“Wouldn’t he let you shoot any more?”

“No-o-o, suh; not after he won all our money.”  Here Bob flung up his head, poked out his lips like a bugle, and broke into a grotesque, “Hoo! hoo! hoo!” It was such an absurd laugh, and Bob’s tale had come to such an absurd denouement, that the white men roared, and shuffled their feet on the flared base of the stove.  Some spat in or near a box filled with sawdust, and betrayed other nervous signs of satisfaction.  When a man so spat, he stopped laughing abruptly, straightened his face, and stared emptily at the rusty stove until further inquisition developed some other preposterous escapade in Bob’s jail career.

The merchant, looking up at one of these intermissions, saw Peter standing at his counter.  He came out of the circle and asked Peter what he wanted.  The mulatto bought a package of soda and went out.

The chill north wind smelled clean after the odors of the store.  Peter stood with his package of soda, breathing deeply, looking up and down the street, wondering what to do next.  Without much precision of purpose, he walked diagonally across the street, northward toward a large faded sign that read, “Killibrew’s Grocery.”  A little later Peter entered a big, rather clean store which smelled of spices, coffee, and a faint dash of decayed potatoes.  Mr. Killibrew himself, a big, rotund man, with a round head of prematurely white hair, was visible in a little glass office at the end of his store.  Even through the glazed partition Peter could see Mr. Killibrew smiling as he sat comfortably at his desk.  Indeed, the grocer’s chief assets were a really expansive friendliness and a pleasant, easily provoked laughter.

He was fifty-two years old, and had been in the grocery business since he was fifteen.  He had never been to school at all, but had learned bookkeeping, business mathematics, salesmanship, and the wisdom of the market-place from his store, from other merchants, and from the drummers who came every week with their samples and their worldly wisdom.  These drummers were, almost to a man, very sincere friends of Mr. Killibrew, and not infrequently they would write the grocer from the city, or send him telegrams, advising him to buy this or to unload that, according to the exigencies of the market.  As a result of this was very well off indeed, and all because he was a friendly, agreeable sort of man.

The grocer heard Peter enter and started to come out of his office, when Peter stopped him and asked if he might speak with him alone.

The white-haired man with the pink, good-natured face stood looking at Peter with rather a questioning but pleasant expression.

“Why, certainly, certainly.”  He turned back to the swivel-chair at his desk, seated himself, and twisted about on Peter as he entered.  Mr. Killibrew did not offer Peter a seat,—­that would have been an infraction of Hooker’s Bend custom,—­but he sat leaning back, evidently making up his mind to refuse Peter credit, which he fancied the mulatto would ask for and yet do it pleasantly.