“How come dat Old Griff didn’t put you in de jail-house?” the colored man asked.
“I had four quarts of prime Kentucky whisky when I started in this adventure. I took it with me to placate Old Griff when he caught me with the goods. It worked. Toward the end of the second quart he offered to make me a present of the horse.”
“You means to say all dis money is yourn?” Skeeter asked, waving his hand over the table.
“It’s ours,” Nuhat replied. “I came back to whack up even with you.”
“Bless Gawd fer a noble white man!” Skeeter exclaimed. “How come you tuck a notion to come back here to me?”
“I might have kept on traveling,” the white man said meditatively, choosing his words cautiously; “but I wanted to have friends in Tickfall in case Old Griff sobered up and began to trail his horse and ask questions along the way. Besides, down at the bottom of me, I’m honest, or want to be.”
He counted out ninety dollars and handed it to Skeeter.
“This don’t go into the divide,” he explained. “This is the sum you originally invested in our business enterprise. The rest is ours—not honestly acquired, perhaps; but I was up against it, and had to have some coin.”
They had five hundred and forty dollars to divide between them. When Skeeter sat fondling two hundred and seventy dollars, Nuhat asked with a smile:
“What you going to do with your money?”