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 tone, "I faded dad deed
fuh ten iron men, an' I reckon I got a once-over comin' fuh my money."
The soldier was plainly mobilized and ready to attack. To fight Tump, to
fight any negro at all, would be Peter's undoing; it would forfeit the
moral leadership he hoped to gain. Moreover, he had no valid grounds for
a disagreement with Tump. He passed over the deed, and the two negroes
moved on their way to Niggertown.
Tump trudged forward with eyes glued to paper, his face puckered in the
unaccustomed labor of reading.
His thick lips moved at the individual letters, and constructed them
bunglingly into syllables and words. He was trying to uncover the verbal
camouflage by which the astute white brushed away all rights of all
black men whatsoever.
To Peter there grew up something sadly comical in Tump's efforts. The
big negro might well typify all the colored folk of the South,
struggling in a web of law and custom they did not understand,
misplacing their suspicions, befogged and fearful.
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