Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 56: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

-- : ¢ to Ormond. One of two Ormond boys who Yan a grocery store was a justice of the - peace. I think Harry got five dollars from ga a __ the county for every case he tried. I re- ceived twelve and one half cents a mile for every prisoner and witness I transported, = and one dollar for every time I turned a key on a man in the Ormond jail. Court was held in a disused schoolhouse. Harry sat at the teacher’s desk and used his fist as a gavel. Harry was a Southerner and he knew more about plain, everyday negro psychology than any man I ever met. Inside of ten minutes, the old school- house was in an uproar, and the truth was coming to the surface in large chunks. I can’t understand the Southern darky when he gets excited and talks fast, but Harry pieced the truth together, and here was =e c what he found: When the argument between Clem and Lightnin’ over the axes began to look like a fight, Clem whipped out of his pocket two small bits of carved hardwood on a red % : It all became clear. ness with which Harry took them. string and dangled them in Lightnin’s face. Whereupon Lightnin’ had stabbed him. Those two little hardwood nuts were charmed — sorcered! Clem confessed that they had descended to him from his grandfather; and they were unquestionably African. “Clem, I thought you were a deacon in your church,” Harry said. “Yes, suh, Ah sho’ am!” Clem declared. “Yet you tote these sorcered charms around in your pocket. How come, Clem?” Clem didn’t know how come. He had _ been toting them around for the last two, three days. And it wasn’t till later that I recalled that he had been toting them approximately ever since that quivery, spooky whistle of Alvina Barnes had first been heard. “But you knew they were sorcered,” Harry insisted. “Yes, judge, Ah knowed it.” “And you deliberately held up those charms at Lightnin’ when you knew a fight __Was goin’ to start?” ** Ah—Ah reckon Ah did, judge.” What impressed me most at that point was not the sorcered charms but the serious- ARGOSY-ALLSTORY WEEKLY, - ' “Tn other words,” Harry said in a stern voice, “you used those charms to try to cast a bad spell on Lightnin’. Well, the whole damned case is reversed, sheriff. Lightnin’ becomes the plaintiff and Clem becomes the defendant.” I wanted-to know how he figured that out. Didn’t Clem have marks of assault and battery all over his chest and neck? “That isn’t the point,” Harry said briskly. “ From a black man’s point of View, these two charms are a lot more dangerous than a knife. Any one of these boys will swear that those charms are a more dangerous weapon than a six-shooter.” “Yes, suh, judge!” a chorus affirmed him. ‘It’s the first time we’ve had trouble of this kind,” Harry explained to me, “ since a sorceress came to Vingo from Apalacha- cola seven years ago. The fellow who was sheriff up there before you, Buck, ran her out of Vingo. You’d better see who’s making this trouble. As for you, Clem, I’m finding you guilty of deliberate assault and battery, and it’s goin’ to cost you just ten dollars and costs or thirty days on the road. J reckon it figures out a little this side of twenty-five dollars.” I paid Clem’s fine and drove my little party back to Vingo, wondering all the way who had started this sorcery business. As I say, I didn’t suspect Alvina Barnes until a long time afterward. But I made a canvass of the negro quarters at Vingo and found two sorcerers and a sorceress; and I gave them till noon to be out of town. My closest friends among the negroes, warned me that I was taking my life in my hands, using such rough language on them; and that they would sorcer me proper. But they. went. It seemed to me that all I heard was “sorcer”’ and “sorcery.” The quarters buzzed with it. And that night and for many nights thereafter there was trouble. There were fist fights and knife fights and family rows. And one night, when I sauntered over to the quarters, not one man was to be seen. I followed a trail of many feet which led beside the old King’s Highway to the river, and in a little clearing I came upon them, oO com (E@) Ebooks