1.

"All I does is follow mah feet,
'Ceptin' when de boss says, 'Stop an' eat!'
Follow mah feet de whole day through;
Follow mah feet 'till I burns a shoe,
Shovin' a truck load o' po'k an' beans,
Loadin' de boat fo' New O'leans."

Back of his truck on the dock the Wildcat set the pace for his fellows. The man in front of him found the Wildcat forever at his heels. The man following had a hard time keeping up.

Now and then the Wildcat's feet abandoned the steady trot for a gait which included considerable prancing, embellished with a new series of fancy steps, limited only by the inertia of the freight truck with which the stepper's ambition was retarded.

"On de down-hill drag let yo' hind legs slide;
Mawnin', Mistah Debbil, git aboa'd an' ride.
Git behin' me, Satan, on de up-hill road,
I'se a one-horse sinner wid a two-horse load."

Late in the afternoon the Wildcat's tactics had converted a group of admirers who had discovered in the prosaic business of rustling freight a first-class chance to make a laughing game of it. Meanwhile, they were moving record tonnage.

At evening the pier foreman sent for the Wildcat. "Tomorrow morning you take a gang down to Section Seventeen and start moving flour into the West King. There'll be five a day extra in it--that'll buy grub for the goat."

"Cap'n, yessuh--you means I'se fo'man?"

"That's what I mean. Keep your niggers rustlin'."

"Yass suh! Sho' will!" The Wildcat jerked at Lily's string halter. "Goat, say you'se 'bliged to de cap'n. Stan' roun' theh, fo' I shows you who's de boss wid a club!"

"Blaaa!" returned Lily.

The pier foreman smiled. "You might round up some more men if you can find 'em," he continued. "We can use a lot more. I'll give you twenty dollars a man for all you can get. Tell 'em ten a day, with grub and quarters furnished here on the dock."

"Cap'n, you means I gits twenty dollars fo' ev'y stevedo' nigger whut I 'cumulates?"

"That's it."

"How much is a hund'ed niggers, suh?"

"Two thousand dollars."

"Cap'n, you gits 'em tomorr'. Us kin rule dat many single handed--me 'suadin' an' Lily rammin'. Mebbe two hund'ed. Come on heah, goat! Le's go!"

The Wildcat left the pier with visions of a military formation of a million men, marching steadily toward a place where they were worth twenty dollars apiece to him. In his dream of being king of all labour agents he failed to include the difficulties with which his pathway was beset. The stevedores' strike, gaining strength each day, now included a floating committee whose duty it was to discourage the enlistment of new labour.

The Wildcat borrowed a dollar and ate supper at the lunch counter where he had met Trombone, hoping that he might again encounter that individual. Ranged about him were ten or fifteen hearty eaters; and to this group, at the termination of his own meal, he addressed his invitation to participate in the business of loading steamships with outbound freight. "Ten dollahs a day, boy, comf'table place fo' sleepin', an' all de grub you kin eat."

His oration fell on barren ground. He left the lunch counter without having gained a single recruit. "C'm on heah, Lily. Dese city niggers sho' is triflin'. Whut us needs is fiel' han's, o' else some heavy 'suader like a hoe handle. Us aims to sleep some now. Mebbe tomorr' Lady Luck boons me wid men whut craves a job wid rations an' ten dollahs a day."

For a while the next morning the work of loading the West King with flour lagged a little under the direction of the new foreman. At eleven o'clock, noting the epidemic of reluctance to move out of a slow drag which had afflicted his gang, the Wildcat climbed to the top of a tier of flour barrels. He took out his knife and whittled through the hoops of a barrel. He resumed his place on the pier. "Break down dat top line. Git movin'! Haul out 'at bottom bar'l! Stan' back when dey comes!"

They came. An avalanche of rolling barrels rolled wildly across the deck of the pier. The top one on which the hoops were cut landed with a smash in the centre of an explosive spray of flour. The atmosphere was suddenly white dust.... Black complexions presently became grey.

Perspiring freight jugglers began to laugh at their fellows. In three minutes the roof of the pier was echoing back the volleys of high-pitched laughter which lifted from below. Until noon, and then through the long afternoon, all that the Wildcat's men did was to laugh their heads off at the slightest provocation and move more freight than the ship's cargo booms could handle.

"Ah likes biscuits an' Ah likes bread,
Doan' like 'em plastered............