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As Peter watched her the jealousy of the male crept over him. "Look here, Cissie," he said in a queer voice, "you you don't mean, after all, that Tump Pack is " "Oh no! No!" Her face showed her repulsion. Then she drew a long breath and apparently made up her mind to some sort of ordeal. "Peter," she asked in a low tone, "did you ever think what we colored people are trying to reach?"
But the negro did not understand Henry Hooker's action at all. The banker had abused his position of trust as holder of a deed in escrow snapping up the sale himself; then he had sold Peter the Dillihay place. It was a queer shift. Tump Pack caught his principal's mood with that chameleon-like mental quality all negroes possess.
"I'll step an' see, Miss Vannie. 'At sho ain't no place fuh a nice gal lak Cissie." Tump turned on his mission, evidently intending to walk to Jonesboro and offer himself in the place of the prisoner. Peter supported Vannie back into the poor living-room, and placed her in the old rocking-chair before the empty hearth.
Asked for an opinion, Tump began twiddling military medal and corrugated the skin on his inch-high brow. "Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter," he answered with importance, "I wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat deed he guv you. He mout of." Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter.
The ground covered ranges from man-packing to horse-packing, from the use of the tump line to throwing the diamond hitch. THE BULL TERRIER, by Williams Haynes. This is a companion book to "The Airedale" and "Scottish and Irish Terriers" by the same author. Its greatest usefulness is as a guide to the dog owner who wishes to be his own kennel manager.
Don't think it!" waved down Cissie, humorously. "But, Cissie, how is it possible " "Just blind." Cissie rippled into a boarding-school laugh. "I could wear the whole rue del Opera here in Niggertown, and nobody would ever see it but you." Cissie was moving toward the door. Peter tried to detain her. He enjoyed the implication of Tump Pack's stupidity, in their badinage, but she would not stay.
Throgmartin was mildly amused, promised the necessary precautions, and said: "It looks like Peter has put one over on Tump, and maybe a college education does help a nigger some, after all." The constable thought it was just luck. "Well, I dunno," said Throgmartin, who was a philosopher, and inclined to view every matter from various angles. "Peter may of worked this out somehow."
Cicero Throgmartin, for whom Tump was working, cautioning Throgmartin to make sure that Tump Pack was in the sleeping-shack every night, as he might get wind of the wedding and take a notion to bolt and stop it. "You know, you can't tell what a fool nigger'll do," finished Bobbs.
Tump Pack drew a shaken, unhappy breath. "Now, I reckon you see whut a nigger-stopper is." Peter stood in the sunshine, looking at the estoppel clause, his lips agape. Twice he read it over. It held something of the quality of those comprehensive curses that occur in the Old Testament. He moistened his lips and looked at Tump. "Why that can't be legal." His voice sounded empty and shallow.
Not till Tump was lifted from his mind did he realize what an incubus the soldier had been. Peter had been forced into a position where, if he had killed Tump, he would have been ruined; if he had not, he would probably have murdered. Now he was free for thirty days. He swung along briskly in the warm sunshine toward the multicolored forest. The day had suddenly become glorious.