Journeyman Read Online Free PDF

angrily. “I can’t stand that.”
    “Shut your mouth and get out of the house,” Semon shouted at him. “I don’t take no fooling from niggers. Get out of here, coon!”
    Semon was an entirely different-looking man then. When he had arrived that afternoon, wearing his black dust-stained suit and hat, and the stringy black bow tie, he looked exactly like an itinerant minister climbing out of his car to stop and rest after a long and tiresome trip across the country. Now, in the kerosene light, against the background of yellow pitch-stained pine walls, he looked like a wild man stalking an animal in the woods.
    “We’d better settle this thing peacefully,” Clay said thinly, watching the gun in Semon’s hand.
    He was ignored. Hardy refused to back away. He came forward a few steps, watching the lamp on the table.
    “Keep back, or I’ll shoot you down to start with,” Semon threatened. “You can’t fool with me, I know how to handle yellow niggers like you.”
    Clay saw what was going to happen. He leaped towards the side of the room.
    Hardy plunged forward, attempting to reach either the lamp on the table or the pistol in Semon’s hands. He failed to get his hands on either one. When he was an arm’s length away, Semon fired his revolver at him. The explosion in the chamber of the short bulldog pistol shook the frail house to its foundations. Dust fell in chunks from the cracks in the ceiling, and chips and splinters rolled from the cracks in the pine-boarded walls.
    Clay was trying to make up his mind whether to try to take the pistol away from Semon, or whether to stay where he was. He stood his ground.
    Hardy had fallen on his hands and knees. He remained there on all fours at Semon’s feet, his head hanging downward until it almost touched the floor.
    Semon was cocking the pistol again with his big stiff thumb. When the hammer was drawn back, the trigger clicked, and Semon aimed it once more at Hardy. Before he could fire it, Sugar fell across Hardy, flinging her body between them.
    Semon was undecided for a minute.
    “Get up and get out of here, both of you!” he said at last. “If I have to shoot again, it’ll be through both of you at the same time.”
    Sugar was trying to lift Hardy. She soon saw she would not be able to carry him out, so she managed to drag him to the door. Semon watched them until they were in the darkness of the hall. They left the house by the back door, and not another sound was heard from them after that.
    Clay knew he would not see Hardy again until either his wound had healed or his dead body was found. He and Sugar would go to the woods and not come back until that time.
    It was all over then. Semon sat down in a chair, his hands shaking too much to hold the revolver any longer. He tossed it on the bed and looked down at the floor where Hardy had fallen.
    There was a rank odor of burned powder in the room, mingling with the cloud of yellow dust that had been shaken from the walls and ceiling and had not had time to settle on the floor and furniture.
    “I don’t mind seeing a dead darky once in a while,” Clay said, “but I sure do hate to see one of my hands passing away on me right at this time. It’s planting time, and no other. If Hardy was to die, I’d have to get out and do some of the work myself. I sure would hate to see him pass on.”
    Dene had been standing outside the door in the dark, and she looked inside the room. Neither Clay nor Semon saw her, and she came inside and stood near the door with her back to the wall.
    “What kind of treatment do you call this for a visitor in your house, Horey?” Semon said, turning his head to one side and glaring at Clay. “Looks like you would be on the lookout to take care of the people who come to stay with you.”
    Dene could not keep her eyes from going back and forth to Semon. He was a strange-looking sight to see in the lamplight, sitting hunched forward in the little chair, his underwear looking as if it had