Flournoy turned the electric flashlight he had been using at the garage into Skeeter’s face, and the blinded, terrified darky reeled backward and dropped the two howling nigger babies upon the porch floor.
“Turn on the light, Skeeter!” Flournoy commanded.
Skeeter reached up above his head and switched on an electric light suspended from a cord.
Flournoy looked down at the howling nigger babies and grinned. He saw nothing unusual in the fact that Skeeter was coming out of his home at eleven o’clock at night, for Mrs. Flournoy had left Skeeter in charge of the house a thousand times in their absence. Nor did the two black babies excite anything more than amusement, for several negro families lived on his place and their cabins were full of children.
“Did you steal those nigger babies, Skeeter?” Flournoy drawled in his easy, smiling way. The remark was merely to make talk.
“Naw, suh,” Skeeter stammered. “Naw, suh!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Flournoy chuckled. “Since the Lamana kidnaping case, the Legislature has passed a law making the penalty for stealing children very severe in Louisiana.”
Skeeter attempted to moisten his parched lips with a dry tongue. Then he asked through jaws which felt like they were locked:
“Whut—whut—whut am de penalty, Marse John?”
“Death!” the sheriff answered.