Hitch cautiously raised his head and elevated his face toward the sky, his nose wrinkled up like the front of a washboard. The airplane was far away. He slowly turned his head and saw Vinegar standing beside him with a bag of cotton waste in his hand. His eyes stuck out like the buttons on an overcoat, and he rose from the ground and started for Vinegar with a bellow of rage which had made him famous in the pugilistic ring in the South. As if in answer to a signal every negro rose from the ground and started a free-for-all fight, a rough-and-tumble affair which is the delight of the darky and generally does no great harm. Men and women pushed and pounded at each other, and grunted, and slapped faces, and wrestled, bouncing chunks of wood off of each other’s heads and going after each other’s skin like they were working by the job and wanted to get it all off right away. Then a few not participating in the scrap glanced up and pointed, exclaiming: “Look! Look dar!” Far up in the sunset sky, getting smaller and smaller as it climbed, the beautiful airplane passed into the purple and gold shadows of the closing day and disappeared from their sight. There was an awed silence which was broken after a moment by the snarling voice of Pap: “Whar is dat Red Cutt gone at?” “He’s done gone!” dozens of voices answered. “Did he hab our money on him?” “Yep, he tuck it all!” Vinegar howled. “I said I’d make dat nigger fly!” Pap exclaimed. “An’ now he has done flew!” “De way he flew is de only way he could fly,” Skeeter Butts laughed. “I’m satisfied in my mind dat nigger didn’t know any more about a airship dan a dog knows about a white shirt. And now he’s done run off wid my dollar.” “I don’t keer,” Vinegar said. “I done got my dollar’s wuth of fun outen dat machine, an’ I expeck I’d better be gittin’ back to town. I’m got to preach at de Shoofly church to-night.” In the fight which had occurred the bag of cotton which the aviator had dropped from his machine had been torn to pieces and the cotton scattered all over the prairie. A number of negro boys amused themselves by throwing the wads of cotton at each other and at their elders. One negro boy picked up a wad and hurled it at the fat stomach of the Rev. Vinegar Atts. Vinegar doubled up with a yell of pain, and then stooped and picked up something. It was a buckskin bag, which Vinegar had last seen in the possession of Red Cutt. “My Gawd!” Hitch Diamond bellowed. “Ain’t dat our bag of money?” With trembling fingers Vinegar untied the buckskin bag and drew out a large number of soiled bills. There was a shout of delight which James Gannaway could have heard fifteen thousand feet in the air. “When dat nigger, Red Cutt, climbed up into dat machine, he hid dat money in my sack of cotton,” Hitch howled, “an’ now we done get it all back. Bless Gawd!”