Colonel Blount scratched his head. "You understand niggers all right,
I'll admit," said he. "But, now, supposing it had been a white man?"
"Well, supposing it was?"
"We don't need to suppose. There was the same thing happened to a white family. Wife got killed—left three children."
"Oh, you mean that accident down at Shelby?"
"Yes, Mrs. Something-or-other, she was. Well, sir, damn me, if that infernal claim agent didn't have the face to offer fifteen dollars for her, too!"
"Looks almost like he played a fifteen dollar limit all the time, doesn't it?" said Eddring.
"It certainly does. It ain't right."
"Well, now, I heard about that woman. She was a tall, thin creature, with no liver left at all, and her chills came three times a week. She wouldn't work; she was red-headed and had only one straight eye; and as for a tongue—well, I only hope, Colonel Blount, that you and I will never have a chance to meet anything like that. Of course, I know she was killed. Her husband just hated her before she died, but blame me, just as soon as she was dead, he loved her more than if she was his sweetheart all over again. Now, that's how it goes. Say, I want to tell you, Colonel Blount, this road is plumb beneficent, if only for the fact that it develops human affection in such a way as this. Fifteen dollars! Why, I tell you, sir, fifteen dollars was more than enough for that woman!" He turned indignantly on the board-pile.
"I reckon," said Colonel Blount, "that you would say that about my neighbor Jim Bowles' cow?"
"Certainly. I know about that cow, too. She was twenty years old and on her last legs. Road kills her, and all at once she becomes a dream of heifer loveliness. I know."