“Turn around and go back, gentlemen,” the sheriff said courteously. “Start your one-man band to playing another tune, and go back!”
In the center of the street there was a rut which had been made by wagon wheels.
The mob moved slowly forward, and stopped at this rut like children toeing a mark in a spelling-match. They seemed to feel that a contest was on, and that this rut was the dead-line.
“We want them niggers, sheriff,” Barto Skaggs said.
“You shall not have them,” Ulloa replied quietly and forcibly. “When you kill those blacks every man of you is a murderer. I shall not be sheriff of a parish which contains sixty murderers—men of prominence—running at large!”
“Aw, come off, George!” an impatient voice exclaimed. “You’ve kilt a plenty of coons in your day!”
“Yes, gentlemen, I have,” Ulloa answered quickly. “I have never been slow to kill! And I was elected sheriff of this parish by you for the one purpose of totally abolishing this wholesale slaughter of innocent and unoffending blacks, and for the protection of offenders from mob violence in order that the law might take its course. I shall do it.”
Looking into the quiet, determined face of the officer, the mob wavered. Then the half-wit’s snare-drum voice rallied them:
“Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git——”
The mob took one cautious step forward. Ulloa drew his pistol from his pocket.