In the Delta: The Story of a Man-Hunt

PRINT THIS April 24, 1919.
ALTERATION. — THE The reason I have not written you for several clays is because we have been all upset with a ‘nigger chase.’
Sunday Paul and I went out to Fitzhugh plantation for dinner, and walked home in the afternoon. It is only six miles, and such a lovely country road, though only Ethiopians walk on the country roads here. If we had proceeded on our hands, we could scarcely have received more stares and comment! Just as we got into the house Mrs. Clara telephoned that Gardner’s murderer had ‘taken to the woods’ near Fitzhugh, and a chase was on. The proper thing seemed to be to get into our car and go racing back to Fitzhugh. We found the road crowded with cars going the same way.
I believe I wrote you about the Gardner murder, which was committed when I first came down here: a man from Blaine, riding along the road with a friend, was killed by a negro who had never seen him before. ‘Will jes’ felt biggoty an’ took a shot at the car,’ the negro’s companion said. That was about a month ago, and several rewards have been offered for the negro’s arrest.
Shortly after we started home Sunday, Dr. Sims of Blaine, who knew this negro, Will Lane, had seen him walking along the railroad just beyond Fitzhugh, headed south toward Blaine. It seems that negro criminals, instead of leaving the country, almost always go ‘back home,’ trusting their friends to hide them. Dr. Sims had his wife and little girl in the car and did not dare shoot for fear Lane was armed. He turned around and drove to Fitzhugh, stopped Mr. Tom, who was on his way to the afternoon train, and asked him if he was going away.
‘Just to get a paper,’ said Mr. Tom, and proceeded about his business.
The worthy doctor was too excited to think clearly. When Mr. Tom came back, he asked him whether he had a rifle. Mr. Tom said that, he had.
‘Got any buckshot?’ demanded Dr. Sims.
‘Plenty,’ said Mr. Tom, in his incurious fashion.
After all this parley the doctor told him that the man who killed Gardner was ‘up the road.’ But it was n’t. until the doctor’s wife, sitting in the car, called out, ‘He’s taken to the woods,’ that Mr. Tom realized that Lane had been in sight (and within gunshot) for a full fifteen minutes. Of course, if he had known, the trouble would have been over. Mr. Tom is ‘the best shot in the county,’ and ‘has a way with the niggers.’ Dead or alive, Lane would have been ‘stopped.’ But by that time Lane was in the tangled woods, a quarter of a mile beyond the railroad track.
Just before we reached Fitzhugh Paul and I met Mr. Tom and Mr. Vick Burnett ‘ on the trail,’with bloodhounds from the convict farm at Parchman.
‘Stay with Mrs. Clara if I don’t get back to-night,’ Mr. Tom called to us.
He and Burnett had the only saddles on the place. Paul was disappointed. Five minutes sooner, and he, instead of Burnett, would have ridden to the hunt with Mr. Tom. How thankful I was for those five minutes!
The whole country seemed to congregate at Fitzhugh, and those who did not congregate telephoned. Men hurried in and out of the house, with rifles and shotguns, and rode across the lawn on mules or horses. There was much excitement, conjecture, and general talk, with Dr. Sims going from one group to another, telling just how Lane kept looking at him to see whether he was recognized, and by what signs he recognized Lane ‘beyond doubt,’ and what he would have done if he had not had Mrs. Sims and Sissy in the car.
Mrs. Clara was the one calm person on the plantation. It seems that Mr. Tom always takes charge of such expeditions. He is tireless, unexcitable, and utterly fearless, and he has a strange, intuitive knowledge about negroes; they say he ‘senses’ what they are going to do next.
Paul and I settled down to be bodyguard at Fitzhugh, for it grew dusk and then dark, and no Mr. Tom. Someone telephoned that they had found the trail.
‘That’s all we may know for a week,’ said Mrs. Clara.
About ten o’clock Mr. Tom telephoned from Wildwood plantation, away back from the railroad, that the trail was hot and they might come up with Lane at any time.
Two hours later Mr. Tom telephoned from Cole’s. They had lost the trail in the middle of the road and could not do anything more until daylight. He wanted Paul to come for him with the car. Cole is the tenant on Mr. Tom’s ‘little place,’ on the road to his ‘old place.’ There is a long, straight road from Fitzhugh plantation to Drew, following the railroad. A mile from Drew the road to the ‘old place’ branches off to the east.
Paul and I dressed in a hurry, and went rushing through the night in the big yellow car, which is like a living thing, it is so easy and wise.
