“Dat's des whar dey done hit 'im, Ole Marster. How I gwine tie 'im?”
But the Major had looked again, and the awful redness rose to his brow.
“Shut up, you fool!” he said with a roar, as he dived under his seat and brought out his brandy flask. “Give him a swallow of that—be quick, do you hear? Pour it into your cup, sir, and give him that corn pone in your pocket. I see it sticking out. There, now hoist him up beside you, and, if I meet that rascal Jones, I'll blow his damn brains out!”
The Major doubtless would have fulfilled his oath as surely as his twelve peers would have shaken his hand afterwards; but, by the time they came up with Rainy-day a mile ahead, his wrath had settled and he had decided that “he didn't want such dirty blood upon his hands.”
So he took a different course, and merely swore a little as he threw a roll of banknotes into the road. “Don't open your mouth to me, you hell hound,” he cried, “or I'll have you whipped clean out of this county, sir, and there's not a gentleman in Virginia that wouldn't lend a hand. Don't open your mouth to me, I tell you; here's the price of your property, and you can stoop in the dirt to pick it up. There's no man alive that shall question the divine right of slavery in my presence; but—but it is an institution for gentlemen, and you, sir, are a damned scoundrel!”
With which the Major and old Rainy-day rode on in opposite ways.