Accustomed as I was to seeing low-down niggers, this one struck me as being the worst specimen nature had ever produced. He had the features of a baboon, and the flapping rags of the grotesque garments he wore made him look like a wild creature.
“Do you have many such intellectual-looking gentlemen around here?” asked Justice, twisting his neck around for a final look at the fellow. “I’d hate to meet that professor at the dark of the moon.”
“Oh, they’re really not as bad as they look,” I replied. “They look like apes, but they’re quite harmless. They’re shiftless to the last degree, but not violent. They’re too lazy to do any mischief.”
“Just the same, I’d rather not get into an argument with that particular brother, if it’s all the same to you,” answered Justice. “He looks like mischief to me.”
“He doesn’t look like a prize entry in a beauty contest,” I admitted.
With all that talk about the negro Justice’s remark about Switzerland went unheeded, but I didn’t forget it just the same. I thought about it all the rest of the afternoon and it was as plain as the nose on your face that there was some mystery about Justice Sherman. A sheep herder who spouted Virgil at a touch, quoted continually from the classics, had refined manners and had traveled abroad, couldn’t hide his light under a bushel very well. Another thing; he wasn’t a Texan as he had led us to believe. He talked with the crisp, clear accent of the North, and the fuss he made about the negro in the road that afternoon betrayed the fact that he was no southerner. Nobody around here pays any attention to niggers, no matter how tattered they are. We’re used to them, but northerners always make a fuss.
The question bubbled up and down in my mind, keeping time to the bubbling of the soup on the stove; why was this educated and refined young man working for thirty dollars a month as a handy man around horses on a third-rate stock farm in this God-forsaken part of the country? Then a suspicion flashed into my mind and at the dreadful thought I stopped stirring with the upraised spoon frozen in mid-air. Then I gathered my wits together and started resolutely for the table. I had promised father I would never ask Justice Sherman anything about his past, but here was something that swept aside all personal obligations and promises. I found him with father in the stable working over a sick colt. I marched straight up to him and began without any preamble.
“See here, Justice Sherman,” I said, “are you hiding yourself to avoid military service? Are you a slacker?”
Justice Sherman straightened up and looked at me with flashing eyes. “No, I’m not!” he shouted in a voice quite unlike his.
I never saw anyone in such a rage. His face was as red as a beet and his hair actually stood on end. “I registered for the service,” he went on hotly, “and wasn’t called in the draft. I tried to enlist and they wouldn’t take me. I was under weight and had a weak throat. If anyone thinks I’m a slacker, I’ll——” Here he choked and had a violent coughing spell.