There were armed ‘ volunteers ’ at all the culverts and crossroads. We found three guards sitting on the little cement bridge over the branch a mile from Fitzhugh, and one of them called out, ‘Nothing doing,’ as we passed. Half a mile farther, a guard, nearly wild with excitement, stopped us. Will Lane had been there not three minutes before. He came up the track from the direction of Drew. Evidently he had made a circle through the woods and regained the railroad; but the sight of the crowd at Whitney had turned him back to look for a road that would enable him to circle Whitney without getting too far from the railway. He does not know this part of the country (Blaine is nearly twenty miles below Drew) and he had to stick to the tracks or run the risk of losing himself completely. The guard shouted to him to stop. He ran down the embankment, away from the road, and disappeared in the brush. They heard him crashing along up the right of way. We passed him between the bridge and the next guard, we later learned, for the bridge guard saw him try to cross the branch on the trestle after we passed, called to him to stop, and then watched him deliberately turn around, walk off the trestle and disappear in the woods along the branch. Not a shot was fired after him. Excellent reasons were given, but the fact remains that six of the dominant race, with rifles, did not stop one hunted nigger. Of course, he has a ‘desperate’ reputation since the murder; but the loquacious reasons for the ‘getaway’ never referred to this.
The guard begged us to ‘get Mr. Tom,’ and this we proceeded to do at rather a reckless pace. Mr. Tom roused the man with the bloodhounds, who proved to be a trusty (colored) from the convict farm at Parchman. The dogs were nice little sleek brown beasts, gentle as kittens, and so pretty that it was impossible to visualize them as baying bloodhounds.
Mr. Tom was startled to find me in the car, and intimated that this was ‘no place for a lady’; but there was nothing to do except take me along. We went back to the place where Lane had left the railroad, and the dogs took the trail at once, starting unhesitatingly up the branch.
‘He’ll look for a good place to cross, I believe,’ said Mr. Tom; ‘then go over and come back to the railroad along the far side, unless we are too close to him. That nigger won’t get away from the tracks if he can help it.’
Quite a little procession went stumbling across the wet field, led by the graceful little dogs, sniffing along, with the negro in his stripes holding the reins and encouraging them; then came Mr. Tom and Paul and I; and behind and beside us a dozen armed volunteers, among them one of the bridge guards, still explaining, sotto voce, why he did n’t shoot.
The stars seemed as large as they do in the desert, and a great red moon was half-way up the sky. You could see for miles and miles by its white, deceptive light. An owl hooted along the branch now and then, and made everybody jump. About half a mile from the tracks Mr. Tom, Paul, and I stopped. We were sure the dogs would cross and come back on the other side in a few minutes. While we waited, Mr. Tom reminisced in his slow drawl about ‘
‘And that was a real chase, too,’ he said. ‘The first day we ran that nigger, his trail led to the cabin of a nigger named Ray. Beyond Ray’s we could n’t find a trace of it, so we decided he had got a lift from there. I told Ray, —
‘“Now, the best thing you can do is tell all you know. It may go hard with you anyway, but your only chance is to tell the truth.”
‘He said, “Yes, suh, boss, I sho’ will tell all I knows.”
‘He was scared to death. That was a nasty shooting and everybody was stirred up. Ray told his story without any hesitation. Filly, the nigger who killed Kutner, had come to his cabin, he said, but he did n’t want to have anything to do with him and told him to get out. Then Filly pulled a gun, according to Ray, and ordered food, quick. With the gun pointed at him, Ray gave him some cornbread and meat and a “drink of coffee.” Then, Ray said, Martin, another nigger, came along on a horse. He stopped outside the cabin and whistled. Filly got up behind and they rode away.
‘Martin lived near Ray and we got hold of him in a few minutes and questioned him. He insisted he had n’t seen Filly since the murder, and said he and Ray were always having trouble. We whipped him till he could n’t stand up, but while we were whipping him he kept screaming that he did n’t take Filly away. Then we filled him up with water till he lost his senses, but he stuck to his story.
‘Finally I went to Ray’s wife, who had been hiding in the cabin, and asked her about it. She said she had n’t seen Filly, and swore he had n’t been at the house. I took her out in the yard and made Ray tell his story before her.
