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Read Ebook: More E. K. Means Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That This Second Book Like the First Needs No Title by Means E K Eldred Kurtz Kemble E W Edward Windsor Illustrator
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Ebook has 3280 lines and 89070 words, and 66 pages
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DIADA, DAUGHTER OF DISCORD 1
GETTING READY TO DIE 70
A MASCOT JINX 104
MESSING WITH MATRIMONY 126
A CORNER IN PICKANINNIES 194
IDLE DREAMS 230
THE GIFT OF POWER 255
OWNER OF DOODLE-BUG 276
EVERY POSE A PICTURE 300
D.D. 346
Diada, Daughter of Discord
A BRAND FROM THE BURNING
Diada was a sight.
She stood on the Gaitskill lawn motionless as a brown wooden statue, gazing like a homesick child toward the purple haze which hung over the Little Moccasin Swamp. Her hips bulged out behind like a bustle; her stomach protruded in front like the chest-protector of a fat baseball-catcher; her back curved above her hips and bent at her shoulders, giving her the appearance of a hunchback; and as for her face--well, the children of Tickfall took one look at that mug and hiked for home, howling at every step; the pious took a look and crossed themselves; the ungodly "cussed"; and it is rumored that some negroes turned white.
Every feature of that face was a horror.
Her head was covered with a mat of coarse hair growing down on a sloping forehead almost to her eyebrows; her eyes were immensely large and protruding, and had the wolf's vicious glint and surly shifting glance; her nose was no longer adorned, according to the custom of her native land, by having long thorns and splinters of bone thrust through it, but it had suffered grievously from this devotion to fashion, and was now a battered daub of a snout which looked as though it had been run through a sausage-grinder before it was smeared on her face; her ears had been so deformed by carrying heavy iron rings that the lobes hung down nearly to her shoulders and flapped at every motion of her head like the loose-hung ears of the hound; and her mouth was a cavernous monstrosity--great, horrid, horselike teeth protruding outward, and covered with thick, repulsive lips which curled back when she spoke or grinned until the blue gums of the upper teeth were revealed.
Colonel Tom Gaitskill was among the ungodly who gazed upon this horrific vision with profane utterance. He turned to the tall, weather-tanned man who sat beside him on the porch and spoke:
Captain Lemuel Manse broke into a loud laugh. He looked at Diada and laughed again; then he looked at Gaitskill's horrified countenance and laughed louder.
"I'm afraid you have none of the spirit of the Christian missionary, Tom," Manse finally managed to say.
"If the Christian missionaries in the Pacific Islands are engaged in saving the immortal souls of she-baboons like that," Gaitskill snorted, pointing to Diada, "I'll never give 'em another cent--not a dang cent!"
"Diada was made in the image of God, Tom," Manse snickered.
"Why do you ask?" Captain Manse inquired.
"My eyes are getting sore looking at that heathen cannibal--that's why I ask," Gaitskill replied. "When are you going to take her away from here?"
"Tom," Manse said in a voice of mock sadness and reproof, "I'm surprised at you. It's been five years since I was a guest in your hospitable home, and in less than two hours after my arrival you inquire the time of my departure! Shame!"
"Keep your eye on that nigger!" Gaitskill said with a chuckle as he pointed to a giant black who came through a side gate into the lawn.
With the free stride of the athlete, Hitch Diamond, the immense, coal-black prize-fighter, came across the grass, his eyes following the winding galleries of the house, apparently in search of Mr. Gaitskill.
He came face to face with Diada before he noticed her; he gazed with popping eyeballs; his pugilistic courage and his giant strength oozed out at his bootheels, and his iron jaw dropped down and wigwagged like the loose under lip of a plug horse sleeping in the sun.
"My Gawd!" he exclaimed.
He slunk slowly backward until he got some thorny shrubbery between himself and Diada, and then his ponderous feet beat a wild tattoo of panicky retreat upon the sodded turf.
"There, now!" Gaitskill exclaimed. "Hitch Diamond has given an outward and visible manifestation of my inward and spiritual emotions. Look at the wench! She hasn't moved a muscle of her body for twenty minutes! Can't you get her to do something?"
"Sure!" Captain Manse answered, feeling in his pocket and bringing forth a ten-cent piece. "Have you got a dime in your pocket?"
Gaitskill produced the silver piece and held it out.
"No," Manse said, "I don't want to touch it. Throw your money out there in the grass!"
The two men tossed their coins out into the thick Bermuda grass, and Manse gave a sharp whistle.
Diada turned and trotted toward him like a dog.
"Hunt, Diada!" Manse exclaimed, pointing to the grass. "Hunt!"
Diada wheeled and made a wide circle around that part of the lawn; then traveling in a steady trot, she made ever narrowing circles, eyes searching the ground. Suddenly she stopped, picked up a silver dime, placed it to her nose, gave a snort of disgust, and tossed the coin aside.
"That was your money," Manse explained. "She'll find mine in a minute."
Even as he spoke, Diada pounced upon the silver piece and came trotting up to the porch and placed it in her master's hand.
"Ah, I see!" Gaitskill exclaimed comprehendingly. "I have spent my life hunting for my collar-buttons, shirt-studs, hat, and socks. So have you. So has every man. And you've brought this cannibal belle to this country with you to help you find yours!"
"No, Tom," Captain Manse laughed. "I bought Diada to save her life. My yacht stopped at one of those little islands in the Pacific Ocean which has about a thousand inhabitants--there's no end of such islands out there. The cannibal chief came on board with Diada and offered to sell her to me."
"He explained that he had captured her from a neighboring tribe and had intended to eat her. I bought her for about eleven dollars, paying for her in red calico, brass beads, and some tinware. The cannibal chief put one of the tin buckets on his head for a hat and rowed away as happy as an angel with a crown upon his forehead and a harp within his hand."
Manse broke off and emitted a sharp whistle. Diada came to him on a trot.
Manse caught her left hand, pushed back the loose sleeve of her white dress, and bared her arm.
Gaitskill shuddered.
Just below her elbow was the slowly healing scar of a most horrible wound.
"My stars!" Gaitskill exclaimed. "That wound looks like it had been made by teeth!"
"That's where the old chief bit her to see if she was good to eat," Manse explained. "He said she was too tough."
Gaitskill glanced at Diada's face. The vicious, surly glint was gone from her eyes, and she gazed with a mild, pleading look upon the man who had saved her--the look of the dumb animal which has suffered and shows gratitude for relief. Gaitskill underwent a change of heart. He rose to his feet and stood facing them both.
"Lem," he said, "if that cannibal chief had showed me that wound I would have bought Diada if she had cost me a thousand dollars."
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