Skeeter dismounted from the driver’s seat and opened the door in the rear of the ambulance. Hitch Diamond, Figger Bush, and the Reverend Vinegar Atts climbed out. They pulled a stretcher into view, and Skeeter laid hold upon it.
They tramped into the Hen-Scratch saloon like a quartette of pall-bearers, and walked to the pallet where Dazzle Zenor, the actress, now acting the part of a Red Cross nurse, had just completed a major operation upon the face and hands of Tick Hush. Tick was lifted upon the stretcher, carried to the ambulance and placed inside.
Skeeter tied a piece of yellow cloth a yard wide and two yards long to the door knob of the ambulance, and climbed back to the driver’s seat.
The four stretcher bearers walked solemnly beside the pest-wagon.
Every negro inhabitant of Dirty-Six crowded the sidewalks and watched this dreadful wagon go by. All the older ones recalled that fearful epidemic of yellow fever years before when this wagon had rolled along the streets at midnight, and a driver with muffled mouth, breathing through a cloth saturated with disinfectants, called aloud in sepulchral tones:
For the first time in thirty years, the pest-wagon was on the streets of Tickfall again. It was no longer a shiny, black vehicle, but was rusty, dusty, weather-beaten, and time-worn, more than ever suggestive of diseases and pestilence and sudden death.
As the stretcher bearers marched, they sang. The superb baritone of the Reverend Vinegar Atts rolled like an organ:
“Somebody buried in de graveyard, Somebody buried in de sea; Gwine to git up in de mawnin’ Shoutin’ de jubilee. If you git dare befo’ I do, Run an’ tell de Lawd I’m comin’, too. Oh! Somebody dyin’ on de mountain, Somebody dyin’ in de bed, Somebody gwine to rise like a fountain, Gwine to rise from de dead! Oh! If you git dar befo’ I do, Run an’ tell de Lawd I’m comin’, too!”
“Git back, niggers!” Hitch Diamond bellowed to the crowd when he saw they were disposed to follow. “Keep away! I got awders from de white folks!”
In front of the home of Vakey Vapp the ambulance came to a stop.
Vakey stepped out into the middle of her yard with plenty of fresh, untainted air around her.
“You tole me las’ night dat you wanted to deliver to Tick Hush a dyin’ message!” Skeeter exclaimed as he opened the door of the ambulance. “Come up close so you kin speak to him!”