“I reckon he ain’t noways vicious,” said the trader, looking at Balaam’s smiling face.
“I have never seen him angry or sullen,” said Mr. Cozart. Other questions were asked, and finally the trader jotted down this memorandum in his note-book:—
“Buck nigger, Balaam; age 32; 6 feet 1 inch; sound as a dollar; see Colonel Strother.”
Then the trader made an appointment with Berrien for the next day, and said he thought the negro could be disposed off at private sale. Such was the fact, for when Berrien went back the next day the trader met him with an offer of fifteen hundred dollars in cash for Balaam.
“Make it eighteen,” said Mr. Cozart.
“Well, I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” said the trader, closing his eyes and pursing his mouth in a business-like way. “I’ll give you sixteen fifty—no more, no less. Come, now, that’s fair. Split the difference.”
Thereupon Mr. Cozart said it was a bargain, and the trader paid him the money down after the necessary papers were drawn up. Balaam seemed to be perfectly satisfied. All he wanted, he said, was to have a master who would treat him well. He went with Berrien to the hotel to fetch his little belongings, and if the trader had searched him when he returned he would have found strapped around his body a belt containing fifty dollars in specie.
Having thus, in a manner, replenished his empty purse, Mr. Berrien Cozart made haste to change his field of operations. To his competitors in his own special department of industry he let drop the hint that he was going to Columbus, and thence to Mobile and New Orleans, where he would hang on the outskirts of the racing season, picking up such crumbs and contributions as might naturally fall in the way of a professional gentleman who kept his eyes open and his fingers nimble enough to deal himself a winning hand.
As a matter of fact Mr. Cozart went to Nashville, and he had not been gone many days before Balaam disappeared. He had been missing two days before Colonel Strother, his new master, took any decided action, but on the morning of the fourth day the following advertisement appeared among others of a like character in the columns of the Atlanta “Intelligencer”:—