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.
Pap Curtain, in his turn, came to the aid of his friend. Picking up the paint-bucket with a circular motion of his long arm, he brought it down upon the head of Smart Durret. The bucket did not bounce, but Durret did.
Deciding it was high time to go for the constable and the sheriff, Solly departed with expedition, deeply regretting that the State militia and the Federal army were not available in this hour of need.
But Smart and Solly had loyal friends, and in a moment Mustard and Pap stood with their backs to the wall, each in possession of a heavy chair, holding it like a lion-tamer to keep the crowd from rushing them.