Crooks's Room

They’ll take ya to the booby hatch. They’ll tie ya up with a collar, like a dog.

S’pose George don’t come back no more. S’pose he took a powder and just ain’t coming back. What’ll you do then?

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

"They left all the weak ones here," she said finally.

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. ..."

And scattered about the floor were a number of personal possessions; for, being alone, Crooks could leave his things about, and being a stable buck and a cripple, he was more permanent than the other men, and he had accumulated more possessions than he could carry on his back.