“Bless Gawd!” Hitch Diamond bellowed fervently.
Deo Diddle then brought out a cot and set it in the middle of the stage. He threw down upon the floor a coil of rope many feet in length and addressed the audience:
“I wants about ten men to come up on dis flatform and tie me to dis cot. I offers to bet ten dollars I kin git loose in two minutes!”
“I takes dat bet, bully!” Skeeter Butts squealed as he sprang to his feet and climbed upon the platform.
“Me, too!” came a chorus of voices, and Vinegar Atts, Prince Total, Pap Curtain, Hitch Diamond, and a number of others who had been accused of various crimes and misdemeanors by Tella Tandy followed Skeeter to the stage.
They carefully examined the cot and rope. Then Deo Diddle stretched himself out upon it, lying flat upon the mattress with his feet together and his hands down at his sides. Vinegar Atts and Hitch Diamond passed the rope around and around him, crossing and crisscrossing it over his feet and body and neck until he was swathed like a mummy and apparently as helpless.
Then the committee climbed off the platform and left Deo to free himself in full view of the crowd.
Deo entertained the crowd for a minute by a mighty struggling and tugging and jerking and grunting, but all the while Deo’s right hand was resting upon a lateral bar under the cot which held the mattress taut. At the proper time Deo simply slipped this bar out of its fastening on one side of the cot; the mattress sagged down in the middle like a hammock, with the many coils of rope across Deo, but hardly touching his body.
Then Deo climbed from under the rope as easily as a pig slips through a gap in the fence and was free!
The shout of applause which greeted this performance almost lifted the roof, and amid the noise Deo and Tella quickly removed the cot so that the committee could not examine it again.