A few minutes later Vinegar Atts entered the Hen-Scratch saloon, dragged his lead-weighted feet over the sand-covered floor, and fumblingly spread out a copy of the paper upon the table before the eyes of Skeeter Butts, Hitch Diamond, and Figger Bush.
“Read dat, niggers!” he bellowed in awe-stricken tones. “Read an’ prepare fer de end!”
Skeeter Butts started to read the article aloud, but long before he had finished his voice was trembling until he could hardly enunciate the awful words. He stopped, placed his quivering hands over his face, tried to rub the stiffness out of the muscles of his lips and cheeks, and sighed:
“You finish it fer us, Revun! Dis is awful!”
When Vinegar Atts concluded, the three negroes groaned aloud.
“Whar did you git dat paper, Revun?” Hitch Diamond inquired, his giant form shaking with the palsy.
“Isaiah got it from Sheriff Flournoy,” Atts replied.
“Ef Sheriff Flournoy an’ Dr. Moseley is tuck it up, dar ain’t no hopes fer us,” Skeeter Butts lamented. “Dem white mens do bizzness wid niggers ’thout no pity. De pest-wagon is comin’ fer us all!”
Into each mind came the instant recollection of that dreadful time, thirty years before, when the yellow-fever had invaded Tickfall, leaving barely enough of the living to bury the dead; when two-wheeled carts had rumbled through the negro settlements of Tickfall at midnight, and the cart-driver had bellowed through a cloth saturated with carbolic acid and wrapped around his mouth: “Bring out your corpse!”
“Whu-whu-whut is ancestors?” Hitch Diamond stammered, glaring at the newspaper. “Whut kind of new ailment is dat?”