“Who’s they?” inquired Hank.
“I gug-gug-guess we shall know that soon,” returned the one-eyed man grimly. “Hi, you niggers there, forward! I s’pose you got razors hid somewhere in yer pants?”
“Say,” drawled his friend, “you’d mebbe better go slow over this deal, Mr. Billy Nutt. The steamer does look asleep, but if you start making your self ugly too soon, somebody may wake up and pull off guns at us.”
“I’ve been mum-mum-missed before.”
“So’ve I, sonny. That’s why there’s all the more chance of being hit now. You go slow, Billy Nutt; just go slow. If they see that ugly face of yours and hear you talk, somebody’ll shoot, sure’s death.”
“Shoot or no shoot,” retorted the man at the tiller, “I’m going to have some of their plunder before a dozen hours are over, or else be a deader. I never had a chance like this in all my life before, and I’ll never geg-geg-get another.”
“You bet not,” agreed his friend. “Nor’ll I. That’s why I’ll stand in with you over this deal down to the last chip. I guess it’s the one soft thing I’ve been looking for all through a lifetime. I thought once I was going to make my pile out of breaking Monte Carlo. Then it was a corner in pork. Then we tried to stick up a mail train and raid the dollars out of the express car. But all these operations kinder weakened when it came to the point. I s’pose we didn’t put enough jump into them. But we’ll not get euchred for want of that here. No, siree. You and me, Billy Nutt, ’ll either come out topside over this deal, or else die in our boots. You hear me. I reckon,” he added, in a lower voice, “we can count well on the niggers, too. They’re not exactly a camp-meeting crowd. They’re toughs that a racket like this’ll suit as nat’ral as chicken-stealing.”
He bent forward over the coach-roof and communicated the scheme to the negroes in a few words. The mobile African faces changed like children’s. They became savage and animal-like. The fellow who but a short while before had carried such a look of touching devotion as he trolled out the Jordan Hymn, ceased almost to be human. In a flash he had turned to a lustful, savage beast, with glinting yellow eyeballs, gripping a razor with one black paw and ready to grapple anything with the other. The veneer of American civilization had slid from him like some tattered wrap. He was a fitting specimen of the most dangerous “made” race of which this world can at present boast.
Even Hank was half alarmed at the furies he had unchained. “See here, fellows!” he said, as an after-thought. “Just take care which way you run when we get aboard that steamer, and don’t get foul of Billy Nutt and me. If you try any of your blame’ nigger carving games on us, I guess you’ll turn into cold meat quicker’n you can wink. Nutt and me are the handiest men with guns in this section of Florida.”