The black boy let out a loud guffaw. He leaned back with one hand supporting his weight on the haunches of his mount, and whooped his mirthful derision to the open heavens. Newt gazed at him, first in astonishment; then in passion.
"What air ye a-laughin' at, nigger?" he inquired with low-pitched ferocity of voice.
The boy gathered up his reins, and, under the pressure of his spurred heel, the colt was away in a gallop.
"I may be a nigger," he flung back over his shoulder, "but I ain't no po' white trash. The likes of you comin' to our dance! Good Gawd!" A roar of ironical laughter followed in the wake of clattering hoofs, while Newt Spooner, his thin face working with a positive mania of fury, hurled rock after rock at the retreating figure.
Slowly the mountain boy walked back toward town, his black suit already whitened with a fine coating of turnpike dust.
As he neared the court-house, he quickened his step, for a dense crowd was gathered at its front, and he knew that the speaking must be in progress. His people would be in the throng and they would be armed. If he were going to the dance to-night, he needed a gun, and yet his craftiness automatically set a restraint on his impatient haste. Should he rush headlong into that crowd just on the verge of trouble, he might rush also into arrest. The applause and laughter with which the crowd just now jostled shoulders told him that nothing had yet occurred to break the peace or equipoise of the occasion; but that something was to happen he knew, and the knowledge made him cautious. A distinguished-looking gentleman with white hair was speaking from an improvised stand, and, as the ex-convict drew near the outskirts of the crowd, he found himself standing near a man who wore a blue coat, and leaned on a stout hickory staff. The partial uniform of this individual proclaimed a town marshal, and the badge on the breast corroborated the proclamation. It occurred to Newt that to be talking with an officer of the law when the shooting began would constitute an excellent alibi. So he stopped, and touching the officer on the elbow, inquired:
"Stranger, who mout thet man be, thet's a-talkin'?"
The policeman turned and regarded him out of a broad, good-humored face, in which shrewd, but merry eyes twinkled.
Newt wanted that officer to know him the next time they met, and to remember him definitely, so he returned the gaze with one frank and unblinking.
"That's General Braden, sonny," the town marshal amiably enlightened; "he's just introducin' the Honorable Cale Floyd. That's Floyd now."