I

A white man entered the Hen-Scratch saloon and sat down at one of the little tables. He looked around him curiously. The glory of the Hen-Scratch had departed. Nothing remained of the saloon but its name. There was dust upon the tables. The mirror behind the bar was written all over with the unedifying literature of soft drinks. There were no patrons in the place. A little yellow barkeeper was wiping glasses and trying to arrange grape-juice bottles in an enticing array upon his shelves, glancing up from his task at intervals to gaze into the tragic face of Abraham Lincoln, which looked out from a fly-specked frame hung crookedly upon the wall.

Skeeter Butts laid down a bottle which contained one of the softest of soft drinks, came from behind the bar, and murmured politely into the ear of the white man:

“Us ain’t sellin’ no drinks to white men, boss. Endurin’ of de barroom time, it wusn’t allowed. De law made us hab sep’rate barrooms fer de whites an’ blacks. Dar ain’t no saloons no mo’, but——”

“I ain’t buying drinks,” the white man answered. “I have no money, no credit, no friends, no business.”

“Escuse me fer sayin’ it, boss,” Skeeter chuckled, “but dem is my fixes, an’ you is mighty nigh as bad off as a nigger.”

“I’m worse off than a nigger,” the white man responded, and he seemed to get a lugubrious satisfaction from a realization of the fact. “More is expected of my race than of yours.”

“Dat’s right,” Skeeter agreed. “Dey lets us blacks down easy; but neither de whites nor de blacks is up to expectations.”

The white man sat for a while in deep thought. Skeeter noticed that the top of his head was overdeveloped, like an infant’s; that his fingers were stained with cigarettes; that his clothes were of good material but badly worn. He decided that the man was an animated slosh in the desert of total abstinence, mourning the demise of John Barleycorn, and hopefully looking for a damp cloud on the horizon in the shape of a blind tiger.

Skeeter returned to his task of polishing glasses and wiping his bar, the habit acquired through twenty years of service to men who put one foot upon the brass rail. Meantime he watched the stranger from the corner of his eyes, and when the silence was prolonged he became nervous and fidgety. At last the man came to the bar and spoke.

“Can you lend me ten dollars?”

In all Skeeter’s varied career no such request had ever been uttered in his astonished ears. Skeeter wondered if this extraordinary thing was attributable to prohibition. Surely the old order changeth!

“I ain’t know yo’ favor or yo’ face, an’ I ain’t met de ’quaintance of yo’ name, boss,” Skeeter replied.

“My name is Dick Nuhat,” the white man responded promptly. “I am not altogether an honest man, but I am a gentleman. This is a request of one gentleman to another.”

“I likes to ’commodate white gentlemens, boss,” Skeeter said uneasily; “but I ain’t got de ten dollars, an’ so I cain’t affode to lend it.”

Without a word the man turned away, walked back to the table, and sat down. Once more there was a period of silence and deep meditation, while a nervous colored man polished glasses and watched the white man from the corner of his eye. Mr. Nuhat had the trick of sitting as motionless as a stone dog on a lawn, while even his eyes were fixed in a stony stare, oblivious to what went on around him and looking out across the spaces unseeingly.

“Dope!” Skeeter muttered to himself; but Skeeter was wrong.

There was twenty minutes of this ponderous thinking, and then the man came to Skeeter and made a proposition.

“I’ve got one thing I can sell, Skeeter. I rode to town on a horse that is worth one hundred dollars, intending to take him to Shongaloon, to enter him in the races at the fair; but I am broke. If you had lent me the ten dollars I would have gone on; but now, if I went, I would have no money to bet. So I am going to sell and go out of the racing business.”

“You don’t talk like no race-hoss man to me,” Skeeter said.

“I ain’t a race-horse man,” was the reply. “I am a scholar and a gentleman.”

“I ain’t got no hundred dollars,” Skeeter Butts said next. “Dar ain’t no nigger in dis town wid dat much money in one lump. You’ll have to sell out to de white folks.”

“Couldn’t you find ten colored people who had ten dollars each?” the white man asked. “All ten of you can own the horse, and when you make a win you can divide your earnings.”

“What kind of hoss you got?” Skeeter asked with a new interest.

“He’s a hard looker, Skeeter. He’s a hound dog. He limps in all four feet, but not in all at the same time, you know. He swaps from one foot to the other. Every time he stops he goes lame in a different foot, because he can’t remember which foot he was limping on before. He has an awful short memory that way. You never can tell what foot he is going to cripple in next, and he don’t know himself.”

