Git behin' me, Satan, on de up-hill road,
I'se a one-horse sinner wid a two-horse load."
Late in the afternoon the Wildcat's tactics had converted a group of admirers who had discovered in the prosaic business of rustling freight a first-class chance to make a laughing game of it. Meanwhile, they were moving record tonnage.
At evening the pier foreman sent for the Wildcat. "Tomorrow morning you take a gang down to Section Seventeen and start moving flour into the West King. There'll be five a day extra in it—that'll buy grub for the goat."
"Cap'n, yessuh—you means I'se fo'man?"
"That's what I mean. Keep your niggers rustlin'."
"Yass suh! Sho' will!" The Wildcat jerked at Lily's string halter. "Goat, say you'se 'bliged to de cap'n. Stan' roun' theh, fo' I shows you who's de boss wid a club!"
"Blaaa!" returned Lily.
The pier foreman smiled. "You might round up some more men if you can find 'em," he continued. "We can use a lot more. I'll give you twenty dollars a man for all you can get. Tell 'em ten a day, with grub and quarters furnished here on the dock."
"Cap'n, you means I gits twenty dollars fo' ev'y stevedo' nigger whut I 'cumulates?"