“That’s far enough, fellow citizens,” he said, and now his voice drawled like the purr of a cat and was deadly in its menace. “When you get those niggers I won’t be the sheriff of this parish. I’ll be dead. I don’t know who’ll get me, but I’ll kill the first man who takes the next step forward!”
The mob packed denser, became tense, throbbed like an automobile when the power is turned on. Ulloa’s eyes gazed straight into the destructive orbs of Barto Skaggs and held him like a hypnotist. Then the half-wit began:
“Gon’er git—them niggers! Gon’er git——”
A back-handed blow from Barto Skaggs’s fist struck the half-wit fairly in the mouth and sent him reeling backward, disarranging for a moment the tense compact mass of men.
Then from the second-story front window of the jail, just above the sheriff’s head and behind him, there came a sound which caused the sheriff’s swarthy face to whiten to the eyebrows—the most unfortunate thing which could have happened to his cause:
“Oo-oh! My Gawd, my Gawd! De mobbers is comin’! De mobbers!”
Instantly the mob crouched like panthers ready to spring.
VIII
MOB AND MUSIC.
Up to the moment when their frightened screams had stirred afresh the mob’s lust to kill, Mustard and Pap Curtain had been totally ignorant of what was occurring outside the jail. Wandering idly to the window to look out, they had seen what every negro dreads, whatever the reason for his incarceration—a mob.
With the first frightened cry Sheriff Ulloa knew that it would be impossible to disperse the crowd before him. The scream of the quarry only stimulates the pursuit of the wolf-pack.