He glanced up at the sky. It was as clear as a soap bubble. The haze of the evening was settling upon the tree-tops like a vail of purple and gold under the setting sun. He was looking for the signs of the sudden storms which blow in from the Gulf, and he sniffed the air for the odor of smoke from a forest fire.
“’Tain’t no fire, an’ it ain’t no cycaloon storm,” he muttered.
He turned and walked rapidly down the little foot-path, still listening, but now more interested in getting out of the darkening woods than in locating the source of the sound. Suddenly he heard the noise so loud and distinct that his next guess was nearer than he dreamed.
“Dat’s a automobile engyne!” he chattered, the goose-flesh rising all over his body. Then he shook his head in mute denial of his assertion. The nearest public highroad was ten miles away.
“Not even a skeart nigger preacher kin hear ten miles,” he muttered. “An’ nobody but de debbil could run a automobile in dese here woods whar dar ain’t no road!”
The thought brought him to a quick halt. Suppose the devil were loose in these woods, riding around in a flivver or straddle of a motor-cycle, seeking whom he might devour?
“I don’t crave to meet de debbil,” the colored clergyman murmured, as he reached up for his stove-pipe hat and grasped it firmly in his fingers.
“I done slanderized the debbil too frequent in my sermonts!”
He turned his face until his eyes looked straight into the face of the setting sun, and he began to leave the scenery of the swamp behind him. He did not run. No man can run as fast as the Rev. Vinegar Atts was traveling.
And Vinegar knew where he was going. In the very heart of that Little Moccasin Swamp was the Moccasin prairie. It was an open space containing nearly a square mile of ground without a tree or stump. It was completely surrounded by water, and two years before a raging forest fire had left it a charred ground strewn with ash and soot. Now it was covered with grass and was as smooth as a baseball diamond. Vinegar was including that open space in his route toward Tickfall because he could travel across it with ease and speed.
Suddenly every winged creature of the swamp broke the silence and became vocal with screams of fright. Hundreds of wild pigeons rose in the air and began to describe mad circles over the head of the running negro. From all the watercourses rose the wild fowls that love the low, damp marshes, and they sailed upward with hoarse shrieks of fear. The angry, fighting, bark-like call of the hawks, mingled with the scream of eagles, and these fearless birds sailed straight into the glowing red eye of the sun to meet the peril that was coming.