Page:Birthright.djvu/77

 “Now you puts it to me lak dat, Peter,” he answered with importance, “I wonders ef dat gimlet-haided white man ain't put some stoppers in dat deed he guv you. He mout of.”

Such remarks as that from Tump always annoyed Peter. Tump's intellectual method was to talk sense just long enough to gain his companion's ear, and then produce something absurd and quash the tentative interest.

Siner turned away from him and said, “Piffle.”

Tump was defensive at once.

“'T ain't piffle, either! I's talkin' sense, nigger.”

Peter shrugged, and walked a little way in silence, but the soldier's nonsense stuck in his brain and worried him. Finally he turned, rather irritably.

“Stoppers—what do you mean by stoppers?”

Tump opened his jet eyes and their yellowish whites. “I means nigger-stoppers,” he reiterated, amazed in his turn.

“Negro-stoppers—” Peter began to laugh sardonically, and abruptly quit the conversation.

Such rank superiority irritated the soldier to the nth power.

“Look heah, black man, I knows I is right. Heah, lonme look at dat-aiuh, deed. Maybe I can find 'em. I knows I suttinly is right.”

Peter walked on, paying no attention to the request Until Tump caught his arm and drew him up short.

“Look heah, nigger,” said Tump, in a different