Then Vinegar Atts walked up and laid his hand on Skeeter’s shoulder.
“Looky here, Skeeter!” he bellowed. “All us niggers is losin’ our dollars on dis here game! I b’lieves dat dis game has been fixed!”
“’Tain’t so, Elder,” Skeeter denied tearfully. “I done bet fawty dollars on dis game, an’ I’s gwine lose eve’y cent of dat an’ ten dollars dat my gal bet!”
“Whut ails dis Tickfall team?” Vinegar wanted to know.
“Dem Sawtowners done got de hoodoo sign on ’em,” Skeeter explained. “I tried to bust de hoodoo when us wus at bat, but it cain’t be did.”
Vinegar shook his fat fist at the face of Butts.
“I tells you dis, solemn an’ specific, Skeeter: dese here cullud pussons is bet deir few money on yo’ recommend. Dey don’t figger on no hoodoo or no nothin’! Ef you done gone an’ fixed dis game, all I gotter say is, you better unhoodoo our team befo’ dis crowd of coons make up deir minds whut dey gwine do to you fer sellin’ us out to de Sawtowners!”
Vinegar Atts walked away with a majestic air, and Skeeter Butts sat down on the ground beside Coco Ferret, wiping the copious sweat from his face.
“O Lawd,” he prayed, “ef I only but had a jinx!”
“Whut am a jinx, Skeeter?” Coco inquired.
“It’s a cross-eyed female woman,” Skeeter declared, looking at Coco hopefully. But Coco’s eyes were round as a buckshot and straight, perfectly straight.
With a groan Skeeter placed his face in his two hands and mourned:
“We’s gwine lose all our dollars, Coco--dar ain’t no hope!”
“Whut did Vinegar Atts specify de niggers wus gwine do to you?” Coco asked.
“He ain’t say,” Skeeter told her, speaking from a heart filled with misery and dreadful foreboding. “I ’speck dey’s gwine hang me.”
A wild yell from the Sawtown rooters caused him to glance up listlessly. The slaughter had begun again. With another groan he dropped his head and gave himself up to deep thought.
A sharp crack of hickory against horsehide--Skeeter looked up and saw the Tickfall center-fielder fumbling with the ball, picking it up and dropping it three times, while four hilarious Sawtown men came in and scored.
Skeeter rose to his feet, dusted the seat of his duck trousers, and said to Coco:
“Little gal, you set right here till I gits back. Dar ain’t no cross-eyed gals in dis whole town, but I’m gotter bust dat hoodoo sign onless I hankers to die, which ain’t so. Is you willin’ to he’p me?”