"Stoppers—what do you mean by stoppers?"
Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. "I means nigger- stoppers," he reiterated, amazed in his turn.
"Negro-stoppers—" Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit the conversation.
Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.
"Look heah, black man, I knows I is right. Heah, lonme look at dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right."
Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught his arm and drew him up short.
"Look heah, nigger," said Tump, in a different tone, "I faded dad deed fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes moved on their way to Niggertown.
Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the unaccustomed labor of reading.
His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all black men whatsoever.