s thoughts seemed to divide. The
greater part was occupied with Tump Pack. Peter could vision the
formidable ex-soldier lying dead in Jonesboro jail, with his little
congressional medal on his breast. Some lighter portion of his mind
nickered about here and there on trivial things. He observed a little
hole rusted in the running-board of the motor. He noticed that the
officer's eyes were just the same chill, washed blue as the winter sky
above his head. He remembered a tale that, before electrocution became a
law in Tennessee the county sheriff's nerve had failed him at a hanging,
and the constable Dawson Bobbs had sprung the drop. There was something
terrible about the fat man. He would do anything, absolutely anything,
that came to his hands in the way of legal sewage.

In the midst of these thoughts Peter heard himself saying.

"He--was trying to get Cissie out?"

"Yep."

"He--must have been drunk."

"Oh, yeah."

Mr. Bobbs sat studying the mulatto. As he studied him he said slowly:

"Some of 'em say he was disguised as a woman. Others say he had some
women's clothes along, ready to put on. Now, me and the sheriff knowed
Tump Pack purty well, Peter, and we knowed that nigger never in the
worl' would 'a' thought up sich a plan by hisself."

He sat looking at Peter so interrogatively that the mulatto began, in a
strained, earnest voice, telling the constable precisely what had
happened in regard to the clothes.

Mr. Bobbs sat listening impassively, moving his toothpick up and down
from one side to the other of his small, thin-lipped mouth. At last he
nodded.

"Well, I guess that's about the way of it. I didn't exactly understand
the women's clothes business,--damn' fool disguise,--but we figgered it
might pop into the head of a' edjucated nigger." He sucked his teeth,
reflectively. "Peter," he said at last, "seems to me, if I was you, I'd
drift on away from this town. The niggers around here ain't strong for
you now; some say you're a hoodoo; some say this an' some that. The
white folks don't exactly like you trying to get up a cook's union. It's
your right to do that if you want to, of course, but this is a mighty
small city to have unions and things. The fact is, it ain't a big enough
place for a nigger of yore ability, Peter. I b'lieve, if I was you, I'd
jes drift on some'eres else."

The officer tipped up his toothpick so that it lifted his upper lip in a
little v-shaped opening and exposed a strong, y