"Say, man!" cried Legs. "Didn't I get out of that thing in luck?"
"Bet your life on that you did," commented Hatfield. "If they'd have gotten you, the devil would have been to pay." He laughed a low, hard laugh, and then added: "Those church people have had their eyes on your place for some time, and the chances are if you had been caught, they'd have appeared against you."
"They certainly put old Jack Bell out of business proper," Legs commented, thoughtfully. "That old nigga conducted such a rotten dump and tiger, though; and all those dirty little girls around on top of it, I don't wonder."
"Wonder whether he had any money left when they got through with him?" Hatfield inquired.
"Hard to tell," said Legs. "They fined him out of hundreds, that I do know."
By this time, the train was entering the city. From the car could be seen an incomplete mass of varied buildings, little shacks that faced alleys, and at the front of which played dozens of little unbleached pickaninnies. Wyeth viewed the city as the train crept slowly along, and his impression did not agree with what he had gathered from reading of it. It was not, he felt positive, the city Attalia was, although claiming almost an equal number of people.
"You see those two brick cupola's extending into the air?" he heard Hatfield saying. "That's a Negro Baptist church." He was mistaken, however, for the same proved to be the large, new station, the pride of the city.
Soon the train rolled into this, and a few minutes later, they stood in the waiting room.
"It's going to cost like the dickens to get all these grips of your hauled," said Hatfield, with a frown.
"Only had to pay thirty-five cents to get them to the depot in Attalia." He walked to the lower end of the platform, and began a series of inquiries relative to the hauling of the same. He soon came upon an express man, who agreed to unload them for fifty cents, at where-ever they found a room.