But his defense only infuriated the soldier. He suddenly broke into violent profanity.

"Hot d.a.m.n you! shut yo black mouf! Whut I keer whut-chu done! You weaned her away fum me. She won't speak to me! She won't look at me!" A sudden insanity of rage seized Tump. He poured on his victim every oath and obscenity he had raked out of the whole army.

Strangely enough, the gunman's outbreak brought a kind of relief to Peter Siner. It exonerated him. He was not suspected of wronging Cissie; or, rather, whether he had or had not wronged her made no difference to Tump. Peter's crime consisted in mere being, in existing where Cissie could see him and desire him rather than Tump. Why it calmed Peter to know that Tump held no dishonorable charge against him the mulatto himself could not have told. Tump's violence showed Peter the certainty of his own death, and somehow it washed away the hope and the thought of escape.

Half-way down the hill they entered the edge of n.i.g.g.e.rtown. The smell of sties and stables came to them. Peter's thoughts moved here and there, like the eyes of a little child glancing about as it is forced to leave a pleasure-ground.

Peter knew that Jim Pink, who now made a sorry figure in their rear, would one day give a buffoon's mimicry of this his walk to death. He thought of Tump, who would have to serve a year or two in the Nashville Penitentiary, for the murder of negroes is seldom severely punished. He thought of Cissie. He was being murdered because Cissie desired him.

And then Peter remembered the single bit of wisdom that his whole life had taught him. It was this: no people can become civilized until the woman has the power of choice among the males that sue for her hand. The history of the white race shows the gradual increase of the woman's power of choice. Among the yellow races, where this power is curtailed, civilization is curtailed. It was this principle that exalted chivalry.

Upon it the white man has reared all his social fabric.

So deeply ingrained is it that almost every novel written by white men revolves about some woman's choice of her mate being thwarted by power or pride or wealth, but in every instance the rightness of the woman's choice is finally justified. The burden of every song is love, true love, enduring love, a woman's true and enduring love.

And in his moment of clairvoyance Peter saw that these songs and stories were profoundly true. Against a woman's selectiveness no other social force may count.

That was why his own race was weak and hopeless and helpless. The males of his people were devoid of any such sentiment or self-repression. They were men of the jungle, creatures of tusk and claw and loin. This very act of violence against his person condemned his whole race.

These thoughts brought the mulatto an unspeakable sadness, not only for his own particular death, but that this idea, this great redeeming truth, which burned so brightly in his brain, would in another moment flicker out, unrevealed, and be no more.

CHAPTER XVIII

The coughing and rattling of an old motor-car as it rounded the n.i.g.g.e.rtown curve delayed Tump Pack's act of violence. Instinctively, the three men waited for the machine to pa.s.s before Peter walked out into the road. Next moment it appeared around the turn, moving slowly through the dust and spreading a veritable fog behind it.

All three negroes recognized the first glimpse of the hood and top, for there are only three or four cars in Hooker's Bend, and these are as well known as the faces of their owners. This particular motor belonged to Constable Bobbs, and the next moment the trio saw the ponderous body of the officer at the wheel, and by his side a woman. As the machine clacked toward them Peter felt a certain surprise to see that it was Cissie Dildine.

The constable in the car scrutinized the black men, by the roadside in a very peculiar way. As he came near, he leaned across Cissie and almost eclipsed the girl. He eyed the trio with his perpetual menace of a grin on his broad red face. His right hand, lying across Cissie's lap, held a revolver. When closest he shouted above the clangor of his engine:

"Now, none o' that, boys! None o' that! You'll prob'ly hit the gal if you shoot, an' I'll pick you off lak three black skunks."

He brandished his revolver at them, but the gesture was barely seen, and instantly concealed by the cloud; of dust following the motor. Next moment it enveloped the negroes and hid them even from one another.

It was only after Peter was lost in the dust-cloud that the mulatto really divined what was meant by Cissie's strange appearance with the constable, her chalky face, her frightened brown eyes. The significance of the scene grew in his mind. He stood with eyes screwed to slits staring into the apricot-colored dust in the direction of the vanishing noise.

