“No; fourteen. Yer see, you’re not up ter taime on the nigger question. I know ’em like a church-steeple. When I bought that are boy, now comin’ three year, I seed he wuz a sprightly nigger, one er yer ambitious sort, what would be mighty apt to git fractious, an’ be makin’ tracks, onless I got a holt on him. So sez I to him, ‘Ham, you’re a sprightly nigger, one of the raal ambitious sort, now aincher?’ He allowed he warnt nothin’ else. ‘Waal,’ sez I, ‘Ham, how’d you like to buy yerself, an’ be a free nigger, an’ hev a house of yer own, an’ a woman of yer own, all jess like white folks?’ ‘Lor,’ sez he, ‘Massa, I’d like it a heap.’ ‘Waal,’ sez I, ‘you jess scrabble round an’ raise me seven hundred dollars, an’ I’ll sell you to yerself, an’ cheap at that.’ So yer see he began to pay up, an’ I got a holt on him. He’s a handy nigger, an’ a likely nigger, an’ a pop’lar nigger. He ken play on ther fiddle like taime,—pooty nigh a minstril is that are nigger. He ken cut hair an’ fry a beefsteak with ayry man. He ken drive team, an’ do a little j’iner work, an’ shoe a mule when thar ain’t no reg’lar blacksmith round. He made these yer boots, an’ reg’lar stompers they is. He’s one er them chirrupy, smilin’ niggers, with white teeth an’ genteel manners, what critturs an’ foaks nat’rally takes to. Waal, he picked up the bits and quarters right smart. He’s ben at it, lammin’ ahead raal ambitious, for ’bout three year. Last Sunday, after church, he pinted up the last ten of the six hundred. So I allowed ’t wuz come time to sell him. He wuz gettin’ his bead drawed, an’ his idees sot on freedom very onhealthy. I didn’t like to disapp’int him to ther last; so I allowed ’t wuz jest as well to let you hev him cheap to go down River. That’s how to work them fractious runaway niggers. That are’s my patent. You ken hev it for nothin’. Haw! haw!”
“Haw, haw, haw! You are one er ther boys. I’m dum sorry that are trick can’t be did twicet on the same nigger. I reckon he knows too much for that. Waal, s’pose we walk round to the calaboose, ’fore we go to bed, an’ see ef he’s chained up all right.”
They went out.
Biddulph spoke first.
“Shame!”
“Yes,” said Brent; “do you wonder that we have to run away to the Rockys and spend our indignation on grizzlys?”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Try to abolish slavery in Ham’s case. Come; we’ll go buy him a file.”
“We seem to have business with the Murker family,” said I.
“A hard lot they are. Representative brutes!”