For the most part they were silent and barren of speech. One youngish man kept repeating to himself a set phrase as he marched along. This phrase never varied in word or expression. It was: “Goin' to git that nigger! Goin' to git that nigger!”—that was all—said over and over again in a dull, steady monotone. By its constant reiteration he was working himself up, just as a rat-terrier may be worked up by constant hissed references to purely imaginary rats.
Their number was obscured by the dust their feet lifted. It was as if each man at every step crushed with his toe a puffball that discharged its powdery particles upward into his face. Some of them carried arms openly—shotguns and rifles. The others showed no weapons, but had them. It seemed that every fourth man, nearly, had coiled upon his arm or swung over his shoulder a rope taken from a plow or a well-bucket. They had enough rope to hang ten men or a dozen—yes, with stinting, to hang twenty. One man labored under the weight of a three-gallon can of coal-oil, so heavy that he had to shift it frequently from one tired arm to the other. In that weather the added burden made the sour sweat run down in streaks, furrowing the grime on his face. The Massac Creek blacksmith had a sledge-hammer over his shoulder and was in the front rank. Not one was masked or carried his face averted. Nearly all were grown men and not one was under twenty. A certain definite purpose showed in their gait. It showed, also, in the way they closed up and became a more compact formation as they came within sight of the trees fringing the square.
Down through the drowsing town edge they stepped, giving alarm only to the chickens that scratched languidly where scrub-oaks cast a skimpy shade across the road; but as they reached the town line they passed a clutter of negro cabins clustering about a little doggery. A negro woman stepped to a door and saw them. Distractedly, fluttering like a hen, she ran into the bare, grassless yard, setting up a hysterical outcry. A negro man came quickly from the cabin, clapped his hand over her mouth and dragged her back inside, slamming the door to behind him with a kick of his bare foot. Unseen hands shut the other cabin doors and the woman's half-smothered cries came dimly through the clapboarded wall; but a slim black darky darted southward from the doggery, worming his way under a broken, snaggled fence and keeping the straggling line of houses and stables between him and the marchers. This fleeing figure was Jeff, Judge Priest's negro bodyservant, who had a most amazing faculty for always being wherever things happened.
Jeff was short and slim and he could run fast. He ran fast now, snatching off his hat and carrying it in his hand—the surest of all signs that a negro is traveling at his top gait. A good eighth of a mile in advance of the mob, he shot in at the back door of the courthouse and flung himself into his employer's room.
“Jedge! Jedge!” he panted tensely. “Jedge Priest, please, suh, wake up—the mobbers is comin'!”
Judge Priest came out of his nap with a jerk that uprighted him in his chair.
“What's that, boy?”
“The w'ite folks is conin' after that there little nigger over in the jail. I outrun 'em to git yere and tell you, suh.”
“Ah-hah!” said Judge Priest, which was what Judge Priest generally said first of all when something struck him forcibly. He reared himself up briskly and reached for his hat and umbrella.
“Which way are they comin' from?” he asked as he made for the hall and the front door.