"Van Dorn, what you goin' to give me if I git a nigger?"
"This!" said Van Dorn, without a pause, reaching the boy a measured blow with his whip-lash on the shoulder that made him literally fall from the mule and grovel with pain.
"Discipline is what your mother failed to give you, repróbo. Manners I shall teach you. Fall in the rear!"
Owen Daw crawled desperately on his mule and obeyed without parley, but his audacity soon recovered enough to force his animal up to the wagon tail and open whispered communications with Levin there.
Nothing had passed them for hours that Levin had seen, when suddenly a horseman at a rapid lope stopped the wagon, and a hoarse negro voice muttered:
"How de do, now? See me! see me!"
"Derrick Molleston?" spoke Van Dorn.
"See me! see me!"
"Get down and ride with me. Levin, are you awake?"
"Yes, Captain."