Jeff's jaws opened and refused to close. His throat locked on a howl, and that howl emerged as a thin, faint wheeze. The filling inside his knee joints turned to a marrowy jelly. His scalp crawled on his skull.
The ghost grabbed him in a fumbling embrace; and even as Jeff, in an intensified spasm of terror, wrestled to be free of that awful clutch, he realised that this ghost was entirely too solid for a regular ghost. Besides, there was that smell of gin. Ghosts did not drink—or did they? He found his voice—part of it.
“Shacky, ain't you daid?” he pleaded in croaking accents. “Fur Gawd's sake, tell me de truth—ain't you sho-'nuff daid?”
“Who say I'm daid?” demanded Red Hoss with maudlin truculence. Then instantly his tone became plaintive: “How come ever'whars I goes to-night dey axes me is I daid? Does I look daid? Does I act daid?”
“Wait a minute, Shacky—lemme think.” And now Jeff, well recovered, was holding the ex-apparition upright. “You sorter taken me by s'prise; but lemme think.”
Already, as his self-possession came back to him, the germ of a splendid, dazzling idea took root and sprouted in his brain.
Still supporting the burden of the miraculously restored Red Hoss, he glanced over his shoulder up the hallway. There was no one visible; none other shared this marvellous secret with him. As quickly as might be, he guided the uncertain form of Red Hoss away from the doorway and round the corner into the black shadows at the side of the building, where rain dripped on them from the eaves above.
That made no difference. Red Hoss was wet through, and in this moment any slight dam-age from dampness to his own vanities of wardrobe meant nothing at all to Jeff. He propped Red Hoss against the brick wall and steadied him there. And when he spoke, he spoke low; but, also, he spoke fast. Time was a precious commodity right now.
“Red Hoss,” he said, “I's yore friend, ez you knows full well. Now tell me: How come you didn't git drownded in de river?”
“Me? Huh! Dey ain't nary river ever been dug deep 'nuff to drownd me in,” Red Hoss was replying with drunken boastfulness. “Here's de way 'twuz: Come de night after C'ris'mus, I finds myse'f a little bit overtuck wid licker. So I lays down on de b'iler deck of dat dere tugboat, takin' a little nap. I reckin I must 'a' roll over in my sleep, 'ca'se all of a sudden I 'scovers myse'f in de middle of dat ole Tennessee River; an' dat tugboat, she's agoin' 'long upstream same ez ef de w'ite folks is sayin' to deyse'ves: 'Well, one nigger mo' or less don't make no diff'ence in good times lak dese.'