“Dat’s a kind of trick hoss,” Skeeter snickered.

“Exactly,” Dick agreed. “I can make a killing with him at every race-track, for one look at him is aplenty. I can get all sorts of odds against him; but don’t make any mistake, little yeller nigger—that horse can run!”

“Dat sounds good to me,” Skeeter replied after a moment’s thought. “How much do I git fer makin’ de trade?”

“Get nine negroes to give you ten dollars each for the horse, and I’ll be satisfied with the ninety dollars. That will give you a ten-dollar share in the animal without costing you a cent.”

“Kin I try out de hoss an’ see if he is all right?” Skeeter asked eagerly.

“Certainly.”

“All right, boss,” Skeeter replied. “I’ll take you up!”

II

Skeeter staged his commercial transaction with some forethought. He chose nine negroes whom he knew to be possessed of ten dollars each, and asked them to meet him out at the old fair-grounds. He got Little Bit, who was the colored jockey of Tickfall, to give the horse a try-out.

In appearance, the horse was all the white man said he was, and more. He had a peculiar slinking gait, like a limp, sometimes in one foot, then in another. Often he seemed to be limping in all four feet at the same time.

The negroes howled in derision when Skeeter proposed to be one of ten to buy the animal. They examined his feet and made many comments, and finally proposed to bet Skeeter ten dollars that he could not tell what leg the horse would limp on the next time he started off.

But when Little Bit climbed on that horse the negroes stopped laughing. He could run like a jack-rabbit, and really had the jack-rabbit’s peculiar springy, limpy gait.

“Dis hoss is a powerful funny pufformer,” Conko Mukes howled; “but I puts my ten on him. He’s a runner!”

“Who’s gwine take keer of dis hoss whut belongs to us ten niggers?” Pap Curtain inquired.

“I’ll keep him an’ feed him,” Skeeter answered. “I kin turn him in a big pasture dat belongs to Marse John Flournoy, an’ Marse John won’t ever know he’s in de field. I’ll feed him Marse John’s oats and corn, an’ dat white man won’t ever miss it.”

Two hours later Skeeter returned to the Hen-Scratch and handed Mr. Nuhat the sum of ninety dollars.

“I turned de hoss in de pasture back of de sheriff’s house,” he volunteered. “Part of de trade wus dat I wus to take keer of de hoss. I reckin de tenth part dat I bought is de part whut eats.”

“Would you be held responsible if anything happened to the animal?” Nuhat asked.

“Not onless he choked to death,” Skeeter laughed. “I jes’ takes keer of de eatin’ end.”

“I’m sorry I could not go on to Shongaloon,” the white man said quietly. “There’s a lot of good money to be picked up betting on that horse at the races.”

“We’ll slick him up an’ git him feelin’ good an’ bet on him some ourselfs,” Skeeter said.

“Don’t make him look too fit,” Nuhat warned him. “That horse’s looks get the odds against him. Nobody bets against something that looks like a winner.”

A few minutes later the white man bought a package of cigarettes from Skeeter Butts, thanked him for the sale of the horse, and walked out.

Until midnight Skeeter was alone in the Hen-Scratch. No one came in to patronize his soft-drink emporium. The man was in the depths of despair. His place had always been the popular hang-out for all the plain loafers and fancy sons of rest. Now there were none so lazy as to enter a place which had nothing of its former attractiveness but a name.

“De niggers avoids dis place like it wus a pesthouse,” Skeeter lamented to himself. “Ef I had about two hundred dollars I could start me a movin’-picture show fer colored only in dis little house, an’ sell soft drinks on de side. Dat would fotch de crowd back, an’ de men would bring de lady folks, an’ I could git rid of a lot of ice-cream combs an’ things like dat.”

He smoked many cigarettes, lighting a fresh one on the stub of each old one, trying to think out a way to get some money for his new enterprise.

“Mebbe I could work some kind of flim-flam wid dat hoss,” he sighed. “But I cain’t make money very fast ef I got to ’vide up my profits by ten.”

It had never occurred to Skeeter to question the white man’s ownership of that horse, nor his right to dispose of it. The animal looked like just such an old skate as a broken-down race-horse man would own at the end of his track career. When a horseman retires from the turf, he generally has something like that to get rid of.

Skeeter did not get to his home on Sheriff John Flournoy’s premises until midnight. He did not go to see his new horse until the next morning at feeding-time.

When he went to the pasture, he found that a gap was broken in the fence and the horse was gone.

