Sure. Ya see the stable buck’s a nigger.

Yeah. Nice fella too. Got a crooked back where a horse kicked him. The boss gives him hell when he’s mad. But the stable buck don’t give a damn about that. He reads a lot. Got books in his room.

There wasn’t another colored family for miles around. And now there ain’t a colored man on this ranch an’ there’s jus’ one family in Soledad.

"Listen, Nigger," she said. "You know what I can do to you if you open your trap?"

Crooks, the negro stable buck, had his bunk in the harness room; a little shed that leaned off the wall of the barn.

"I ain’t a southern negro," he said. "I was born right here in California. My old man had a chicken ranch, ’bout ten acres. The white kids come to play at our place, an’ sometimes I went to play with them, and some of them was pretty nice. ..."