JUST THEN, OUT CAME ONE OF THOSE OLD BOARDS AND THERE STOOD THE BLACK MAN.
“Just one more shot to finish him,” he said. It sounded just exactly like a pistol.
“There he is,” Warde said; “and he’ll never frighten good little boy scouts again. Nobody will ever get another prize for hitting him in the eye with a baseball. His glorious career as a target is over. Step up, lads, and take a look at him.”
Oh, boy, I guess we never felt so silly in our lives. Poor bandit, he was just one of those figures that sit in a chair and are pelted with baseballs, three shots for a dime. “Every time you hit the nigger!” That’s what the man used to call. When some one hit him a good hard crack he’d topple off the seat and then the man would give you a kewpie doll or maybe an ash-tray. The poor old wooden “nigger” had been packed away and all we had seen was his black face sticking up above some old boxes.
I said to Warde, laughing good and hard, “You knew it all the time, didn’t you?”
He just said, “A scout is observant. Do I get the Gold Cross?”
Westy said, “I don’t think you get the Gold Cross, but we ought to get leather medals, I know that. We’re a fine outfit of scouts not to know an old ‘hit-the-nigger’ target from a bandit.”
Warde just kicked the poor old black man. I guess the black man didn’t care, because he was used to being pelted in the face. I wouldn’t want that job.