Page:Micheaux - The Conquest, The Story of a Negro Pioneer (1913).djvu/305

 On hearing me, Ethel came downstairs and called up Claves. A few minutes later her mother called me, saying Claves wanted to talk to me. When I took the receiver and called "hello," he answered like a crazy man. I said:

"What is the matter? I do not understand what you are talking about."

"What are you doing in my house, after what you said about me?" he shouted excitedly.

"Said about you?" I asked.

"Yes," he replied, "I hear you treated my wife like a dog, after I sent her out there to attend to your wife, called me all kinds of bad names, and said I was only a fifteen-cent jockey."

"Treated your wife ugly, and called you a jockey," here I came to and said to myself that here was some more of the elder's work, but I answered Claves: "I haven't the faintest idea of what you are talking about. I treated your wife with the utmost courtesy while she was in Dakota, I never mentioned your name in any such terms as you refer to, and I am wholly at a loss to understand the condition of affairs I find here. I am confused over it all."

"Well," he answered, "suppose you come down to where I work and we will talk it over."

"I'll do that," I answered, and went down town where he worked on Wabash avenue.

One thing I had noticed about him was, that while he was ignorant, he was at least an honest, hard-working fellow, but was kept in fear by his wife and the elder. I saw after talking to him, that he, like Mrs. McCraline, did not believe a word of