"A little, once in a while, when I have had the time. You see, a railroad man can't always choose."
"Railroad man?" said Colonel Blount. A sudden gloom fell upon his ruddy face. "Railroad man, eh? Well, I wish you was something else. Now, I helped get that railroad through this country—if it hadn't been for me, they never could have laid a mile of track through here. But now, do you know what they done did to me the other day, with their damned old railroad?"
"No, sir, I haven't heard."
"Well, I'll tell you—Bill! Oh, Bill! Go into the house and get me some ice; and go pick some mint and bring it here to this gentleman and me—Say, do you know what that railroad did? Why, it just killed the best filly on my plantation, my best running stock, too. Now, I was the man to help get that railroad through the Delta, and I—"
"Well, now, Colonel Blount," said the other, "the road isn't a bad sort of thing for you all down here, after all. It relieves you of the river market, and it gives you a double chance to get out your cotton. You don't have to haul your cotton twelve miles back to the boat any more. Here is your station right at your door, and you can load on the cars any day you want to."
"Oh, that's all right, that's all right. But how about this killing of my stock?"
"Well, that's so," said the other, facing the point and ruminatingly biting a splinter between his teeth. "It does look as if we had killed about everything loose in the whole Delta during the last month or so."
"Are you on this railroad?" asked Blount suddenly.
"I reckon I'll have to admit that I am," said the other, smiling.
"Passenger agent, or something of that sort, I reckon? Well, let me tell you, you change your road. Say, there was a man down below here last week settling up claims—Bill! Ah-h, Bill! Where've you gone?"