It was all true enough what he said, but that didn’t make it no better for them to take.”
“Now, Brother Watta, just you go, as you know you ought to, and acknowledge you ought to have kept your temper, and that’ll make the whole thing right, and Doc’ll apologize too,” said the apparently confiding Elder.
“Do you think so? Well, suppose you come along with us,” said Watta, a slight veil of credulity scarcely concealing a sarcasm that bordered upon contempt for the self-loving simplicity of the Elder. “I’d rather get on my knees to them,” he added more seriously, “bad as I hate them, than have my wife and children as scared as they are to-day. But I doubt the success of even that, unless I would give them my gun, and promise to lie there, and let them kick me when they chose, or shoot me if they like, and I’m afraid my temper would rise then, if I didn’t.”
In defiance of fears, the men all laughed at the ludicrous picture of this tall, genteel-appearing, light yellow gentleman, brimful of the same “spirit” that fired some of the noblest heroes the South ever boasted of, and in whose veins coursed much of the same ancestral blood, cringing in such a pusillanimous fashion.
“It is no time for fun,” said Springer. “Will you go with me, Adam Watta, and see General Baker?”
“If you say you think it’ll do any good, I will go.”
“You can but perish if you go,” said Elder Jackson, who was, like many another, very courageous for his neighbors, and quite willing to bid them Godspeed in any efforts for the safety of the town, including Elder J. and his possessions.
But the men paused in the doorway. “Ask a man to run the gauntlet of all those armed and half-drunken enemies? I tell you I can’t do it; I’m not prepared to die, and I sha’n’t go. I could fight, but to go right into a crowd to be murdered, I’m not ready,” and Watta turned back. Looking out upon the constantly increasing mob, Springer did not urge him.
“I’m going to Prince Rives’s house,” said Doc, and strode out of the office and down the street.
The cry of an infant was heard in an adjoining room, followed by the sound of a rocking cradle, and the voice of the little boy singing in chanting style, “You must not cry, little sister; for the wicked men is all agoing around to kill all the little children, ‘from two years old and under,’ and they will shoot your papa, and make your mamma cry. So take this rattle and be still.”