“Spread out, men! Cover the yard! Look everywhere!”
Hitch Diamond turned his back on that crowd and started in the opposite direction at full speed, running in the dark, with no notion where he was going. He got an idea when he plunged into the mill-pond up to his neck.
“Dis here is sloppy wuck!” he grunted as he climbed out of there.
He began to skirt the edge of the pond, and found to his alarm that he was following the curve which led him back to the lighted mill. He heard the sound of running feet; a flash-light shot its rays across the mill-pond, and Hitch departed from the water’s edge with all possible speed.
He found one of the long alleys between the lumber piles in the yard and sprinted down the sawdust trail at a lively gait.
Glancing back over his shoulder, he found the entrance of the alley filled with men who were coming toward him with incredible swiftness. The employees of the mill were familiar with all the main thoroughfares and by-paths of the yard, while Hitch had to feel his way to some extent, and his progress was necessarily slow.
A revolver spat fire and lead at him, a fusillade followed, a big lumber-stack rose like a mountain before the frightened negro, and he fell against it with both hands outspread.
He found something that he had never noticed in a lumber yard before—that strips of wood were thrust between the layers of lumber to give a circulation of air and prevent the lumber from rotting.
These little gaps made it possible for him to climb, and he scrambled up the pile like a big baboon and lay on the top, panting like the exhaust of an engine.
His pursuers passed the pile on the path below, and Hitch began to breathe easier.