“Smart,” Solly exclaimed, “when yo’ mind goes off it kicks like a muzzle-loader. Dat plan’ll hit de bull’s-eye. But ef you ain’t got no objections, I’ll be de one whut goes atter de cornstable. Dem two coons looks powerful perilous to me.” “All right,” Smart acquiesced reluctantly. “But don’t you lose no time gittin’ dat cornstable. I ’speck you better fetch de sheriff, too.” They separated to meet an hour later in the Chicken-Wing saloon, a negro resort where Mustard and Pap were loudly advertising their presence by playing duets. The plan of the two conspirators to start trouble was simple but effective. Solly Saddler entered the place with a bucket of red paint and a broad paint-brush. Smart Durret came in with a large bottle filled with a foamy, milk-colored liquid--soap-suds. The two avoided each other for a time, then they got together. “Whut’s dat you got in dat bottle, Smart?” Solly inquired in a nigger-minstrel tone. “Dis here is a new kind of cleaner fer clothes,” Smart answered. “It takes all de dirt spots, grease spots, fade spots, an’ paint spots offen clothes, suits, dresses, an’ sich like.” “Dat stuff won’t conjure loose no paint spots,” Solly argued, flourishing the bucket of paint at Smart. “I bet yer fo’ bits,” Smart answered promptly. Then followed a heated discussion of the merits of the paint remover. The crowd slowly gathered around the disputants, and Solly gradually worked his way around until he stood directly in front of Mustard Prophet. Setting the bucket of paint on the floor and stooping over it, he began to stir it with his brush while the argument waxed hotter and hotter. Then Solly arose, with the dripping paint-brush in his hand. Then with a quick turn and flourish, he swiped the dripping paint-brush up and down the front of Mustard Prophet’s clothes. “Now, nigger Durret,” Solly bawled dramatically, “lemme see you take de paint off dis cullud brudder’s coat!” Mustard reeled backward to escape the paint, a guffaw of loud laughter swept around the circle, and Solly followed Mustard, still busy plying the brush. Mustard was a sight. Then Mustard got busy. Solly felt a hard hand on the back of his neck, lost his grip on the brush, and Mustard caught it. Irresistibly, Mustard led the struggling negro back to the red paint, held him there as easily as a man can hold a wiggling fish suspended from a hook, and proceeded to paint him red, frescoing both the garments and the man within them. Solly bawled and shrieked and struggled and bit, but Mustard did not release him until the bucket was exhausted of paint. Solly, too, was a sight. Then Smart Durret entered the fracas. Seizing his bottle of magic cleanser by the neck and manipulating it like a club, he struck it over the dome of Prophet’s head. But the soapy neck of the bottle was slick and slipped from Durret’s hand, bounced from the armor-plated skull of Mustard Prophet like a rubber ball, and was smashed to fragments halfway across the room.