“We better hunt dat hoss befo’ he gits too fur away,” Skeeter said to himself. “I reckin he’s gone back home; but I don’t know whar his home is at, an’ I ain’t know which way to look fer him.”

Two hours later all ten owners of the animal were searching for him. Such a task was hopeless at the start, for the animal could go into the swamp in any direction around Tickfall and disappear forever. A strange animal, like a strange man, seldom came out of that jungle if he entered it alone.

The ten men made a circle of the town, walking on the edge of the swamp, looking for tracks. They were experienced in reading signs, but they could not find a place where an animal had entered the jungle. Concluding that the horse had kept in some beaten path, they separated, each following a winding trail in the great hot-house of the morass, slimy with rusty-colored oily water, and all acrawl with repulsive form of insect and animal life.

At noon they all met at the broken place in the fence where the horse had escaped. The ground was soft, and yet they could find no hoof-tracks leading from the field to the highroad.

They did not know that Dick Nuhat had tied some cotton bagging under each hoof of his limpy horse before he led him through the gap.

About ten o’clock that night, Conko Mukes, entered the Hen-Scratch saloon.

“Skeeter, I come to git my money back,” he said. “I done decided not to buy no race-hoss.”

“You cain’t git yo’ money back,” Skeeter said. “De white man took all our dollars wid him, an’ now our hoss done eloped away.”

“I don’t know no white man,” Conko Mukes said belligerently. “I never seen no white man. I ain’t saw nobody but you, didn’t make no trade wid nobody but you, an’ I got a mighty shawt look at dat hoss whut I paid my good ten dollars fer. Now I’s lookin’ to you!”

“I got a mighty little look, too,” Skeeter said placatingly. “I ain’t got a real good recollection of whut dat hoss looked like. I ain’t real shore I’d know him in de road ef he didn’t limp none.”

“I ain’t buyin’ no absent hoss,” Conko said. “I want my money back!”

“But de white man is got our money,” Skeeter explained again. “You won’t git yo’ money onless you finds de white man; an’ he’ll be harder to find dan de hoss. You had a look at de hoss, but you never saw de white man whut sold it.”

“I ain’t seem’ nobody but you,” Conko Mukes remarked in a hard tone. “I gived you my money an’ you tuck it, an’ you is de mighty nigh white man whut is got to give it back!”

“I ain’t got no money!” Skeeter Butts wailed.

“Git it!” Conko Mukes barked.

With this command he drew a large pistol from a holster under his left arm and laid it on the table with the business end pointing toward Skeeter Butts.

Skeeter turned almost white. Conko had the reputation of having killed several men, and Skeeter had no desire to be commemorated by the next notch carved on the butt of his gun.

He rose hastily to his feet and started toward the little safe in the corner of the barroom. Conko followed him, his big gun punching at a spot between Skeeter’s shoulder blades, which turned cold as ice from the contact of the steel. Conko was not sure whether Skeeter was going after money or a gun.

The trembling barkeeper stooped and opened the little door of his safe. He took out the only ten dollars he had in the world and thrust it into Conko’s hands.

“Good-by, Skeeter,” Conko grinned. “Dat wus a very narrer escapement fer you. I done kilt plenty niggers fer less money!”

III

The next day Skeeter faced bankruptcy.

Conko possessed the gift of expression and liked to talk. He exhibited the ten dollars he had secured from Skeeter, boasted of the forcible methods he used to extract it from the barkeeper’s roll, and started eight others to planning how they also could get their money back.

The Rev. Vinegar Atts called early, and brought Conko Mukes with him.

“I wants my money back, Skeeter!” he howled. “Conko an’ me been talkin’ it over. He specifies dat I kin come an’ shoot off my mouth, an’ he’ll be handy to shoot off his gun; but I hopes dat ain’t needful to pussuade you to do yo’ Christyum duty an’ hand my dollars back. Ef you don’t see it dat way, I kin do de tongue-lashin’ an’ Conko kin do de razor-slashin’. How soon is you gwine hand over my ten?”

“I ain’t got no tenner, Vinegar,” Skeeter said nervously. “Conko will tell you dat he got my las’ dollar.”

“Git some mo’ dollars!” Vinegar shouted. “Dat hoss white man muss hab ’vided up dat money wid you. I wants mine back!”

“You got to gimme time,” Skeeter said desperately. “I’s tellin’ you de noble truth when I says I ain’t got it.”

Vinegar turned around and looked at Conko significantly. The brave fighter stepped into the ring and shook a pugilistic fist under Skeeter’s twitching nose.

