Ordinarily Skeeter would have been the center of the whole thing. But this affair had slipped up on him and had suddenly developed business complications and his mind was too occupied with his troubles to enjoy the fun going on around him.
Soon after entering the grounds he found Pap Curtain. Pap was entertaining himself by paying five cents for three baseballs. He would then try to throw each ball so it would stay in a bucket about twenty feet away. Whenever he placed one to stay, the proprietor of the amusement feature would give Pap a cigar. The cigars sold three for a nickel in Tickfall and as Pap never succeeded in placing more than two balls in the bucket, the proprietor of the place always made a fair profit in the transaction. Pap had his pocket stuffed full of cheap cigars and promptly offered a handful to Skeeter.
“I don’t smoke garbage,” Skeeter said impatiently, waving aside the offer.
“I figger I done acquired enough of dese cabbage-leaves. Less move on an’ git some fun somewhere else.”
A short distance down the sawdust trail they ran into something new. The diminutive darky named Little Bit was standing on a frail platform erected over a hogshead full of water. There was a trigger shaped like a skiff-paddle about fifty feet away, and men were throwing baseballs at this paddle. If someone hit the trigger, the platform, on which Little Bit was standing, fell and ducked the diminutive darky in the hogshead of water. Little Bit was well known in Tickfall and this particular attraction was a riot. Sometimes thirty baseballs would be flying toward that paddle-shaped trigger at one time, and the hapless Little Bit spent more time in the hogshead of water than he did on the platform.
“Lawd, Skeeter!” Pap exclaimed when he had laughed himself nearly to exhaustion. “I’d druther be de owner of dis Coon Island dan de’ pres’dunt of de Europe war. I feels like I’s jes’ nachelly cut out fer a job like dis. I been huntin’ fer somepin I been fitten fer all my life an’ dis am it.”
“I wish you had dis job, Pap,” Skeeter replied. “I stopped by to ax you a question.”
“I’ll answer yes or no, like de gram jury always tells me to do,” Pap grinned.
“Word is done been sont to me dat you is fixin’ to start a saloon. Is dat so?”
“Yep.”