“My Gawd, Hitchey!” Goldie screamed as she pressed through the crowd and grabbed the ropes by Hitch. “Look out fer dat nigger! He’ll git you hypped, an’ he cain’t unhyp you!” Then she turned and ran toward Tickfall like a yellow streak.
“Dat’s right, sister!” Conko Mukes bellowed as he watched her departure. “You don’t ’pear to be anxious to stay an’ see it done, but dat’s yo’ Uncle Conko’s little game! Dis here Hitch Diamond is gwine to sleep, an’ I don’t keer ef he never wakes up!”
As Conko sat down Hitch arose and smiled at the crowd.
“I never goes to sleep till I wins!” he bawled. “Conko is done made a miscue ’bout who is gwine take a nap. I’s de real old fat mammy whut’ll sing li’l’ baby Conko to sleep!”
Thereupon Conko Mukes performed a stunt which had never before been witnessed in a pugilistic ring, and which Conko in his subsequent career never attempted to duplicate.
He sprang toward Hitch Diamond, sparred for a moment, clinched, and shrieked like a calliope:
“Sleep! Sleep! Sleep, Hitch Diamond—go to sleep!”
This wonderful performance scared Hitch Diamond nearly out of his wits.
He broke from the clinch, smashed Conko against the ropes, and then began hooking and driving all sorts of blows against him, tearing himself out of Conko’s frenzied clinches, punching him, shoving him against the ropes again and again until the cypress saplings to which the ropes were attached bowed beneath the storm and weight of human contestants.
Through it all, like some mighty chant, the stentorian voice of Conko rumbled the dreadful malediction: