Birthright Part 36

"Dustier 'an ever," a.s.sured Jim Pink.

Apparently their conversation had recurred to the weather, after all.

A chill silence encompa.s.sed the glade. The path the negroes followed wound this way and that among reddish boulders, between screens of intergrown cedars, and over a bronze mat of needles. Their steps were noiseless. The odor of the cedars and the temple-like stillness brought to Peter's mind the night of his mother's death. It seemed to him a long time since he had come running through the glade after a doctor, and yet, by a queer distortion of his sense of time, his mother's death and burial bulked in his past as if it had occurred yesterday.

There was no sound in the glade to disturb Peter's thoughts except a murmur of human voices from some of the innumerable privacies of the place, and the occasional chirp of a waxwing busy over cl.u.s.ters of cedar-b.a.l.l.s.

It had been five weeks and a day since Caroline died. Five weeks and a day; his mother's death drifting away into the mystery and oblivion of the past. Likewise, twenty-five years of his own life completed and gone.

A procession of sad, wistful thoughts trailed through Peter's brain: his mother, and Ida May, and now Cissie. It seemed to Peter that all any woman had ever brought him was wistfulness and sadness. His mother had been jealous, and instead of the great happiness he had expected, his home life with her had turned out a series of small perplexities and pains. Before that was Ida May, and now here was her younger sister.

Peter wondered if any man ever reached the peace and happiness foreshadowed in his dream of a woman.

A voice calling his name checked Peter's stride mechanically, and caused him to look about with the slight bewilderment of a man aroused from a reverie.

At the first sound, however, Jim Pink became suddenly alert. He took three strides ahead of Peter, and as he went he whispered over his shoulder:

"Beat it, n.i.g.g.e.r! beat it!"

The mulatto recognized one of Jim Pink's endless stupid attempts at comedy. It would be precisely Jim Pink's idea of a jest to give Peter a little start. As the mulatto stood looking about among the cedars for the person who had called his name, it amazed him that Jim Pink could be so utterly insane; that he performed some buffoonery instantly, by reflex action as it were, upon the slightest provocation. It was almost a mania with Jim Pink; it verged on the pathological.

The clown, however, was pressing his joke. He was pretending great fear, and was shouting out in his loose minstrel voice:

"Hey, don' shoot down dis way, black man, tull I makes my exit!" And a voice, rich with contempt, called back:

"You needn't be skeered, you fool rabbit of a n.i.g.g.e.r!"

Peter turned with a qualm. Quite close to him, and in another direction from which he had been looking, stood Tump Pack. The ex-soldier looked the worse for wear after his jail sentence. His uniform was frayed, and over his face lay a grayish cast that marks negroes in bad condition. At his side, attached by a belt and an elaborate shoulder holster, hung a big army revolver, while on the greasy lapel of his coat was pinned his military medal for exceptional bravery on the field of battle.

"Been lookin' fuh you fuh some time, Peter," he stated grimly.

Peter considered the formidable figure with a queer sensation. He tried to take Tump's appearance casually; he tried to maintain an air of ordinariness.

"Didn't know you were back."

"Yeah, I's back."

"Have you--been looking for me?"

"Yeah."

"Didn't you know where I was staying?"

"Co'se I did; up 'mong de white folks. You know dey don' 'low no shootin' an' killin' 'mong de white folks." He drew his pistol from the holster with the address of an expert marksman.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Naw yuh don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an'

march on to n.i.g.g.e.rtown"]

Peter stood, with a quickening pulse, studying his a.s.sailant. The glade, the air, the suns.h.i.+ne, seemed suddenly drawn to a tension, likely to, break into violent commotion. His abrupt danger brought Peter to a feeling of lightness and power. A quiver went along his spine. His nostrils widened unconsciously as he calculated a leap and a blow at Tump's gun.

The soldier took a step backward, at the same time bringing the barrel to a ready.

"Naw you don't," he warned sharply. "You turn roun' an' march on to n.i.g.g.e.rtown."

"What for?" Peter still tried to be casual, but his voice held new overtones.

"Because, n.i.g.g.e.r, I means to drap you right on de Main Street o'

n.i.g.g.e.rtown, 'fo' all dem n.i.g.g.e.rs whut's been a-raggin' me 'bout you an'

Cissie. I's gwine show dem fool n.i.g.g.e.rs I don' take no fumi-diddles off'n n.o.body."

"Tump," gasped Jim Pink, in a husky voice, "you oughtn't shoot Peter; he mammy jes daid."

"'En she won' worry none. Turn roun', Peter, an' when I says, 'March,'

you march." He leveled his pistol. "'Tention! Rat about face! March!"

Peter turned and moved off down the noiseless path, walking with the stiff gait of a man who expects a terrific blow from behind at any instant.

The mulatto walked twenty or more paces amid a confusion of self- protective impulses. He thought of whirling on Tump even at this late date. He thought of darting behind a cedar, but he knew the man behind him was an expert shot, and something fundamental in the brown man forbade his getting himself killed while running away. It was too undignified a death.

Presently he surprised himself by calling over his shoulder, as a sort of complaint:

"How came you with the pistol, Tump? Thought it was against the law to carry one."

"You kin ca'y 'em ef you don' keep 'em hid," explained the ex-soldier in a wooden voice. "Mr. Bobbs tol' me dat when he guv my gun back."

The irony of the thing caught Peter, for the authorities to arrest Tump not because he was trying to kill Peter, but because he went about his first attempt in an illegal manner. For the first time in his life the mulatto felt that contempt for a white man's technicalities that flavors every negro's thoughts. Here for thirty days his life had been saved by a technical law of the white man; at the end of the thirty days, by another technical law, Tump was set at liberty and allowed to carry a weapon, in a certain way, to murder him. It was grotesque; it was absurd. It filled Peter with a sudden violent questioning of the whole white regime. His thoughts danced along in peculiar excitement.

At the turn of the hill the trio came in sight of the squalid semicircle of n.i.g.g.e.rtown. Here and there from a tumbledown chimney a feather of pale wood smoke lifted into the chill suns.h.i.+ne. The sight of the houses brought Peter a sharp realization that his life would end in the curving street beneath him. A shock at the incomprehensible brevity of his life rushed over him. Just to that street, just as far as the curve, and his legs were swinging along, carrying him forward at an even gait.

All at once he began talking, arguing. He tried to speak at an ordinary tempo, but his words kept edging on faster and faster:

"Tump, I'm not going to marry Cissie Dildine."

"I knows you ain't, Peter."

"I mean, if you let me alone, I didn't mean to."

"I ain't goin' to let you alone."

"Tump, we had already decided not to marry."

After a short pause Tump said in a slightly different tone:

"'Pears lak you don' haf to ma'y her--comin' to yo' room."

A queer sinking came over the mulatto. "Listen, Tump, I--we--in my room --we simply talked, that's all. She came to tell me she was goin away.

I--I didn't harm her, Tump." Peter swallowed. He despaired of being believed.