“Lawdymussy, niggers!” Skeeter wailed. “Gimme a little time to hunt dat hoss. You oughter trust me till I kin find him.”

“Us done spent a day huntin’ fer dat hoss,” Conko said inexorably. “It didn’t git us nothin’. Now you pay Vinegar’s money back an’ take yo’ time huntin’ dat hoss, an’ when you finds him you will own my tenth an’ Vinegar’s tenth an’ yo’ tenth of dat hoss. Three limpy legs will b’long to you.”

Skeeter made a few more feeble protests; but when he saw that Conko was preparing to flash the old familiar weapon, he surrendered finally. Going to his little safe, to his cash-drawer, and raking his pockets of every coin, he managed to scrape together the sum required, in pitiful little pindling amounts—ten cents here and two bits there.

“Dar it am,” Skeeter lamented. “I done squoze out my last nickel. I hopes you-alls will take pity on me, an’ not tell nobody dat I paid you back. De nex’ feller dat claims his money will have to take my pants!”

“He’ll either take yo’ pants or git his money outen yo’ hide,” Conko laughed unfeelingly, as the two men walked out of the saloon.

One hour later Figger Bush and Shin Bone entered the place and drew Skeeter off to a corner of the room.

“Us wants our money back, Skeeter!” was the familiar greeting.

“I ain’t got no money,” was Skeeter’s old lamentation.

Followed a long argument, ending with threats. Skeeter pleaded and prayed until he saw that the two were clearing for action, and once more he quit.

“I ain’t got no money, men,” he said desperately, throwing his arms wide in a hopeless gesture. “Jes’ look aroun’ you an’ he’p yo’selves to de Hen-Scratch.”

“I takes a fancy to dat grassyphome,” Figger replied promptly. “I always did like free music, an’ dat machine will sound real good in my cabin, wid me settin’ on one side smokin’ my pipe an’ Scootie settin’ on de yuther side, dippin’ snuff.”

“Take it!” Skeeter wailed.

“Dis here slop-machine whar you draps in a penny an’ gits out a stick of chaw-gum will go good in my resteraw,” Shin Bone remarked.

“Take it!” Skeeter lamented. “I’m a blowed-up sucker!”

After these men departed, Skeeter did not have long to wait before another caller arrived. It was Pap Curtain. He bit off the end of a cigar and gazed intently into the little barkeeper’s gloomy face.

“You owes me ten dollars, Skeeter,” he began.

“I knowed dat as soon as I seen you, Pap,” Skeeter sighed. “I admits dat I owes you. I promises to pay you as soon as I kin; but I ain’t got de money now. Ef you’ll jes’ only go away ’thout talkin’, you’ll make me happy.”

Pap took off his hat and laid it upon the table, where they were sitting. He took his cigar from his mouth and placed it on the table so that the lighted end projected a little over the edge. Then he drew a chair close to Skeeter and laid a horny finger upon Skeeter’s knee for emphasis. Evidently Skeeter was not to be made happy.

Pap’s baboon face, with its snarling voice and lips, carried its continual sneer. He possessed the conversational facilities of Bildad the Shuhite.

First he coaxed, wheedled, begged, and implored. Then he argued and expounded, reviewed and reiterated, discussed details and recapitulated, presenting the whole matter from the broadest possible standpoint; but he found it hard to persuade money out of Skeeter, for the reason that Skeeter had none. The cupboard was bare.

Then he mentioned the possibility of a final and absolute refusal on Skeeter’s part to restore the ten dollars wrongfully acquired, and explained the inevitable consequences. At this point he put on what the negroes call the “’rousements,” and yapped like a poodle. Reaching his peroration, he found that decent language bent and broke beneath the burden of his meaning, so he “cussed.”

“I got only two boxes of seegaws in my little show case, Pap,” Skeeter said, when the vocal pyrotechnics subsided into a feeble splutter of hot ashes. “Take ’em an’ git out! Dey is wuth mo’ dan ten dollars, but I gib ’em to you. Fer Gawd’s sake git out!”

Evidently Conko Mukes was waiting outside until Pap finished. The swinging doors of the saloon had not ceased to vibrate after Pap before Conko pushed them wide and entered the room with the clumsy gait of a bear.

“I got four friends dat is app’inted me to colleck fawty dollars Skeeter!” he bellowed. “Dey promises me ten pussent per each fer my trouble in collectin’. Dat’ll be fo’ dollars fer me.”

“Jes’ take whutever you wants an’ call it even,” Skeeter said in a lifeless voice. “I been agonizin’ all de mawnin’, an’ I craves to got de agony over.”

