“One step farther and you’re a dead man,� Trench said.
The would-be lyncher lurched backward. In the white light of dawn Caleb’s gaunt figure loomed, his stern face showed its harshest lines, and there was fire in his eyes. A stone flew and struck him a little below the shoulder, another rattled on the shingles beside the door; there was a low ominous roar from the mob; right and left men were dismounting, and horses plunged and neighed.
“Give up that damned nigger or die yourself!� was the cry, taken up and echoed.
Within the house Shot began to bark furiously, and there was suddenly the shrill crying of a child.
“Jean Bartlett!� some one shouted.
“Ay, let’s hang him, too—for her sake!�
There were cheers and hisses. Caleb neither moved nor shut the door.
“Give us that nigger!� they howled, crowding up.
By a miracle, as it seemed, he had kept them about three yards from the entrance in a semicircle, and here they thronged now. From the first they had surrounded the house, and the possibility of an entrance being forced in the rear flashed upon Caleb. But he counted a little on the curiosity that kept them hanging on his movements, watching the leaders. He saw at a glance that there was no real organization, that a motley crowd had fallen in with the one popular idea of lynching the negro offender, and that a breath of real fear would dissolve them like the mists which were rolling along the river bottoms.
“Where’s that nigger?� came the cry again, and then: “It’s time you remembered Jean Bartlett!