Then we began to whip her. She yelled that she would “tell it,” and began to give the story she had heard Ray tell. She had it almost right, but there was just enough difference to prove she was lying to save herself and trying to repeat what Ray had said.
’I told the crowd I did n’t believe Martin had helped Filly, and that Ray had made up his story because he thought he had to tell something to save his neck. I did n’t want any more to do with it and came home.
‘We never did get hold of Filly. We finally struck his trail again. Someone saw him drop off a train forty miles away. We carried the hounds down there on a flat car and followed the trail for a week, but we lost him out in the hills. I’d like to get my hands on that nigger, just, to find out how he got away from here. He was at Ray’s cabin, of course, but I’m convinced it was while they were in the field. He may have stopped somebody passing there who did n’t know him and begged a ride, but more likely he was helped. I’d certainly like to know who carried him away.’
I wanted to know whether anything happened to Martin and Ray.
‘The crowd let Ray off with a whipping,’ said Mr. Tom, ‘but they hung Martin.’
The owl screeched and I shivered. Mr. Tom suggested that we go back to the car. We found Burnett waiting there. He was tired. He and Mr. Tom had trailed all the evening, a hot trail across Wildwood plantation to the Sunflower River. There they found a negro who had put Lane over the river. Lane told him who he was, after he was on the other side. He had secured a bottle of turpentine some way and sat on the bank rubbing turpentine on his feet. (That is supposed to destroy the scent.) Lane told his ferryman that the dogs were after him, and, according to the negro, asked for a gun and a mule. Mr. Tom thought he might have asked for the mule; but if he asked for a gun, it was to give the impression that he was unarmed.
‘He had a gun to kill Gardner, and he must have known he would need it again.’
Soon after he crossed the river the trail disappeared. At four o’clock we all went back to Fitzhugh. It was gray dawn, with fading stars, and away up the branch the barking of dogs marked the progress of the chase. The hounds do not bark, of course, but all the dogs they meet do. We dropped into bed, and were asleep almost before we knew it. The bloodhounds from Crystal Springs, supposedly the best in the state, were expected in the morning.
‘Keep him moving all night, get fresh dogs on him in the morning, and it’s done,’ said Mr. Tom.
Yesterday morning one of the volunteers reported that they had followed a fresh trail along the branch all night. Once they actually saw Lane in a lot, trying to catch a mule,‘but we did n’t shoot for fear of killing the mule.’ This was accepted as perfectly legitimate.
The hounds from Crystal Springs did not come yesterday, but they got fresh dogs from Parchman and went on. All yesterday Paul and Mr. Tom were in the woods along Sunflower, and the trail zigzagged back and forth, now up the river, now down.
‘That buck’s worth trailing,’ said Mr. Tom.
Paul and Mr. Tom got back to Fitzhugh in the evening, and Paul was ready to go home for a good sleep, leaving other zealots to follow the hounds.
Mr. Tom came in town early this morning, bringing lots of news. Someone had taken Lane in a car to Ruleville, six miles beyond Drew, on the way to Blaine. That was about noon yesterday, but he had left such a complicated trail that the dogs did not reach the place where he was picked up till late last evening.
At Ruleville Lane went to the home of a negro family he had known for years. Only the woman was at home. He asked for something to eat, and she gave him a good meal, which he bolted. Then he took to the woods again. He had been twenty-four hours without food or rest. As soon as the woman’s husband came home, she told him Lane had been there and she had fed him. He reported it at once to his ‘boss,’ knowing the trail would eventually be followed to his cabin, and consequences would be dire if he was found to have been ‘harboring.’ The ‘boss’ finally reached Mr. Tom over long-distance, and last night the dogs were taken to Ruleville on the train and carried to the house of Lane’s friends, where they picked up the trail. In the woods they came on the place under some bushes where Lane had slept for several hours in the afternoon; then the trail led straight back into the canebrake — heavy, slow going for everybody. This afternoon they were in the woods behind Doddsville, the next station to Blaine. That was Gardner’s home town, and the whole place has turned out.
‘It’s their hunt now,’ Mr. Tom says; and he and Paul are peacefully at work shingling the kitchen porch at Fitzhugh. ‘They’ll have him by morning. It would have been better for that nigger to have been caught up here where we are n’t so excited.’

