"Gawd knows. Dey's all over town by now. Hung two nigguhs on Capitol Avernoo; a man he hit Cah'line wid a rock, an' dey stomped all over her. Listen to 'em!" She shrieked this, half turning to the front. "Whar's Ed 'n' Will? Whar's de baby?"
Tom snatched at his hat; the committeemen reached for theirs. "Let's go out de back way. Diana's mindin' de babies, all de boys 'cep' Ed's dar; he's out in de alley. Can we go to de chu'ch?"
"Dey's burnin' de Meth'dis' chu'ch down de street."
"Police?"
"Won't he'p none."
One of the men spoke up. "Mah boss, Mistus Rylan, he tole me ef trouble ever come, to git in his cellar an' he'd pertec' me. We kin go 'cross lot. You all go on; I'm gwine to go by for Mamie an' de folks upstairs."
Stella rounded up the four larger children, took "Babe" on her arm, and steered Tom and two others of the committee across back fences, and obliquely through hot July fields of sturdy smartweed and brown-dusted grass. As they came out of an alley, just a block away from the Rylan back gate, they saw a moving flood of figures down the street two blocks away. The thinned tumult reached them. They sneaked across, running; Stella waved her bruised hand spasmodically. "Lawd, Lawd!"
Mrs. Rylan came at once in answer to her cook's excited message. "Gracie will show you the way to the cellar. I hope you'll be safe there. My husband phoned me that the rioting was serious."
In the underground dimness Stella appropriated for her sobered flock a garden bench, its back broken, standing on end in one corner. Tom's coat, spread in a barred chicken crate, made a pallet for "Babe."
"Keep mah place fuh me, Diany," she whispered fiercely. She helped the new arrivals get fixed on barrel tops, soap boxes, a rickety wheelbarrow, even an old set of bed springs tucked away in the darkest corner.