Skeeter staged his commercial transaction with some forethought. He chose nine negroes whom he knew to be possessed of ten dollars each, and asked them to meet him out at the old fair-grounds. He got Little Bit, who was the colored jockey of Tickfall, to give the horse a try-out. In appearance, the horse was all the white man said he was, and more. He had a peculiar slinking gait, like a limp, sometimes in one foot, then in another. Often he seemed to be limping in all four feet at the same time.
The negroes howled in derision when Skeeter proposed to be one of ten to buy the animal. They examined his feet and made many comments, and finally proposed to bet Skeeter ten dollars that he could not tell what leg the horse would limp on the next time he started off.
But when Little Bit climbed on that horse the negroes stopped laughing. He could run like a jack-rabbit, and really had the jack-rabbit’s peculiar springy, limpy gait.
“Dis hoss is a powerful funny pufformer,” Conko Mukes howled; “but I puts my ten on him. He’s a runner!”
“Who’s gwine take keer of dis hoss whut belongs to us ten niggers?” Pap Curtain inquired.
“I’ll keep him an’ feed him,” Skeeter answered. “I kin turn him in a big pasture dat belongs to Marse John Flournoy, an’ Marse John won’t ever know he’s in de field. I’ll feed him Marse John’s oats and corn, an’ dat white man won’t ever miss it.”
Two hours later Skeeter returned to the Hen-Scratch and handed Mr. Nuhat the sum of ninety dollars.
“I turned de hoss in de pasture back of de sheriff’s house,” he volunteered. “Part of de trade wus dat I wus to take keer of de hoss. I reckin de tenth part dat I bought is de part whut eats.”
“Would you be held responsible if anything happened to the animal?” Nuhat asked.
“Not onless he choked to death,” Skeeter laughed. “I jes’ takes keer of de eatin’ end.”
“I’m sorry I could not go on to Shongaloon,” the white man said quietly. “There’s a lot of good money to be picked up betting on that horse at the races.”
“We’ll slick him up an’ git him feelin’ good an’ bet on him some ourselfs,” Skeeter said.
“Don’t make him look too fit,” Nuhat warned him. “That horse’s looks get the odds against him. Nobody bets against something that looks like a winner.”
A few minutes later the white man bought a package of cigarettes from Skeeter Butts, thanked him for the sale of the horse, and walked out.
Until midnight Skeeter was alone in the Hen-Scratch. No one came in to patronize his soft-drink emporium. The man was in the depths of despair. His place had always been the popular hang-out for all the plain loafers and fancy sons of rest. Now there were none so lazy as to enter a place which had nothing of its former attractiveness but a name.
“De niggers avoids dis place like it wus a pesthouse,” Skeeter lamented to himself. “Ef I had about two hundred dollars I could start me a movin’-picture show fer colored only in dis little house, an’ sell soft drinks on de side. Dat would fotch de crowd back, an’ de men would bring de lady folks, an’ I could git rid of a lot of ice-cream combs an’ things like dat.”
He smoked many cigarettes, lighting a fresh one on the stub of each old one, trying to think out a way to get some money for his new enterprise.
“Mebbe I could work some kind of flim-flam wid dat hoss,” he sighed. “But I cain’t make money very fast ef I got to ’vide up my profits by ten.”
It had never occurred to Skeeter to question the white man’s ownership of that horse, nor his right to dispose of it. The animal looked like just such an old skate as a broken-down race-horse man would own at the end of his track career. When a horseman retires from the turf, he generally has something like that to get rid of.
Skeeter did not get to............