I try to tell this tale without confusing it by my impressions, but I am afraid it is an untidy piece of reporting. There were many sidelights. For instance, the woman from Blaine who stopped at Fitzhugh in her car to learn the progress of the hunt.

‘They’ll get him, and I hope they torture him a couple of hours before they hang him,’ she said.

The sheriff of this county said to some men from Blaine, ‘If we catch him up here I’ll ’phone you all and bring him down on the train. You can meet me and overpower me at Doddsville.’

MR. TOM.—We can’t let biggoty niggers get away with things like this. If we do, no one will be safe on the roads.

JIMMY (age six).—Dirty nigger gonna get his if Daddy has to chase him a week.

MR. DERMOTT. — If we could trail him all day to-day and all night, and catch him in the morning, we’d have had a good chase.

VICK BURNETT. — Deer-huntin’ has its excitement, but there’s nothin’ as excitin’ as chasin’ a man. He’s worth outwittin’.

Wednesday morning.
Paul drove up then, having come into town for Paris green. He wanted me to go out to Fitzhugh with him, and of course I went. It was a hot, sleepy day, and I was fidgety. ‘Nigger chases’ get on your nerves. I seem to be getting my higher education in the practical aspects of the race-question, and it’s wearing business.
I found Mr. Tom deep in the construction of the new kitchen porch where the churning can be done in coolness and peace. Jimmy, little Paul, Billy, and the baby were assisting, and all the tools disappeared all the time. Rose, one of the field negroes, was whining nearby. Across the railroad from the plantation house there is a row of cabins, in which a good many of the croppers live. One of them is Dick Washington, who has a wife named Maria. But ‘jes’ this summer’ he is also ‘living with’ Rose, to Maria’s great annoyance.
Yesterday Maria was evidently irritated to ‘the point beyond which,’and ‘stuck a knife in Rose’—in her thigh, I believe, and not very far in. Rose came to Mr. Tom, appealing for justice. She insisted that he ‘ heah de story in private.’ Finally Mr. Tom threw down his hammer and went around the corner of the house with her. A moment later we saw Rose limping across the lot to the commissary, with Mr. Tom following her. She turned around with such a desperate face and sniffled,—
‘Please, please, suh!’
‘Go on,’ said Mr. Tom briefly.
‘What’s the matter with Rose?’ I asked Mrs. Clara.
‘I guess Tom is going to give her some liniment for her hip,’ Mrs. Clara replied, and winked at Paul.
Presently Rose came dragging out of the commissary, and Mr. Tom resumed his carpentering.
‘I don’t want to hear another word out of you!’ he said to Rose.
‘You won’t, suh,’she promised heartily.
Jimmy danced up and down.
‘Rose got a whipping! Rose got a whipping! Rose got a whipping!’ he taunted.
Mr. Tom has a reputation for unusual fairness to his negroes.

They caught Lane this afternoon, just outside Itta Bena. A negro discovered the fugitive hiding near his cabin, and told his ‘boss,’ who ‘stopped ’ Lane and turned him over to the sheriff of Sunbriar County. The ‘boss’ wanted the reward, Mr. Tom explained at length, and to get it, it was necessary to turn Lane over to an officer of the law instead of to the crowd. They have him in jail at Itta Bena, and the sheriff of this county is going after him tonight. Mr. Tom says he will notify the people of Blaine what train he is taking, and he will be ‘ met and overpowered ’ en route. ‘Then Lane won’t have long to worry.’ The hunters say they were on Lane’s trail, and would have come up with him in about half an hour.
While all the Parchman bloodhounds were out looking for Lane, three convicts at Parchman seized the opportunity to escape. Now people are trailing around the landscape with guns, looking for them.
I don’t suppose I can ever forget that broad field before dawn, and the screech-owl and the convict in stripes and the cocked guns and Mr. Tom’s low, pleasant voice, telling about the whipping and the torture and the screaming negro; or the little rustlings which might have been a desperate hunted thing creeping through the mud and the brush; or the six-foot strap of harness leather hanging in the commissary which, Mr. Tom told me, ’stung mighty sharp.’
‘Don’t be so squeamish, Beulah,’ Mrs. Clara advises; ‘remember you’ve come to live in the delta.’
With love,
BEULAH.