“I b'lieve you're the only man in this town that'll stand by me, Jim,” the sheriff said. “I swore in six last night, and I see 'em all in that crowd. Poor Mr. Morris! in his place I'd do just what he's doin'. Blest if yonder ain't Doty Buxton comin' to help me! I'll let him in; but see here, Jim, I'm goin' to send Doty to telegraph to the city for Judge More, and I want you to slip out the back way right now, and run to my house, and tell Willie to give you the buggy and the nigger, and you drive that nigger into the city. Of course you'll kill him if he tries to escape.”
“The nigger ain't here!”
“I'm no fool, Jim. And I'll hold this jail, me and Doty, as long as possible, and you drive like hell! You see?”
“I didn't know you really wanted to save the nigger,” his brother remonstrated; “nobody b'lieves that”
“I don't, as a nigger. But you go on now, and I'll send Doty with the telegram, and make time by talkin' to Mr. Morris. I don't think they've found anything; if they had, they'd have come a-galloping, and the devil himself couldn't have stopped 'em. Gosh, but it's awful! Who knows what that nigger's done When I look at Mr. Morris, I wish you fellers had overpowered me last night and had fixed things.”
He let his brother out at the back, then went round to the front gate, where he met the man whom he called Doty Buxton.
“Go telegraph Judge More the facts of the case,” he said, “an' ask him to come. I don't believe I'll need any men if he'll come; and besides, he and Mr. Morris are friends.”
As the man turned away, one of the horsemen rode up to the sheriff.
“We demand that negro,” he said.
“I supposed that was what you'd come for, Mr. Mitchell,” the sheriff answered; “but you know, sir, that as much as I'd like to oblige you, I'm bound to protect the man. He swears that he's never touched Mrs. Morris.”