“Naw,” Mustard rejoined vehemently. “Marse Tom gimme dat cawnet-hawn, an’ he’s powerful proud of it. He say he’d know de sound of dat cawnet in Chinee.”
Their argument ended right there, for suddenly from a window in the second story of the jail two voices screeched like a calliope:
“Murder-r! He’p! Come here, eve’ybody!”
Yells and whoops and screams and wails came from Solly and Smart who realized that Mustard and Pap had escaped and who saw the reward for their capture slipping away, leaving themselves in durance.
At the first screech, Rogers, the constable, who was sitting on a near-by door-step, ran to the jail and arrived just in time to empty his pistol at the fleeing forms of the three negroes as they passed under the last electric street light, and ran onto the protection levee at the river.
Then the constable hastened back to the jail and became the recipient of some surprising misinformation from the wailing negroes in the prison. In an eager antiphony, they recited what they knew, snatching the sentences from each other’s lips:
“Dem two niggers whut got away robbed de sto’ at Tickfall——”
“An’ kilt dat Mister Skull whut owned it——”
“De feller whut blows de cawnet-hawn done it——”
“He brag his brags dat he done kilt mo’ coons dan he kin count——”