On the edge of the town, near the commissary store of the big sawmill, he found a most interesting ditch. It was about ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep, and was hard and dry at the bottom.
He leaned over to examine that ditch with great care. He seemed to want to remember it, to impress it on his mind. It may fairly be presumed that he did impress it on his mind. He fell into it on his head.
At midnight he was sleeping in it undisturbed. A little after midnight something happened. A man walking down the deep gulley stepped on Hitch Diamond and woke him up.
Hitch did not know how long he lay in the ditch after he had been awakened. He tried to remember where he was and how he got there, but he was half asleep and wholly confused, and the task was too great for him.
What woke him up completely was a long, shrill whistle, followed by four pistol-shots in rapid succession.
Hitch sprang to his feet and started running down the gulley, but he stumbled in the dark and fell headlong.
Three more pistol-shots cracked in the still night air, a man screamed, and Hitch sprang up and started again. He stumbled and fell a second time.
Over in the far end of the big lumber yard a second whistle shrilled, the call of a night watchman, followed by the _crack! crack! crack!_ of an automatic pistol. Then the big mill whistle roared its warning through the town and reverberated down the river and echoed from the woods, and deafened and terrified Hitch Diamond by its sinister call to the people of Sawtown to rouse themselves.
From the great number of little houses where the employees of the mill lived men issued forth, brandishing firearms and calling to each other as they ran. The electric lights in the mill flashed up, and in a brief time an immense crowd had congregated.
Hitch could hear their excited questions and answers.
“Commissary store has been robbed and night watchman killed!”
There was a moment of silence while the crowd considered this. Then a roar:
“Find them niggers and mob ’em! Come on!”
“Spread out, men! Cover the yard! Look everywhere!”
Hitch Diamond turned his back on that crowd and started in the opposite direction at full speed, running in the dark, with no notion where he was going. He got an idea when he plunged into the mill-pond up to his neck.