“Murder! Murder! Murder! Whut do Gawd Awmighty think about dat?”
She pranced down the street, thrusting the people aside with her ponderous body as a steamboat cuts through the mushy ice upon a river. Her voice howled like a wolf’s call, with a taunting, bark-like, malicious, nerve-searing gratification:
“Murder!”
She managed to reach the head of the procession and walked just behind Sheriff Flournoy’s horse.
She whirled round and round like a Dervish, stooped and threw dust in the air, tore her clothes, and waving her fists at the sky shrieked like a maniac:
“Murder! Murder! Murder!”
John Flournoy stopped his horse, and turned and looked at her with a queer expression upon his face. Once he opened his mouth to speak, then shut his jaws tight, turned his eyes forward and rode on.
“Murder!” Ginny Babe Chew screamed.
Vinegar Atts could endure the horror no longer. He ran forward, and caught Ginny Babe by her fat shoulder and whirled her around. Vinegar had had years of experience as a pugilist and was Hitch’s boxing partner to this day. He knew exactly where to place his blow.
His open palm with all his strength behind it flattened upon Ginny Babe’s squalling lips. She uttered a low grunt, and fell in the street.