“I don’t want no secont-hand bar-fixtures,” Conko laughed hoarsely. “Barrooms is gone out of style. I wants de spot cash paid in my hand. Gimme yo’ money or yo’ life!”

“You know I ain’t got no money,” Skeeter wailed. “Cain’t you take somepin I got in dis saloom?”

“Naw!” Conko bawled. “I cain’t colleck no ten pussent of no brass foot-rail or pool-table. I wants de cash!”

Up to this moment the day had been one of great humiliation. Now began a period in which Skeeter showed a marvelous mental versatility.

There was no way for him to pay back that forty dollars except to borrow it, and no one to borrow from but the white folks. He had to tell a different story to each white man in order to start the fountain of his generosity and secure the loan. And through the whole day of frenzied effort to meet the demands upon him, there was the haunting fear that the horse had wandered off and would never be seen again.

Early the next morning Skeeter started out to hunt his horse. Having bought it and paid for it, he wanted it. His search was futile, and when he returned to Shin Bone’s restaurant for his noonday meal he was loud in his protestations of woe.

“De white man whut sold you dat hoss went to de pasture an’ stole him out an’ tuck him away,” Shin Bone told him. “Instid of huntin’ dat hoss, you oughter git de sheriff on de trail of dat white man.”

“But de fence wus broke down,” Skeeter protested stupidly. “Dat shows dat de hoss got out by hisself.”

“Ef I wus gwine steal a hoss, I’d break down de fence so de folks would think de hoss got out,” was the reply.

This was a new idea to Skeeter, who really had not given much thought to his predicament. He carried this dark suspicion for the rest of the day, still hunting his horse, but devoid of all hope of finding it.

“Dat white man rode dat hoss to town, sold him to me, an’ rode him out of town,” he sighed pitiably. “Yet dat feller looked to me like a tollable nice man. He stressified dat he warn’t honest, but he specified dat he was a puffeck gentlemun. I ain’t never gwine he’p a white man agin!”

He thought of the forty dollars he had borrowed from the white folks and had to pay back. The profits from his little business were extremely small and growing less. The repayment of the borrowed money meant close economy for a long time.

“I feels powerful sorry fer myself,” he wailed.

Wronged, abused, depressed, and hopeless, he returned to the Hen-Scratch saloon. When he entered he gasped for breath.

Dick Nuhat was sitting at one of the little tables, in an attitude of deep and solemn meditation, as motionless as a stone dog.

IV

Skeeter sat down at the same table and opened his mouth to deliver his mind of all its burden of trouble; but the white man put such a successful cloture on the colored man’s oratory that Skeeter could not speak a word for a long time.

Nuhat thrust both hands into his pockets and brought them out full of silver and currency. He did not speak a word of greeting. He merely laid the money on the top of the table and watched Skeeter’s popping eyes.

“You ought to have been at the races, Skeeter,” Nuhat said at last. “We mopped up!”

Skeeter needed no proof of this beyond the tabletop covered with money; but even yet he could not find a word to say.

“There is over six hundred dollars of it that says we win, Skeeter,” Nuhat laughed.

“Whut hoss win?” Skeeter asked with stiff lips.

“Your horse,” Nuhat replied. “Don’t you remember that you bought a horse? Your ten-share nigger horse that I sold you. I sneaked him out of the pasture, took him to Shongaloon to the races, and mopped up this money.”

“I been huntin’ fer dat hoss eve’ywhar,” Skeeter sighed. “I shore missed him. I’s had a lot of trouble ’bout dat hoss!”

“You won’t ever see him again,” Nuhat responded.

“How come?”

Nuhat hesitated a minute, looking sharply at Skeeter. He seemed undecided what to say in reply, but finally ventured:

“I didn’t own that horse in the first place. That horse’s real name is Springer, and its real owner is Old Griff.”

Skeeter opened his eyes until they were like china door-knobs. He wondered why he had not recognized the most famous race-horse in Louisiana, named Springer because of his peculiar springy gait.

“I borrowed Springer from Old Griff’s stable without requesting the loan of him,” Nuhat continued. “Old Griff came to Shongaloon after him. He was real nice about it, after I had talked to him about four hours. At first he wanted to put me in jail for horse-stealing.”

“My Lawd, white man!” Skeeter ranted. “Dat wus a awful risky thing to do. Glory to gracious! To think dat a nigger like me one time owned three-tenths of Springer—fo’-tenths—my Lawd, I owned all of him, fer dem niggers made me give deir money back!”

