The rattling rumble of an old Ford sounded behind him and came thudding solemnly in his wake. It came roaring alongside, and its brakes squealed.
“H’llo, Mistuh Colby!” said Nesbit heavily. “I’m goin’ in to town. Can I give ye a lift?”
Colby swallowed something. He felt his forehead beading; but Nesbit was bending down in the driver’s seat, critically adjusting the carbureter ferrule and watching the radiator absently.
“Th-thanks,” stammered Colby.
He got in. Nesbit shoved in the clutch to first speed and took off his foot, and the car jerked into high. It went quivering and rumbling along the road to town.
Colby wiped the sweat from his face again. In the back seat, silent and awed, and perhaps a trifle fearful, sat the two colored boys whom he had passed twenty minutes before. They gazed at him with the amazing blank woodenness of colored boys in a white man’s car. Colby felt his heart racing.
“Get any shootin’?” asked Nesbit presently, never taking his eyes from the road ahead. “I saw ye goin’ out with yer friend.”
“We bagged a few,” said Colby. He was fighting off a panic that he knew to be unreasonable, so he added: “We started back to town, but a car came along with one of Grahame’s friends in it. He was going on to Richmond, so Grahame got in with him. Saved him a train trip. I gave him the whole bag.”
“Yeah,” said Nesbit heavily. He drove in silence for a space. “I don’t reckon we realize how much city people like birds. We can get ’em when we want ’em. They can’t.”
“Grahame seemed to enjoy himself,” said Colby.