The bound figure on the floor began moaning in a steady, dead monotone, with his lips against the planking.
“So, bein' as me and Quarles wanted the credit for bringin' him in, not to mention the reward,” went on the deputy, without a glance at the moaning negro, “we decided not to take no chances. I kept him out of sight until Quarles could go over to the river and borrow a rig, and we driv in with him by the lower road, acrost the iron bridge, without goin' anywhere near Massac.”
“What does the nigger say for himself?” asked Bynum, greedy for all the details.
“Huh!” said the deputy. “He's been too scared to say much of anything. Says he'd tramped up here from below the state line and was makin' for Ballard County, lookin' for a job of work. He's a strange nigger all right. And he as good as admits he was right near the Hampton place yistiddy evenin' at milkin' time, when the girl was laywaid, and says he only run because the dogs took out after him and scared him. But here he is. We've done our duty and delivered him, and now if the boys out yonder on Massac want to come in and take him out that's their lookout and yourn, Dink.”
“I reckon you ain't made no mistake,” said Bynum. Cursing softly under his breath he walked over and spurned the prisoner with his heavy foot. The negro writhed under the pressure like a crushed insect. The under jailer looked down at him with a curious tautening of his heavy features.
“The papers call 'em burly black brutes,” he said, “and I never seen one of 'em yit that was more'n twenty years old or run over a hundred and thirty pound.” He raised his voice: “Jim—oh, Jim!”
An inner door of sheet-iron opened with a suspicious instantaneousness, and in the opening appeared a black jail trusty, a confirmed chicken thief. He ducked his head in turn toward each of the white men, carefully keeping his uneasy gaze away from the little negro lying between the table legs in the corner.
“Yas, suh, boss—right here, suh,” said the trusty.
“Here, Jim”—the deputy jailer was opening his pocketknife and passing it over—“take and cut them ropes off that nigger's arms and laigs.”
With a ludicrous alacrity the trusty obeyed.