in silent, and all the rest of the way to Bairdstown
he set there with that scowl on his face. I guesses he was thinking now,
the way things had shaped up, he wouldn't sell none of his stuff at all
without he fell right in with the reception chance had planned fur him.
But if he did fall in with it, and pertend like he was a Messiah to
them niggers, he could get all they had. He was mebby thinking how much
ornerier that would make the hull scheme.

CHAPTER XVII

We got to Bairdstown early enough, but we didn't go to work there. We
wasted all that day. They was something working in the doctor's head he
wasn't talking about. I supposed he was getting cold feet on the hull
proposition. Anyhow, he jest set around the little tavern in that place
and done nothing all afternoon.

The weather was fine, and we set out in front. We hadn't set there
more'n an hour till I could tell we was being noticed by the blacks,
not out open and above board. But every now and then one or two or three
would pass along down the street, and lazy about and take a look at
us. They pertended they wasn't noticing, but they was. The word had got
around, and they was a feeling in the air I didn't like at all. Too much
caged-up excitement among the niggers. The doctor felt it too, I could
see that. But neither one of us said anything about it to the other.

Along toward dusk we takes a walk. They was a good-sized crick at the
edge of that little place, and on it an old-fashioned worter mill. Above
the mill a little piece was a bridge. We crossed it and walked along a
road that follered the crick bank closte fur quite a spell.

It wasn't much of a town--something betwixt a village and a
settlement--although they was going to run a branch of the railroad over
to it before very long. It had had a chancet to get a railroad once,
years before that. But it had said then it didn't want no railroad. So
until lately every branch built through that part of the country grinned
very sarcastic and give it the go-by.

They was considerable woods standing along the crick, and around a turn
in the road we come onto Sam, all of a sudden, talking with another
nigger. Sam was jest a-laying it off to that nigger, but he kind of
hushed as we come nearer. Down the road quite a little piece was a
good-sized wooden building that never had been painted and looked like
it was a big barn. Without knowing it the doctor and me had been pinting
ourselves right towar