He lifted his head, every nerve tingling with desperate determination. The low growl of voices was audible through the partition, but there was no other sound. Carson City was still resting, and there would be no crowd nor excitement until much later. Not until nightfall would any attack be attempted; he had six or eight hours yet in which to perfect his plans. He ran his eyes about the room searching for some spot of weakness. It was dark back of the bench, and he turned in that direction. Leaning over, he looked down on the figure of a man curled up, sound asleep on the floor. The fellow's limbs twitched as if in a dream, otherwise he might have deemed him dead, as his face was buried in his arms. A moment Keith hesitated; then he reached down and shook the sleeper, until he aroused sufficiently to look up. It was the face of a coal-black negro. An instant the fellow stared at the man towering over him, his thick lips parted, his eyes full of sudden terror. Then he sat up, with hands held before him as though warding off a blow.
“Fo' de Lawd's sake,” he managed to articulate finally, “am dis sho' yo', Massa Jack?”
Keith, to whom all colored people were much alike, laughed at the expression on the negro's face.
“I reckon yer guessed the name, all right, boy. Were you the cook of the Diamond L?”
“No, sah, I nebber cooked no di'onds. I'se ol' Neb, sah.”
“Yes, sah, I'se de boy dat libbed wid ol' Missus Caton durin' de wah. I ain't seen yo', Massa Jack, sence de day we buried yo' daddy, ol' Massa Keith. But I knowed yo' de berry minute I woke up. Sho', yo' 'members Neb, sah?”
It came to Keith now in sudden rush of memory--the drizzling rain in the little cemetery, the few neighbors standing about, a narrow fringe of slaves back of them, the lowering of the coffin, and the hollow sound of earth falling on the box; and Neb, his Aunt Caton's house servant, a black imp of good humor, who begged so hard to be taken back with him to the war. Why, the boy had held his stirrup the next morning when he rode away. The sudden rush of recollection seemed to bridge the years, and that black face became familiar, a memory of home.
“Of course, I remember, Neb,” he exclaimed, eagerly, “but that's all years ago and I never expected to see you again. What brought you West and got you into this hole?”