Skeeter gasped as he eyed the cruelest collection of manacles and shackles he had ever seen.
There was a pair of home-made wrought-iron handcuffs with a stiff iron bar a foot long to connect the bracelets instead of a chain. There was a pair of cumbersome leg-irons which were used a half century ago in Southern convict camps, but whose use is now prohibited. And there was something else which gave Skeeter a sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach merely to look at. It was a pair of trigger cuffs. Any attempt to loosen them by the wearer has the effect of tightening the bracelets while at the same time a needle trigger presses deeper and deeper into the flesh of the wrist until the captive is helpless with pain.
“When I was first elected sheriff, forty years ago, this stuff was in use, Skeeter. I won’t give you the keys to these manacles. If you get them on that coon he’ll certainly need me! You can telephone me at the house to-night after Deo the Diddle forks over that twenty-five plunks to you!”
Skeeter wrapped the hardware in a newspaper and trod on air as he walked back to the Hen-Scratch saloon. When he told the waiting crowd of his success and showed them the manacles the darkies had a jubilee and then waited with the impatience of children for the night to come.
The front row of seats was occupied that night by Skeeter Butts, Figger Bush, Vinegar Atts, Pap Curtain, Prince Total, Hitch Diamond, and a few others of that type who were smarting under the public revelations of the recording angel the night before.
The house was crowded to suffocation and the performance consisted of fortune-telling, feats of magic, singing, and dancing.
At last the time came for the Monarch of the Manacle to make good his boast that he could get out of any handcuff or leg-iron which the community could provide for his bonds.
Up to this time Deo had found it perfectly safe everywhere to offer to release himself from any handcuffs which the negroes could provide, for a handcuff was something which no negro possessed, and with all their barbaric love of jewelry it was an ornament which no darky cared to wear. When no manacles were supplied by the audience, Deo would then invite a committee to come upon the stage and examine his. He would present forty different kinds for their inspection and let them choose any sort to place upon his legs and wrists. As they were all familiar to Deo, well oiled and in good condition, he had no trouble in releasing himself.
But this time Deo Diddle was up against it!
Skeeter Butts was Sheriff John Flournoy’s “nigger.” And for that reason he was probably the only colored person in the South who could go to a sheriff and get the assortment of manacles which he now had wrapped in a newspaper and hidden under his seat.