There was a nervous quiver in his strong voice, and as he waited he drummed with his fingers on the table, tapped the toe of one foot on the floor, then snatched up a paper-weight and began to grind it savagely into the blotter on a desk.
The coons had exasperated him often enough, he thought; but Pap Curtain had gone the limit. He would catch that nigger and wring his fool neck.
“Hey—hello!” he bawled through the speaking-tube. “Is that you, Bill? This is Gaitskill—Say, has No. 2 passed through Tonieville yet? Coming now? All right, listen: tell the constable to board the Jim-Crow coach on that train and haul off a nigger—a yellow nigger with a baboon face and shifty eyes and a mouth which sneers. Yes! his name is Pap Curtain. He’s got a pocketful of money. Sure! Haul him off. Tell the constable to bring him back on No. I! Good-bye!”
Gaitskill hung up the receiver, wiped the sweat from his face, and walked out of the bank, pausing at the door long enough to inform the clerk:
“I’m going down to the cotton-shed, Frank. Got to hold an executive session with those coons!”
Pap Curtain had the negro-coach all to himself. He leaned back and sighed with a vast content.
“Dem coons tried to knife me, but I beat ’em to it!” he snickered, as the train puffed slowly along. “One hundred an’ eighteen dollars is shore good wages fer a day’s wuck.”
He planned his expenditure of the money: first a visit to New Orleans, and a happy time in the negro resorts of that city. After that a job on a steamboat which traveled down the river. After a long time, a return to Tickfall and a renewal of friendships with his negro neighbors.
“Niggers don’t hold spite long,” he grinned. “An’ money don’t bother ’em hardly at all, whedder he makes it or loses it!”