“My Gawd, Mr. Braider, I didn't kill dem folks!” Pete said, pleadingly. “I don't know a thing about it.”
“Well, whether you did or not, they say you threatened to do it, and your life won't be worth a hill of beans if you stay here. The only thing to do is to get you to the Gilmore jail. We may make it through the mountains if we are careful, but we've got to git horses. We can borrow some from Jabe Parsons down the road, if he hasn't gone crazy like all the rest. Come on.”
“I tell you, Mr. Braider, I don't know er thing 'bout dis,” Pete said; “but it looks ter me lak mebby Sam Dudlow—”
“Don't make any statement to me,” the officer said, humanely enough in his rough way. “You are accused of a dirty job, Pete, and it will take a dang good lawyer to save you from the halter, even if we save you from this mob; but talkin' to me won't do no good. Me'n King here couldn't protect you from them men if they once saw you. I tell you, young man, all hell has broke loose. For twenty miles around no black skin will be safe, much less yours. Innocent or guilty, you've certainly shot off your mouth. Come on.”
Without further protest, Pete dropped his hoe and went with them. Doggedly, and with an overpowering and surly sense of injury, he slouched along between the two men.
A quarter of a mile down a narrow, private road, which was traversed without meeting any one, they came to Parsons' farm-house, a one-story frame building with a porch in front, and a roof that sloped back to a crude lean-to shed in the rear. A wagon stood under the spreading branches of a big beech, and near by a bent-tongued harrow, weighted down by a heap of stones, a chicken-coop, an old beehive, and a ramshackle buggy. No one was in sight. No living thing stirred about the place, save the turkeys and ducks and a solitary peacock strutting about in the front yard, where rows of half-buried stones from the mountain-sides formed the jagged borders of a gravel walk from the fence to the steps.
The sheriff drew the gate open and, according to rural etiquette, hallooed lustily. After a pause the sound of some one moving in the house reached their ears. A window-curtain was drawn aside, and later a woman stood in the doorway and advanced wonderingly to the edge of the porch. She was portly, red of complexion, about middle-aged, and dressed in checked gingham, the predominating color of which was blue.
“Well, I'll be switched!” she ejaculated; “what do you-uns want?”
“Want to see Jabe, Mrs. Parsons; is he about?”
“He's over in his hay-field, or was a minute ago. What you want with him?”