“Ma’am,” says I, tryin’ to work my face into shape for talkin’, “don’t let this jigger make any trades with yuh. He’s a —”
Whap! Old Zibe steps back and wraps that bullwhip around my legs.
“Git back, nigger!” he roars. “Git back, or I’ll cut yore legs off!”
I ask yuh if that wasn’t a dirty trick. I didn’t like Zibe, anyway; so I took a wild swing at his jaw, knocked him silly with one punch, took him to my bosom and pitched him headfirst into the committee on the first row.
“The nigger wins by a knockout!” yells “Greasy” Easton, and somebody cut the curtain loose, with the Curse of Drink outfit haulin’ me back by the slack of my overalls.
Well, I got told all about myself, while old Zibe manages to get around to the back, where he got his gun and wanted to assassinate me, but they took his gun away. The committee comes up and says that the show begins to look like it was worth the money, but they’ve got to see it all first.
While they’re tryin’ to fix the stage for the next act, Hank explains the show to me.
“In that first act, the father of them two girls has just died, leavin’ ’em nothin’ but that racehorse. I was their father’s jockey, and this horse is to win a big race. That’s the climax. Legree owns a horse in that race, but he knows it can’t beat our horse; so he schemes to git our horse. Legree is the villain, yuh see. Yo’re an old nigger, which was owned by the old man, who went broke and had to sell yuh, along with other slaves. Legree buys yuh. He knows Susie is crazy about yuh, and he figures to trade you to her for this racehorse. She won’t trade the first time; so he beats yuh up—”
“He tries to, yuh mean,” says I.
“That was all in the play, Hozie. You ruined it. There won’t nobody know what it’s all about now. We’ve got to go ahead with the second act. This act—”