Clenching his iron fists, Hitch started at full speed. Ten men blocked the entrance before him. He went through them like an express-train, rolling some of them heels over head.
A man ran out of a by-path, and his head collided with Hitch’s fist like a punching-bag. As the negro ran another, another, and another came out of the little pathways, and each one went down like a bag of salt. Thus Hitch arrived at the main passageway.
Then he found every by-path pouring forth its quota of men, every thoroughfare contributed its number, and every man upon the lumber-piles ran toward one spot to illumine the passage with their dark lanterns.
“Lawdymussy!” Hitch sighed. “Ef I don’t mix wid ’em, dey’ll shoot me!”
To the end of their lives, those powerful, husky sawmill men told with awe-stricken voices of the fight of that giant black in the lumber yard. Hitch mixed with them. No man dared to use his pistol for fear of killing a friend. It was a hand-to-hand battle, one negro against forty mill-hands.
With a wild, insane bellow Hitch hurled himself upon that mob of cursing, shrieking, clambering, clutching men, and they set upon him like ravening wolves.
The confusion was terrible, the noise was deafening, the shout and the tumult of the battle echoing back from the mountains of lumber. Hitch alone seemed to have a clear idea of his battle—he knew that every man was against him. The others hindered each other, but Hitch knew that he was free to knock any nose and pound any head and butt any stomach.
The proximity of the lumber on each side of the thoroughfare was an aid to Hitch. When he hurled his mighty body into a crowd of his opponents, and they reeled back from the impact and struck the backs of their heads against the wood, it took them a few minutes to recover from the shock, while Hitch gave his attention to others.
His giant fists pounded heads as though they were egg-shells; his ponderous bare feet landed with mighty kicks in the stomachs and the backs of men; his long, iron arms whirled like the wings of a windmill, mowing them down, every man who was touched falling unconscious or helpless.
Four men clung to him like cockleburs to a sheep’s wool, trying to drag him down by their weight. Hitch scooped them up in his mighty arms and fell with their combined weight against a pile of lumber, crushing them and breaking their holds.