Softly, oh, so softly, Jeff's fingers turned the doorknob; gently, very gently, he drew the door itself half open; with the whispered admonition “Now, boy, now!” he swiftly but silently propelled Red Hoss, face forward, through the opening.
The Reverend Grasty stood waiting for the first words of the hymn to uprise from below him in a mighty swing. But from that unseen gathering down in front a very different sound came—a sound that was part a gasp of stupefaction, part a groan of abject distress. For the rest saw what the minister, as yet, did not see, by reason of his back being to the wall, where-as they faced it. They saw, floating against a background of black nothingness, a face limned in wavering pulsing lines of a most ghastly witch fire—nose and brow and chin and ears, wide mouth and glaring eyes, all wreathed about by that unearthly graveyard glow.
In that same flash of space Jeff Poindexter's hand had found the switch, set in the wall hard by the door casing, and had flipped the lights on. And now before them they beheld the form of the late Red Hoss Shackleford, his face seamed with livid greyish streaks, his garments all adrip, his arms outspread, his eyes like balls of flame, and his lips agleam with a palish blush, as though he had hither come direct from feasting on the hot coals of Perdition, without stopping to wipe his mouth. And then he opened that fearsome scupper of a mouth, and in a voice thickened and muddy—the proper voice for one who had lain for days in river ooze—he spoke the words:
“Here I is!” That was all he said. But that was enough.
It is believed that the Reverend Grasty was the first to move. Naturally he would be among the first, anyhow, he being the nearest of all to the risen form of the dead. He spread himself like an eagle and soared away from there; and when he lit, he lit a-running. Indeed, so high did he jump and so far outward that, though he started with a handicap, few there were who beat him in the race to the door.
Smooth Crumbaugh was one who beat him. Smooth feared neither man nor beast nor devil; but ha'nts were something else! He took a flying start, spuming the floor as he rose up over chairs and their recent occupants. Without checking speed, he clove a path straight through the centre of Sister Eldora Menifee's refreshment department; and on the stairway, going down, he passed the Most High Grand Outer Guardian as though the Most High Grand Outer Guardian had been standing still.
It was after he struck the sidewalk, though, and felt the solid bricks beneath his winged feet, that Smooth really started to move along. For some ten furlongs he had strong competition, but he was leading by several lengths when he crossed Yazoo Street, eight blocks away, with the field tailing out behind him for a matter of half a mile or so.
I might add that Sister Rosalie Shackleford, hampered though she was by skirts and the trappings of woe, nevertheless finished inside the money herself.
Jefferson Poindexter, calm, smiling and debonair, picked his way daintily among overthrown chairs and through a litter of hats, helmets, umbrellas and swords across the hall to Ophelia, who, helpless with shock, was plastered, prone and flat on the floor, close up against the side wall, where Smooth had flung her as he launched himself in flight.
Right gallantly Jeff raised her to her feet and supported her; and right mainfully she clung to him, inclosing herself, all distracted and aquiver, within the circle of his comforting arms. Already they were almost alone and within a space of moments would be entirely so, except for one fat auntie, lying in a dead faint under the wrecked snack stand.