See?"
He was as good as his word. The conductor escaped from the car before
Miller had time for further expostulation. Finally McBane, having thrown
the stump of his cigar into the aisle and added to the floor a finishing
touch in the way of expectoration, rose and went back into the white
car.
Left alone in his questionable glory, Miller buried himself again in his
newspaper, from which he did not look up until the engine stopped at a
tank station to take water.
As the train came to a standstill, a huge negro, covered thickly with
dust, crawled off one of the rear trucks unobserved, and ran round the
rear end of the car to a watering-trough by a neighboring well. Moved
either by extreme thirst or by the fear that his time might be too short
to permit him to draw a bucket of water, he threw himself down by the
trough, drank long and deep, and plunging his head into the water, shook
himself like a wet dog, and crept furtively back to his dangerous perch.
Miller, who had seen this man from the car window, had noticed a very
singular thing. As the dusty tramp passed the rear coach, he cast toward
it a glance of intense ferocity. Up to that moment the man's face, which
Miller had recognized under its grimy coating, had been that of an
ordinarily good-natured, somewhat reckless, pleasure-loving negro, at
present rather the worse for wear. The change that now came over it
suggested a concentrated hatred almost uncanny in its murderousness.
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