Then there was Henry Hooker, cashier of the village bank.  Peter knew that the banker subscribed liberally to foreign missions; indeed, at the cashier’s behest, the white church of Hooker’s Bend kept a paid missionary on the upper Congo.  But the banker had sold some village lots to the negroes, and in two instances, where a streak of commercial phosphate had been discovered on the properties, the lots had reverted to the Hooker estate.  There had been in the deed something concerning a mineral reservation that the negro purchasers knew nothing about until the phosphate was discovered.  The whole matter had been perfectly legal.

A hand shook Siner’s shoulder and interrupted his review.  Peter turned, and caught an alcoholic breath over his shoulder, and the blurred voice of a Southern negro called out above the rumble of the car and the roar of the engine: 

“‘Fo’ Gawd, ef dis ain’t Peter Siner I’s been lookin’ at de las’ twenty miles, an’ not knowin’ him wid sich skeniptious clo’es on!  Wha you fum, nigger?”

Siner took the enthusiastic hand offered him and studied the heavily set, powerful man bending over the seat.  He was in a soldier’s uniform, and his broad nutmeg-colored face and hot black eyes brought Peter a vague sense of familiarity; but he never would have identified his impression had he not observed on the breast of the soldier’s uniform the Congressional military medal for bravery on the field of battle.  Its glint furnished Peter the necessary clew.  He remembered his mother’s writing him something about Tump Pack going to France and getting “crowned” before the army.  He had puzzled a long time over what she meant by “crowned” before he guessed her meaning.  Now the medal aided Peter in reconstructing out of this big umber-colored giant the rather spindling Tump Pack he had known in Hooker’s Bend.

Siner was greatly surprised, and his heart warmed at the sight of his old playmate.

“What have you been doing to yourself, Tump?” he cried, laughing, and shaking the big hand in sudden warmth.  “You used to be the size of a dime in a jewelry store.”

“Been in ’e army, nigger, wha I’s been fed,” said the grinning brown man, delightedly.  “I sho is picked up, ain’t I?”

“And what are you doing here in Cairo?”

“Tryin’ to bridle a lil white mule.”  Mr. Pack winked a whisky-brightened eye jovially and touched his coat to indicate that some of the “white mule” was in his pocket and had not been drunk.

“How’d you get here?”

“Wucked my way down on de St. Louis packet an’ got paid off at Padjo [Paducah, Kentucky]; ’n ‘en I thought I’d come on down heah an’ roll some bones.  Been hittin’ ’em two days now, an’ I sho come putty nigh bein’ cleaned; but I put up lil Joe heah, an’ won ’em all back, ’n ’en some.”  He touched the medal on his coat, winked again, slapped Siner on the leg, and burst into loud laughter.

Peter was momentarily shocked.  He made a place on the seat for his friend to sit.  “You don’t mean you put up your medal on a crap game, Tump?”