the negroes drew the first easy breath they had taken for several minutes.
“praise de lawd!” vinegar laughed. “i’s glad i kept my good senses and didn’t git skeart!”
“skeart!” hitch diamond mocked derisively. “you wus so skeart you wus squealin’ like a burnt pig!”
“i warn’t really a coward,” vinegar said defensively. “but i wus sort of discreet. an’ i wusn’t by myself in dat—dis whole mob of niggers wus movin’ from side to side in dis here prairie like butter-beans b’ilin’ in a kittle.”
“shore dey wus,” hitch diamond answered. “dey wus skeart an’ i wus skeart an’ eve’ybody wus skeart—escusin’ you.”
“dat ole airship is jes’ like a ole dog widout no teeth—it makes a lot of noise, but ’tain’t no harm,” vinegar said complacently.
suddenly, from the direction of the setting sun, a long, slanting shadow crossed the prairie like a black knife cutting through their composure and leaving them wide open to the terror which approached.
the airplane was advancing upon them, apparently just skirting the tops of the trees, and the noise of the exhaust of the engine was deafening, terrifying, nerve-racking, a sound which reminded these country negroes of nothing so much as a great forest fire in a cane-brake where the popping of the cane is like the musketry of battle. they did not know whether to run or lie down or stand still, but finally their action was universal and automatic—they tumbled over on the ground like a lot of dead geraniums in a broken pot. all of this was an experience so entirely new to them that there was no precedent; they had never been along that path before. that great motor sounded to them like disease and death, and it made enough noise to make a snail jump through a barrel-hoop.
but there is one thing every negro can do. his fright is like kerosene poured on hot coals: it goes up in vapor and goes off with a bang. when those explosive sounds began to prod the negroes like hat-pins running into their ears, they began to howl and pray, and from five or six hundred throats there arose an assorted series of yells—they sang a long scale of variegated vociferations of fright—and they uttered implorations and prayers, and made promises to the god of heaven in return for his protection, promises which they could not have remembered in sober moments, much less performed.
as the machine came nearer to them and looked like it was coming down to the ground to mow them down with its wide-spreading wings, five hundred men, women, and children flattened themselves upon the ground, uttered a farewell gasp like a fish dying in the bottom of a boat and prayed that god would remove all rotundity and make them as flat as a withered leaf to meet this emergency that was upon them.
when about one hundred feet above the ground the aviator tossed out of the machine hitch diamond’s bag of cotton waste. had he known the contents of that bag he would have tossed it out a long time before. during all his stunts in the air he had held this sack of worthless cotton waste, and out of the kindness of a heart that was full of love for a woman he had returned it to the rightful owners.
the bag landed on the shoulders of vinegar atts. vinegar merely spread out like a busted bag of oats and sang an up-and-down tune of assorted prayers like the howling of a hound dog. after a long time, when the exhaust of the engine sounded far away, he slowly rose up like a mouse in a trap, scared and begging on its hind legs.
“my gawd!” he whooped. “i had a powerful good chance fer heaven dat time. i’m got more lives dan a litter of kittens!”
then, seeing the bag of cotton waste on the ground, for some reason he got the notion that hitch diamond had hit him on the back with that bag. he picked it up and struck hitch over the head with it.
hitch cautiously raised his head and elevated his face toward the sky, his nose wrinkled up like the front of a washboard. the airplane was far away. he slowly turned his head and saw vinegar standing beside him with a bag of cotton waste in his hand. his eyes stuck out like the buttons on an overcoat, and he rose from the ground and started for vinegar with a bellow of rage which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring in the south.
as if in answer to a signal every negro rose from the ground and started a free-for-all fight, a rough-and-tumble affair which is the delight of the darky and generally does no great harm. men and women pushed and pounded at each other, and grunted, and slapped faces, and wrestled, bouncing chunks of wood off of each other’s heads and going after each other’s skin like they were working by the job and wanted to get it all off right away.
then a few not participating in the scrap glanced up and pointed, exclaiming: “look! look dar!”
far up in the sunset sky, getting smaller and smaller as it climbed, the beautiful airplane passed into the purple and gold shadows of the closing day and disappeared from their sight.
there was an awed silence which was broken after a moment by the snarling voice of pap: “whar is dat red cutt gone at?”
“he’s done gone!” dozens of voices answered.
“did he hab our money on him?”
“yep, he tuck it all!” vinegar howled.
“i said i’d make dat nigger fly!” pap exclaimed. “an’ now he has done flew!”
“de way he flew is de only way he could fly,” skeeter butts laughed. “i’m satisfied in my mind dat nigger didn’t know any more about a airship dan a dog knows about a white shirt. and now he’s done run off wid my dollar.”
“i don’t keer,” vinegar said. “i done got my dollar’s wuth of fun outen dat machine, an’ i expeck i’d better be gittin’ back to town. i’m got to preach at de shoofly church to-night.”
in the fight which had occurred the bag of cotton which the aviator had dropped from his machine had been torn to pieces and the cotton scattered all over the prairie. a number of negro boys amused themselves by throwing the wads of cotton at each other and at their elders. one negro boy picked up a wad and hurled it at the fat stomach of the rev. vinegar atts.
vinegar doubled up with a yell of pain, and then stooped and picked up something.
it was a buckskin bag, which vinegar had last seen in the possession of red cutt.
“my gawd!” hitch diamond bellowed. “ain’t dat our bag of money?”
with trembling fingers vinegar untied the buckskin bag and drew out a large number of soiled bills. there was a shout of delight which james gannaway could have heard fifteen thousand feet in the air.
“when dat nigger, red cutt, climbed up into dat machine, he hid dat money in my sack of cotton,” hitch howled, “an’ now we done get it all back. bless gawd!”
so it was a happy band which moved slowly back to tickfall. vinegar atts forgetting all about his automobile walked back to town with the others. he improvised a song on the way which he taught his fellow pilgrims. the chorus, repeated many times, was this:
“de airships fly up to de sky
an’ circle all de stars around.
while yuthers try to fly on high—
lawd, keep my foots on solid ground.”
when they had sung the chorus for about the first time there was great excitement in tickfall, four miles away.
the first army airplane ever seen in that neighborhood flew over the town, and every man, woman, and child was looking at it. the aviator gave an exhibition of stunt flying. first, a series of loops, then tail slides, then what he would have called a “stall,” a maneuver in which the machine was brought to a dead stop after reaching the apex of an upward curve. then he did side slides and nose dives. it was wonderful to the people of tickfall to see the number of evolutions that pilot put his machine through.
there were all kinds of funny stunts, and that machine cut all sorts of queer figures like a playful kitten of the clouds.
the people of tickfall thought that he was doing all of that for them—but they were greatly mistaken.
everything james gannaway did was a message telling a certain girl that all was well with him, that he would return to the aviation camp with his own beautiful lie and her beautiful truth, and that he anticipated no trouble before him. most of all, it was a message of passionate love to that same girl, who now sat alone in her buggy on a sandy road and looked up at the airplane with eyes that filled with tears and glowed with love like stars.
the end
