
“Up where?” I says.
“Up to de mound,” he says.
“Why, I be dog if I know,” I says. “The last time I talked to him he never sounded like he was fixing to go nowhere. Maybe he just decided to take a walk. Hit might do him some good; make him sleep tonight and help him get up a appetite for breakfast maybe. What do you think?”
But Ash never said nothing. He just went on back into the kitchen. And still I never suspected nothing. How could I? I hadn’t never even seen Jefferson in them days. I hadn’t never even seen a pair of shoes, let alone two stores in a row or a arc light.
So I went on in where the poker game was, and I says, “Well, gentlemen, I reckon we might get some sleep tonight.” And I told them what had happened, because more than like he would stay up there until daylight rather than walk them five miles back in the dark, because maybe them Indians wouldn’t mind a little thing like a fellow with hiccups, like white folks would. And I be dog if Major didn’t rear up about hit.
“Dammit, Ratliff,” he says, “you ought not to done that.”
“Why, I just sujested hit to him, Major, for a joke,” I says. “I just told him about how old Basket was a kind of doctor. I never expected him to take hit serious. Maybe he ain’t even going up there. Maybe’s he’s just went out after a coon.”
But most of them felt about hit like I did. “Let him go,” Mr. Fraser says. “I hope he walks around all night. Damn if I slept a wink for him all night long. . . . Deal the cards, Uncle Ike.”
“Can’t stop him now, noways,” Uncle Ike says, dealing the cards. “And maybe John Basket can do something for his hiccups. Durn young fool, eating and drinking himself to where he can’t talk nor swallow neither. He set behind me on a log this morning, sounding just like a hay baler. I thought once I’d have to shoot him to get rid of him. . . . Queen bets a quarter, gentlemen.”
So I set there watching them, thinking now and then about that durn fellow with his shotgun and his lantrun stumbling and blundering along through the woods, walking five miles in the dark to get shed of his hiccups, with the varmints all watching him and wondering just what kind of a hunt this was and just what kind of a two-leg varmint hit was that made a noise like that, and about them Indians up at the mound when he would come walking in, and I would have to laugh until Major says, “What in hell are you mumbling and giggling at?”
“Nothing,” I says. “I was just thinking about a fellow I know.”
“And damn if you hadn’t ought to be out there with him,” Major says. Then he decided hit was about drink time and he begun to holler for Ash. Finally I went to the door and hollered for Ash towards the kitchen, but hit was another one of the niggers that answered. When he come in with the demijohn and fixings, Major looks up and says “Where’s Ash?”
“He done gone,” the nigger says.
“Gone?” Major says. “Gone where?”
“He say he gwine up to’ds de mound,” the nigger says. And still I never knowed, never suspected. I just thought to myself, “That old nigger has turned powerful tender-hearted all of a sudden, being skeered for Luke Provine to walk around by himself in the dark. Or maybe Ash likes to listen to them hiccups,” I thought to myself.
“Up to the mound?” Major says. “By dad, if he comes back here full of John Basket’s bust-skull whisky I’ll skin him alive.”
“He ain’t say what he gwine fer,” the nigger says. “All he tell me when he left, he gwine up to’ds de mound and he be back by daylight.”
“He better be,” Major says. “He better be sober too.”
So we set there and they went on playing and me watching them like a durn fool, not suspecting nothing, just thinking how hit was a shame that that durned old nigger would have to come in and spoil Luke’s trip, and hit come along towards eleven o’clock and they begun to talk about going to bed, being as they was all going out on stand tomorrow, when we hyeard the sound.
Hit sounded like a drove of wild horses coming up that road, and we hadn’t no more than turned towards the door, a-asking one another what in tarnation hit could be, with Major just saying, “What in the name of—” when hit come across the porch like a harrycane and down the hall, and the door busted open and there Luke was.
He never had no gun and lantrun then, and his clothes was nigh tore clean offen him, and his face looked wild as ere a man in the Jackson a-sylum. But the main thing I noticed was that he wasn’t hiccuping now. And this time, too, he was nigh crying.
“They was fixing to kill me!” he says. “They was going to burn me to death! They had done tried me and tied me onto the pile of wood, and one of them was coming with the fahr when I managed to bust loose and run!”
“Who was?” Major says. “What in the tarnation hell are you talking about?”
“Them Indians!” Luke says. “They was fixing to—”
“What?” Major hollers. “Damn to blue blazes, what?”
And that was where I had to put my foot in hit. He hadn’t never seen me until then. “At least they cured your hiccups,” I says.
Hit was then that he stopped right still. He hadn’t never even seen me, but he seen me now. He stopped right still and looked at me with that ere wild face that looked like hit had just escaped from Jackson and had ought to be took back there quick.
“What?” he says.
“Anyway, you done run out from under them hiccups,” I says.
Well, sir, he stood there for a full minute. His eyes had done gone blank, and he stood there with his head cocked a little, listening to his own insides. I reckon hit was the first time he had took time to find out that they was gone. He stood there right still for a full minute while that ere kind of shocked astonishment come onto his face.
Then he jumped on me. I was still setting in my chair, and I be dog if for a minute I didn’t think the roof had done fell in.
Well, they got him offen me at last and got him quieted down, and then they washed me off and give me a drink, and I felt better. But even with that drink I never felt so good but what I felt hit was my duty to my honor to call him outen the back yard, as the fellow says. No, sir. I know when I done made a mistake and guessed wrong; Major de Spain wasn’t the only man that caught a bear on that hunt; no, sir.
I be dog, if it had been daylight, I’d a hitched up my Ford and taken out of there. But hit was midnight, and besides, that nigger, Ash, was on my mind then. I had just begun to suspect that hit was more to this business than met the nekkid eye. And hit wasn’t no good time then to go back to the kitchen then and ask him
