As Joe hesitated, four men came out of the crowd. "You heard what he said. Get going," and they laid rough hands on Joe and carried him bodily away.
But they did not stop at the car. The raucous-voiced leader of the group yelled, "Don't worry, Ceec. We'll get him there for you. Don't need no car. We know where the jail is!"
The spark was touched off—the thought suggested—by a blurred voice from the crowd. "We don't need no jail house. What we need's a rope!"
Laughter—ugly laughter—and other suggestions: "There's the tree by Indian Head Rock. About big enough to hold a rat his size."
More drunken laughter but laced now with viciousness and excitement. Shouts and curses rising into a steady roar. A lynch mob.
Cecil Bates never quite knew how it happened. He made no resistance because he lacked the courage and he was afraid to defend the prisoner. After all, he rationalized—when he saw how things were going—these were the people, the taxpayers, the hard core of the country. They had an instinct for knowing when swift action was necessary. And by gosh, when it was time, they acted!
But he realized these were only weak alibis for his own impotence and that he was held helpless by his fear, his inner rottenness, his lacking of stature as a man.
And when they took the stranger and hung him to the tree by Indian Head Rock, Cecil Bates looked himself in the face for the first time in his life and was sickened by what he saw. He screamed at himself—do something. For God's sake don't let this happen. That man hanging there is you. When he dies you've come to the end of your rope too. But there's still time. Do something. Stop them.
But the weakness he had nourished and fed within himself for so long would not let him raise his voice or his gun. And he stood alone with his sickness watching the body of the stranger twirl gently at the end of the rope someone had brought along just in case....