“Wal, Mr. Haley,” said Marks, “jest pass the hot water. Yes, sir; you say jest what I feel and allers have. Now, I bought a gal once, when I was in the trade—a tight, likely wench she was too, and quite considerable smart—and she had a young un that was mis’able sickly; it had a crooked back, or something or other; and I jest gin’t away to a man that thought he’d take his chance raising on’t, being it didn’t cost nothin’; never thought, yer know, of the gal’s takin’ on about it—but Lord, yer oughter seen how she went on. Why, re’lly, she did seem to me to valley the child more ’cause ’twas sickly and cross, and plagued her; and she warn’t making b’lieve, neither—cried about it, she did, and lopped round, as if she’d lost every friend she had. It re’lly was droll to think on’t. Lord, there an’t no end to women’s notions.”
“Wal, jest so with me,” said Haley. “Last summer, down on Red River, I got a gal traded off on me, with a likely lookin’ child enough, and his eyes looked as bright as yourn; but, come to look, I found him stone-blind. Fact—he was stone-blind. Wal, ye see, I thought there warn’t no harm in my jest passing him along, and not sayin’ nothin’; and I’d got him nicely swapped off for a keg o’ whisky; but come to get him away from the gal, she was jest like a tiger. So ’twas before we started, and I hadn’t got my gang chained up; so what should she do but ups on a cotton-bale, like a cat, ketches a knife from one of the deck hands, and, I tell ye, she made all fly for a minit, till she saw ’twarn’t no use; and she jest turns round, and pitches head first, young un and all, into the river—went down plump, and never ris.”
“Bah!” said Tom Loker, who had listened to these stories with ill-repressed disgust—” shif’less, both on ye! my gals don’t cut up no such shines, I tell ye!”
“Indeed! how do you help it?” said Marks briskly.
“Help it? why, I buys a gal, and if she’s got a young un to be sold, I jest walks up and puts my fist to her face, and says, ‘Look here, now, if you give me one word out of your head, I’ll smash yer face in. I won’t hear one word—not the beginning of a word.’ I says to ’em, ‘This yer young un’s mine, and not yourn, and you’ve no kind o’ business with it. I’m going to sell it, first chance; mind, you don’t cut up none o’ yer shines about it, or I’ll make ye wish ye’d never been born.’ I tell ye, they sees it an’t no play, when I gets hold. I makes ’em as whist as fishes; and if one on ’em begins and gives a yelp, why—” and Mr. Loker brought down his fist with a thump that fully explained the hiatus.
“That ar’s what ye may call emphasis,” said Marks, poking Haley in the side, and going into another small giggle. “An’t Tom peculiar? He! he! he! I say, Tom, I ’spect you make ’em understand, for all niggers’ heads is woolly. They don’t never have no doubt o’ your meaning, Tom. If you an’t the devil, Tom, you’s his twin brother, I’ll say that for ye!”
Tom received the compliment with becoming modesty, and began to look as affable as was consistent, as John Bunyan says, “with his doggish nature.”
Haley, who had been imbibing very freely of the staple of the evening, began to feel a sensible elevation and enlargement of his moral faculties—a phenomenon not unusual with gentlemen of a serious and reflective turn under similar circumstances.
“Wal, now, Tom,” he said, “ye re’lly is too bad, as I al’ays have told ye; ye know, Tom, you and I used to talk over these yer matters down in Natchez, and I used to prove to ye that we made full as much, and was as well off for this yer world, by treatin’ on ’em well, besides keepin’ a better chance for comin’ in the kingdom at last, when wust comes to wust, and thar an’t nothing else left to get, ye know.”
“Bah!” said Tom, “don’t I know?—don’t make me too sick with any yer stuff—my stomach is a leetle riled now;” and Tom drank half a glass of raw brandy.
“I say,” said Haley, and leaning back in his chair and gesturing impressively. “I’ll say this now, I al’ays meant to drive my trade so as to make money on’t fust and foremost, as much as any man; but, then, trade an’t everything, and money an’t everything, ’cause we’s all got souls. I don’t care now who hears me say it—and I think a cussed sight on it—so I may as well come out with it. I b’lieve in religion, and one of these days, when I have got matters tight and snug, I calculates to ’tend to my soul and them ar matters; and so what’s the use of doin’ any more wickedness than’s re’lly necessary?—it don’t seem to me it’s ’tall prudent.”
“‘Tend to yer soul!” repeated Tom contemptuously; “take a bright look-out to find a soul in you—save yourself any care on that score. If the devil sifts you through a hair sieve, he won’t find one.”
“Why, Tom, you’re cross,” said Haley; “why can’t ye take it pleasant, now, when a feller’s talking for your good?”
“Stop that ar jaw o’ yourn, there,” said Tom gruffly. “I can stand most any talk o’ yourn but your pious talk—that kills me right up. After all, what’s the odds between me and you? ’Tan’t that you care one bit more, or have a bit more feelin’—it’s clean, sheer, dog meanness, wanting to cheat the devil, and save your own skin; don’t I see through it? And your ‘gettin’ religion,’ as you call it, arter all, is too p’isin mean for any crittur; run up a bill with the devil all your life, and then sneak out when pay-time comes! Bah!”
“Come, come, gentlemen, I say; this isn’t business,” said Marks. “There’s different ways, you know, of looking at all subjects. Mr. Haley is a very nice man, no doubt, and has his own conscience; and, Tom, you have your ways, and very good ones, too, Tom; but quarrelling, you know, won’t answer no kind of purpose. Let’s go to business. Now, Mr. Haley, what is it? you want us to undertake to catch this yer gal?”
“The gal’s no matter of mine—she’s Shelby’s; it’s only the boy. I was a fool for buying the monkey!”
“You’re generally a fool!” said Tom gruffly.
“Come, now, Loker, none of your huffs,” said Marks, licking his lips; “you see, Mr. Haley’s a puttin’ us in a way of a good job, I reckon; just hold still—these yer arrangements is my forte. This yer gal, Mr. Haley, how is she? what is she?”
“Wal! white and handsome—well brought up. I’d a gin Shelby eight hundred or a thousand and then made well on her.”
“White and handsome—well brought up!” said Marks, his sharp eyes, nose, and mouth all alive with enterprise. “Look here, now, Loker, a beautiful opening. We’ll do a business here on our own account; we does the catchin’; the boy, of course, goes to Mr. Haley—we takes the gal to Orleans to speculate on. An’t it beautiful?”
Tom, whose great heavy mouth had stood ajar during this communication, now suddenly snapped it together, as a big dog closes on a piece of meat, and seemed to be digesting the idea at his leisure.
“Ye see,” said Marks to Haley, stirring his punch as he did so, “ye see, we has justices convenient at all p’ints alongshore, that does up any little jobs in our line quite reasonable. Tom, he does the knockin’ down and that ar; and I come in all dressed up—shining boots—everything first chop, when the swearin’s to be done. You oughter see, now,” said Marks, all in a glow of professional pride, “how I can tone it off. One day, I’m Mr. Twickem, from New Orleans; ’nother day, I’m just come from my plantation on Pearl River, where I works seven hundred niggers; then, again, I come out a distant relation of Henry Clay, or some old cock in Kentuck. Talents is different, yer know.
