“Naw,” Dainty said in her sweetest tones. “It’s a bowl of hot sass’fras tea!”
“It’s mighty good fer a nigger whut’s had a accidunt, Dude,” Dainty told him with suspicious gentleness.
Dude glanced at Hitch Diamond. That gentleman’s face was set in a monstrous, mouth-stretching grin, and his eyes danced with unholy glee.
“Huh!” Dude grunted. He sheepishly bent his head over the bowl of sassafras tea and sipped its last drop without saying a word.
“Dat fake preacher prize-fighter is done scratched me out,” he reasoned. “I’ll git even, or die!”
Finishing his tea, Dude rose to his feet. “I’s gwine out to feed de pigs fer de night, Dainty,” he said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Dude sat down in the door of the corncrib and meditated deeply upon a proper method of retaliation.
“Dat Hitch Diamond thinks he’s purty blame peart in his head,” he announced to himself. “He thinks dat he’s got so much sense dat his eyes looks red.”
He ran his hands deep into his pockets and meditated some more. Then he shook his head hopelessly.
“I ain’t got nothin’ in my head but squash-seed. When I tries to ponder, it gibs me blind-staggers in my brains. I hope, some day, dat nigger will hab to swaller a whole sassafras-tree!”
He stood up and started slowly back toward the house. He looked tired and worn. He had most certainly never heard of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but he would have agreed with that philosopher in the statement that “thinking is the hardest work in the world.”
“I reckin I’ll hab to take dese new socks fer my pay an’ call it even,” he sighed. “Dar ain’t no revengeunce comin’ to me. Dainty an’ Hitch is too much team to pull ag’in.”
He walked into the room where the two sat, nursing a grouch and by no means disposed to be courteous to his guest. He took a corn-cob pipe from his pocket, scratched in the bottom of another pocket for some crumbs of smoking tobacco, and lighted up.
“Dude is got anodder pipe, elder. Would you wish to smoke?” Dainty inquired.
“Yes’m,” Hitch responded. “It’ll kinder sottle my stomick fer my supper vittles.”
Dude arose grumpily, walked to the mantle shelf, and picked up a pipe. Out of one pocket he brought a few crumbs of smoking tobacco, then scraped the bottom of another pocket for a few more crumbs. He emptied some papers and matches and pieces of string out of a mug on the mantle, and poured out a few more crumbs. Then, behind a picture, his eyes caught the gleam of metal, and he brought out something which looked like a flask. He poured a few crumbs out of this into his hand, finished filling the pipe as he turned his back, and reached for a match. Passing them to Hitch, Dude took his chair on the far side of the room near the open door.
