“Me, too,” Vinegar agreed. “An’ I bet he sleeps wid dem guns on his pusson!”
Before the day was over, the marksman had been so loudly proclaimed by the white men for his skill that the negroes were feeling proud of this representative of their race and color.
The negro women of Tickfall had prepared a great dinner at the hog camp. While the negroes were eating, the distinguished stranger suddenly left the side of Whiffle Bone and walked around the table to where Shin Bone was standing with Atts and Skeeter Butts.
Shin saw him coming, and turned almost white. When the stranger thrust his hand into his pocket, Shin bleached some more; but the stranger extended toward Shin Bone not a gun, but a ten-dollar bill!
“I owes you dis ten-dollar bill, Shinny,” he said, loud enough for everybody to hear.
“I ain’t sold you nothin’,” Shin said, shaking his head and declining the proffered currency.
“Naw, suh, but you loant me dis money a good many year ago, when you got married,” the stranger replied. “You bestowed dis loose change on me to buy some ice-cream an’ cake fer yo’ weddin’, an’ I rambled up-town an’ got in a little crap-game, an’ dem bones didn’t fall right fer me. I lost yo’ money, an’ I decided I better make myse’f absent.”
“My Lawd!” Shin Bone exclaimed, reaching for the money. “Is you Whiffle’s long-lost brudder?”
“Suttinly,” the gunman answered. “My name is Pewter Boone, an’ I jes’ got back from whar we fit de Kaiser.”
“Fer Gawd’s sake, how come you didn’t tell me who you wus a whole heap sooner?” Shin exclaimed.