Presently Tump Pack's form outlined itself in the yellow obscurity, groping toward Peter. He still held his pistol, but it swung at his side. He called Peter's name in the strained voice of a man struggling not to cough:

"Peter--is Mr. Bobbs done--'rested Cissie?"

Peter could hardly talk himself.

"Don't know. Looks like it."

The two negroes stared at each other through the dust.

"Fuh Gawd's sake! Cissie 'rested!" Tump began to cough. Then he wheezed:

"Mine an' yo' little deal's off, Peter. You gotta he'p git her out."

Here he fell into a violent fit of coughing, and started groping his way to the edge of the dust-cloud.

In the rush of the moment the swift change in Peter's situation appeared only natural. He followed Tump, so distressed by the dust and disturbed over Cissie that he hardly thought of his peculiar position. The dust pinched the upper part of his throat, stung his nose. Tears trickled from his eyes, and he pressed his finger against his upper lip, trying not to sneeze. He was still struggling against the sneeze when Tump recovered his speech.

"Wh-whut you reckon she done, Peter? She don' shoot c.r.a.ps, nor boot- laig, nor--" He fell to coughing.

Peter got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes.

"Let's go--to the Dildine house," he said.

The two moved hurriedly through the thinning cloud, and presently came to breathable air, where they could see the houses around them.

"I know she done somp'n; I know she done somp'n," chanted Tump, with the melancholy cadence of his race. He shook his dusty head. "You ain't never been in jail, is you, black man?"

Peter said he had not.

"Lawd! it ain't no place fuh a woman," declared Tump. "You dunno nothin'

'bout it, black man. It sho ain't no place fuh a woman."

A notion of an iron cage floated before Peter's mind. The two negroes trudged on through the crescent side by side, their steps raising a little trail of dust in the air behind them. Their faces and clothes were of a uniform dust color. Streaks of mud marked the runnels of their tears down their cheeks.

The shrubbery and weeds that grew alongside the negro thoroughfare were quite dead. Even the little avenue of dwarf box was withered that led from the gate to the door of the Dildine home. The two colored men walked up the little path to the door, knocked, and waited on the steps for the little skirmish of observation from behind the blinds. None came. The worst had befallen the house; there was nothing to guard. The door opened as soon as an inmate could reach it, and Vannie Dildine stood before them.

The quadroon's eyes were red, and her face had the moist, slightly swollen appearance that comes of protracted weeping. She looked so frail and miserable that Peter instinctively stepped inside and took her arm to a.s.sist her in the mere physical effort of standing.

"What is the matter, Mrs. Dildine?" he asked in a shocked tone. "What's happened to Cissie?"

Vannie began weeping again with a faint gasping and a racking of her flat chest.

"It's--it's--O-o-oh, Peter!" She put an arm about him and began weeping against him. He soothed her, patted her shoulder, at the same time staring at the side of her head, wondering what could have dealt her this blow.

Presently she steadied herself and began explaining in feeble little phrases, sandwiched between sobs and gasps:

"She--tuk a brooch--Kep'--kep' layin' it roun' in--h-her way, th-that young Sam Arkwright did,--a-an' finally she--she tuk hit. N-nen, when he seen he h-had her, he said sh-sh-she 'd haf to d-do wh-whut he said, or he'd sen' her to-to ja-a-il!" Vannie sobbed drearily for a few moments on Peter's breast. "Sh-she did fuh a while: 'n 'en sh-she broke off wid h-him, anyhow, an'--an' he swo' out a wa'nt an sont her to jail!" The mother sobbed without comfort, and finally added: "Sh-she in a delicate fix now, an' 'at jail goin' to be a gloomy place fuh Cissie."

The three negroes stood motionless in the dusty hallway, motionless save for the racking of Vannie's sobs.

Tump Pack stirred himself.

"Well, we gotta git her out." His words trailed off. He stood wrinkling his half-inch of brow. "I wonder would dey exchange pris'ners; wonder ef I could go up an' serve out Cissie's term."

"Oh, Tump!" gasped the woman, "ef you only could!"

"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner.

Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth. There was where he had sat the evening Cissie made her painful confession to him. Only now did he realize the whole of what Cissie was trying to confess.