Mrs. Doggett's throat was dry with apprehension and fear when she reached the barn, but she managed to gasp out the question.
"Hain't nobody hurt, Ann." Mr. Doggett, pale and dazed, sitting flat on the dirt floor inside the barn, his back to one of its pillars, answered her in a voice that was weak and faint. "I bagged Joey not to holler and skeer you, but he would do hit!"
"Thar's what's the matter, Ma!" Joey, ashy white under his tan, pointed to the wagon. On the side board was tacked a great sheet of white wrapping paper covered with writing in big red letters. Against one of the rear wheels leaned an enormous bundle of ten-foot switches, newly cut from osage orange trees,—the wicked thorns left on, and the whole bound with a piece of white cotton rope, ravelled at its end, and saturated with blood.
From the switches dangled a big bunch of matches, and a necklace made of a twine string and two dozen loaded cartridges of thirty-eight caliber. Mrs. Doggett looked at these menacing articles in amazement.
"Whar'd that blood come from?" she gaped, "and who put them thengs thar?"
"Don't ast me ner Joey who put 'em thar," Mr. Doggett answered her, "all we know is they're thar! When I fust come in, I ketched sight o' them hedge switches, and them matches and ca'tridges layin' ag'in the waggin. I says, 'Joey, come here!' Joey, he tuck up the paper and I seed a change come over him. He turned pale and says, 'Pap, they're a gona git you!'"
"Hit's got 'Night Riders' signed to hit," Joey informed his mother, pointing to the big printed words that adorned the lower part of the paper. "And hit means they're a gona whoop Pap in a inch o' his life fer a startin' to raise a terbaccer crop this year,—and ef a whoopin' don't stop him, they're a gona tear up his waggin' and plows, and then burn up the house! And ef he hain't burnt up, they're a gona shoot him!"
"Man alive! You know that hain't so, Joey!" Mrs. Doggett's face would have served for a model of unbelieving horror.
"Jes' read the paper and see what hit says!" Joey spoke in the tone of the convinced.
Mrs. Doggett took a reluctant hold of the paper of warning. "You read hit, Joey. I hain't got my specs."