the safe
way out.

His attempts at transferring the long end of the load to the strutting
deppities who hung around the Temple of Luck met with less success.
"Long as you stays Soopreem enough to wrassle wid de financial
department, us leaves you run it. You is soopreem now. Stay dat way."

Later on Brother Livingstone approached Honey Tone and warned the
leader to stay Soopreem or pay the charges on one life-size mistake.
"Confidential like, Honey Tone, I tells you stay soopreem o' else tell
de grave committee de facts fo' yo' tombstone."

The person of the Soopreem Leader became the object of watchful care on
the part of three shifts of Deppity Gardeens. Day and night there were
two or three watchful waiters on the job.

The fourth pay day was approaching and with it an obligation to pay out
more than four thousand dollars. Receipts were falling off. On
Wednesday night Honey Tone's bankroll audited less than three thousand
dollars. He tried to split the pot with the Deppity Gardeens in return
for liberty. In this he failed.

On Thursday night, as near as he could see, all the gates were closed.
He was on a one-way road.

CHAPTER XIX

1.

"All I does is follow mah feet,
'Ceptin' when de boss says, 'Stop an' eat!'
Follow mah feet de whole day through;
Follow mah feet 'till I burns a shoe,
Shovin' a truck load o' po'k an' beans,
Loadin' de boat fo' New O'leans."

Back of his truck on the dock the Wildcat set the pace for his fellows.
The man in front of him found the Wildcat forever at his heels. The man
following had a hard time keeping up.

Now and then the Wildcat's feet abandoned the steady trot for a gait
which included considerable prancing, embellished with a new series of
fancy steps, limited only by the inertia of the freight truck with
which the stepper's ambition was retarded.

"On de down-hill drag let yo' hind legs slide;
Mawnin', Mistah Debbil, git aboa'd an' ride.
Git behin' me, Satan, on de up-hill road,
I'se a one-horse sinner wid a two-horse load."

Late in the afternoon the Wildcat's tactics had converted a group of
admirers who had discovered in the prosaic business of rustling freight
a first-class chance to make a laughing game of it. Meanwhile, they
were moving record tonnage.

At evening the pier foreman sent for the Wildcat. "Tomorrow morning you
take a gang down to Section Seventeen and start moving flour into the
_West King_.