“That’s some glory for you, Skeeter!” Nuhat assured him.

“How come dat Old Griff didn’t put you in de jail-house?” the colored man asked.

“I had four quarts of prime Kentucky whisky when I started in this adventure. I took it with me to placate Old Griff when he caught me with the goods. It worked. Toward the end of the second quart he offered to make me a present of the horse.”

“You means to say all dis money is yourn?” Skeeter asked, waving his hand over the table.

“It’s ours,” Nuhat replied. “I came back to whack up even with you.”

“Bless Gawd fer a noble white man!” Skeeter exclaimed. “How come you tuck a notion to come back here to me?”

“I might have kept on traveling,” the white man said meditatively, choosing his words cautiously; “but I wanted to have friends in Tickfall in case Old Griff sobered up and began to trail his horse and ask questions along the way. Besides, down at the bottom of me, I’m honest, or want to be.”

He counted out ninety dollars and handed it to Skeeter.

“This don’t go into the divide,” he explained. “This is the sum you originally invested in our business enterprise. The rest is ours—not honestly acquired, perhaps; but I was up against it, and had to have some coin.”

They had five hundred and forty dollars to divide between them. When Skeeter sat fondling two hundred and seventy dollars, Nuhat asked with a smile:

“What you going to do with your money?”

Skeeter took a big breath and sighed in happy anticipation.

“I leaves on de midnight train fer N’Awleens, an’ I stays dar till I gits dis money well spent. I’ll see de nigger shows, ride on all de street-cars, eat hot roasted peanuts, travel up ’n’ down on de yellervators, chaw beefsteak two inches thick, an’ buy me a derby hat an’ a suit of clothes wid so many colors dat when I walks up Canal Street de white folks will think de lightning done struck de rainbow!”

“I’m going to buy a steamboat,” Nuhat said musingly. “Thirty feet long, eighteen feet wide, floating on top of the water like a cigar-box, propelled by a paddle-wheel about as big as a barrel, with a little donkey six-snort-power engine. It has a speed of six miles an hour down-stream, if the current is good. Going up-stream, it gets there when it can.”

“Huh!” Skeeter grunted.

“It costs two hundred dollars,” Nuhat continued. “I expect to live and die on that boat. I love to sit and think!”

“Ain’t you gwine do nothing but think?” Skeeter asked, to whom such an occupation was utterly foreign and beyond his comprehension.

“Yes—I’m going to turn honest. Everybody will know me as a good white man.”

“White folks is diffunt from niggers in deir notions of havin’ fun,” Skeeter said meditatively. “Turnin’ honest an’ thinkin’ don’t look like a awful good time to me!”

“I understand,” Nuhat replied. “A negro has a one-cylinder mind and a smoky spark-plug.”

“But dat good time I plans don’t sep’rate me from mo’ dan fifty dollars of my money,” Skeeter proclaimed. “De rest goes todes startin’ me in de movie bizness. De nex’ time you steals a hoss an’ rides through Tickfall, you’ll see Skeeter in charge of a fust-rate nigger movin’-picture show.”

When the midnight train arrived, Skeeter was on the platform, bidding good-by to Tickfall with a happy face.

The news of his sudden rise to prosperity had spread with amazing rapidity through the colored portions of the town. No one knew the details, but all heard that the horse Skeeter bought had won a fortune at the races. Nine men were sorely distressed that they had treated Skeeter so shabbily and had disposed of their shares of the horse.

Just as the train started, nine negroes came running across the station platform. Pap Curtain was waving two boxes of cigars, Figger Bush was wildly gesticulating with the horn of his “grassyphome,” and the others were holding out their hands with money.

Conko Mukes ran along the station platform, clinging to the steps of the moving train, waving a ten-dollar bill, and speaking in pleading tones.

“I wants to buy my share of dat hoss agin, Skeeter!”

The train was gaining headway, and Skeeter leaned over, pretending he could not hear what was said.

“I wants to buy my share of de hoss back!” Conko bellowed, for he had to run now to keep up with the moving train.

Skeeter grasped the hand-rail on each side of him and kicked out with all the strength of his body.

The toe of his boot struck Conko Mukes on the point of the chin. The man staggered, stumbled, and fell as a rotten log falls in the forest. Eight of his friends stubbed their toes on him, stepped on him, fell on him, then picked him up, brushed off his clothes, and led him away.

The train moved through the darkness like a long serpent with shining, jeweled sides. Skeeter entered the car and sat down, smiling.