“I’ll show you!” Gaze told him.
“Whut job does you wuck at in Sawtown?” Hitch asked.
“I’m gittin’ ready to sot up a little nigger gamblin’-house in Sawtown now,” Dinner replied cautiously, after a moment’s hesitation. “Befo’ dat, I managed a string of nigger prize-fighters in N’Awleens.”
Hitch raised his battered head like an old, scarred war-horse when he hears the bugle-call for charge. Then he remembered that Gaze thought he was talking to a clergyman.
“Dat shore sounds familious to me,” Hitch laughed. “I used to be a prize-fighter my own se’f!”
“Hear dat, now!” Dinner Gaze exclaimed. “I knowed you an’ me wus kinnery when I fust cotch you wid my eye. How come you left de great perfesh?”
“A nigger put a chunk of lead in his glove an’ battered me clean acrost a wharf-boat,” Hitch narrated, drawing upon his imagination, and recalling an incident in the career of his friend, the Reverend Vinegar Atts. “Atter dat I felt a call to preach.”
“Mebbe you could come back,” Gaze suggested.
“Naw, suh,” Hitch grinned, quoting a remark he had heard Vinegar make. “Preachin’ is a plum’ sight safer. I kin git up befo’ a lot of Christyums an’ knock noses an’ pull hair an’ skin shins all I’m got a mind to, an’ all dey kin do is to turn aroun’ de yuther cheek. Ef dey hits back, dey ain’t pious!”
The odor of wet, sawed, sun-scorched lumber entered the car window. The suction of the moving train threw sawdust upon the seat where the feet of the two men rested. They were drawing near to the station at Sawtown.