The Child by Tiger

He just lifted that little rifle in his powerful black hands as if it were a toy, without seeming to take aim, pointed it toward a strip of tin on which we had crudely marked out some bull’s-eye circles, and he simply peppered the center of the bull’s-eye, putting twelve holes through a space one inch square, so fast we could not even count the shots.

He never boxed with us, of course, but Randy had two sets of gloves, and Dick used to coach us while we sparred. There was something amazingly tender and watchful about him. He taught us many things—how to lead, to hook, to counter and to block—but he was careful to see that we did not hurt each other.

There was nothing that he did not know. We were all so proud of him. Mr. Shepperton himself declared that Dick was the best man he’d ever had, the smartest darkey that he’d ever known.

He went too softly, at too swift a pace. He was there upon you sometimes like a cat. Looking before us, sometimes, seeing nothing but the world before us, suddenly we felt a shadow at our backs and, looking up, would find that Dick was there. And there was something moving in the night. We never saw him come or go. Sometimes we would waken, startled, and feel that we had heard a board creak, the soft clicking of a latch, a shadow passing swiftly. All was still.

“Oh, young white fokes,” he would begin, moaning gently, “de dry bones in de valley. I tell you, white fokes, de day is comin’ when He’s comin’ on dis earth again to sit in judgment. He’ll put the sheep upon de right hand and de goats upon de left. Oh, white fokes, white fokes, de Armageddon day’s a comin’[.]”

Dick did not move. But suddenly the whites of his eyes were shot with red, his bleeding lips bared for a moment over the white ivory of his teeth. Lon smashed at him again. The Negro took it full in the face again; his hands twitched slightly, but he did not move. […] No more now, but there were those who saw it who remembered later how the eyes went red.

See it! My eyes were glued upon it. Squarely across the bare board table, blue-dull, deadly in its murderous efficiency, lay a modern repeating rifle. Beside it lay a box containing one hundred rounds of ammunition, and behind it, squarely in the center, face downward on the table, was the familiar cover of Dick’s worn old Bible.

He looked at me and whispered, “It’s Dick!” And in a moment, “They say he’s killed four people.” “With— ” I couldn’t finish. Randy nodded dumbly, and we both stared there for a minute, aware now of the murderous significance of the secret we had kept, with a sudden sense of guilt and fear, as if somehow the crime lay on our shoulders.

“This is no time for mob law! This is no case for lynch law! This is a time for law and order! Wait till the sheriff swears you in! Wait until Cash Eager comes! Wait— ”

He got no further. “Wait, hell!” cried someone. “We’ve waited long enough! We’re going to get that nigger!”

The mob took up the cry. The whole crowd was writhing angrily now, like a tormented snake.

Dick Prosser appeared in the doorway of the shack, deliberately took aim with his rifle, and shot the fleeing Negro squarely through the back of the head. Harris dropped forward on his face into the snow. He was dead before he hit the ground.

The men on horseback reached him first. They rode up around him and discharged their guns into him. He fell forward in the snow, riddled with bullets. The men dismounted, turned him over on his back, and all the other men came in and riddled him. They took his lifeless body, put a rope around his neck, and hung him to a tree. Then the mob exhausted all their ammunition on the riddled carcass.

We saw it, tried wretchedly to make ourselves believe that once this thing had spoken to us gently, had been partner to our confidence, object of our affection and respect. And we were sick with nausea and fear, for something had come into our lives we could not understand.

“Yeah— we!” he grunted. “We killed a big one! We— we killed a ba’r, we did! . . . Come on, boys,” he said gruffly. “Let’s be on our way!”

And, fearless and unshaken, untouched by any terror or any doubt, he moved away. And two white-faced nauseated boys went with him.

A symbol of man’s evil innocence, and the token of his mystery, a projection of his own unfathomed quality, a friend, a brother, and a mortal enemy, an unknown demon, two worlds together— a tiger and a child.