I couldn’t help it. Even Bob coughed, and then pretended to be chewing hay. But, because I laughed, Minkie clouted my ear.

“The Romans always placed a cat at the feet of the Goddess of Liberty; they realized that no animal resists the loss of its freedom so furiously as a cat,” continued Tibbie in her [Pg 44]best purr. “That is why you never see a cat wearing a collar, the badge of servitude, like a dog.”

[Pg 44]

Wow! I’ll give her “servitude” next time I have a chance. “Like a dog!” indeed.

“What has all this got to do with a ju-ju?” asked Minkie.

“I am coming to that. The Egyptians were a very wise people, obviously, and their ways were sure to be copied by the black men who lived near them. They thought so much of cats that whoever killed one, even accidentally, was punished by death. This cat-headed god, Elurus, had a human body, and his image brought luck and good fortune to those who carried it about with them. Now, there are no cats where the black men live, but there are plenty of monkeys, so I am just guessing.”

“I see,” said Minkie, quite seriously.

“Regarding that fish and liver?” cried Tibbie, trying to talk in an off-hand way.

“I am going to interview Cookie now,” was the reply.

“Hold on! Where do I come in?” I simply had to interfere. The thing was an [Pg 45]outrage. Fancy getting fish and liver for a blue-mouldy yarn like that.

[Pg 45]

“And me?” snorted Bob.

“You’re both too fat already,” said Minkie calmly, but she kicked down another lot of hay before she blew the lantern out, and I got a snack of steak while Tibbie was filling up on fish heads and foie de veau. I lapped the best part of her milk, too, when she wasn’t looking.

There was a keen frost that night, and the scent of the nigger, not to mention some beery singers who call themselves “the waits,” kept me awake for hours. Every man has a different smell, though some folk get mad if you tell them so, but the Upper Niger tang was new to me, and I couldn’t help thinking what a place that must be for a hunt if even a well-washed black prince 

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