"Drink!" said the man, uncorking a bottle of champagne; "I had it ready
for you."
He poured the foaming wine and set the bottle on a sort of secretary or
desk, and then looked anxiety and avarice together out of his liquid
black eyes and broad, heavy face.
"_Buena suerte, senor!_" Van Dorn lisped, as they drank together.
"Hya! spitch!" nervously muttered Clark, cutting his own top-boots with
a dog-whip. "I wish I was out of the business: the risk is too great. My
wife is religious--praying, mebbe, now, in there. My daughters is at the
seminaries, spendin' money like the Canawl Company on the lawyers.
Nothin' pays like nigger-stealin', but it's beneath you and me, Van
Dorn."
"_A la verdad!_ This is my last incursion, Don Clark. Pleasure has kept
me poor for life. To-day I did a little sacrifice, and it grows upon
me."
"If they should ketch me and set me in the pillory, Van Dorn, for what
you do to-night, hya! spitch!"--he slashed his knees--"it would break
Mrs. Clark's heart."
"I want this money to-night," said Van Dorn, "to make two young people
happy. They shall take my portion, and take me with them out of the
plains of Puckem."
"Oh, it is nervous business"--Clark's eyes of rich jelly made the pallor
on his large face like a winding-sheet--"hya! spitch! The Quakers are
a-watchin' me. Ole Zekiel Jinkins over yer, ole Warner Mifflin down to
the mill, these durned Hunns at the Wildcat--they look me through every
time they ketch me on the road.
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