Chapter VIII: Mob and Music

Up to the moment when their frightened screams had stirred afresh the mob’s lust to kill, Mustard and Pap Curtain had been totally ignorant of what was occurring outside the jail. Wandering idly to the window to look out, they had seen what every negro dreads, whatever the reason for his incarceration--a mob.

With the first frightened cry Sheriff Ulloa knew that it would be impossible to disperse the crowd before him. The scream of the quarry only stimulates the pursuit of the wolf-pack.

For two dreadful minutes the negroes sobbed and prayed; then Mustard Prophet turned shudderingly away from the window and, going to a window on the side of the jail, knelt at the casement and wept like a child, looking up now and then with fear-crazed eyes at the silent statue of the pewter hero of the Lost Cause.

Then while the grim sheriff stood poised and ready, fronting alone the crouching crowd of eager men, the shrill note of an automobile horn was heard and an immense machine whirled around the Confederate Circle and came sailing down the street toward the jail.

One block distant it stopped--abruptly.

The white-haired, white-bearded man at the steering-wheel gazed down the street in surprise. The scene was too familiar to require explanation. Leaping from the car, he walked slowly and cautiously down the street.

Then, up in the second story of the jail, Mustard Prophet leaped to his feet sobbing, praying, shrieking in a perfect frenzy of hope and fear.

“Oh, my Lawd!” he exclaimed. “_Dar’s Marse Tom!_”

Grabbing his cornet like a drowning man clutches at a straw, he placed it to his quivering lips. Loud and clear, throbbing with the eagerness of hope, the courage of despair, the strains of music became almost articulate speaking the words of a song:

All de world am sad and dreary,
Eberywhere I roam;
Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!

The god Mars, who had witnessed many warlike scenes in Louisiana, never beheld an incident so grotesquely dramatic as this.

In front of the jail, grim, white-faced, desperate, determined to end his life right there, and perfectly sure that the end was near, stood Sheriff Ulloa. In the middle of the street, a mob, bloodthirsty and cruel, listening raveningly to the frightened screams of their quarry, and eager for the kill. Up the street, a man serenely observant, apparently indifferent to what was transpiring before his very eyes; while within the jail two strangling, fear-choked negroes whose breath was like the exhaust of an engine and whose hearts beat in their breasts like war-drums, sobbed and screamed and prayed and one of them played on a cornet _Old Folks at Home_!

Not since the poor, pitiful, dissipated author of that sweet folk-song stumbled over the ragged carpet in his miserable room in the Bowery, struck his head against his broken water-pitcher, bled to death upon the floor, and was carried to his grave while his friends sang his favorite song, had these words and their music been associated with so dramatic an event.

“Fer Gawd’s sake, Pap!” Mustard sobbed. “Come here an’ he’p me play dis toon! Don’t you see Marse Tom standin’ on dat cornder? Play, nigger, play! Say yo’ prayers in dat hawn when you toot it!”

All up and down de whole creation
Sadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation
And for de old folks at home!

Up the street the white-haired man listened, then took off his hat and scratched his head in a quandary.

“A mob set to music!” he smiled to himself. “This is something new to me. I wonder what that fool Mustard Prophet is doing here?”

He walked quietly down the street and stopped in front of the jail, taking his position by the side of Sheriff Ulloa. With a graceful gesture he removed his hat and thus fronted the mob, serene, powerful, his fine face glowing like an alabaster vase with a lamp in it, the wind tossing his snow-white hair and beard--the most striking and impressive figure one beholds in a lifetime. He stood with bowed head listening to the music:

Oh, darkies, how my heart grows weary,
Far from de old folks at home!

The music ended and the intense silence was broken by a voice in the mob:

“_Aw, hell!_ I move we adjourn--_back’ards!_”

With a concerted movement like a piece of oiled machinery, the mob turned and tramped up the street like a drove of mules, leaving four lengthy coils of rope, a broken hatchet, a hoe-handle, and a corncob pipe in the middle of the road.

Turning with gracious Spanish courtesy, Sheriff Ulloa bowed low before the serene, powerful presence of Gaitskill, and murmured:

“I thank you. You saved my life!”

“Nothing of the sort!” Gaitskill snorted. “A mob can’t work to the tune of Suwanee River! Where’s that fool who’s blowing that horn?”

“I’ll conduct you to him,” Ulloa answered.

A minute later Gaitskill and Ulloa had secured another key to the jail, had entered, and stood in the presence of Mustard Prophet and Pap Curtain. The two negroes were too overcome to speak. Crazed by their horrible experiences, they sat wildly mumbling their prayers and uttering exclamations of thanksgiving.

“These are the men I telephoned you about,” Ulloa said.

“These are not the men we want,” Gaitskill replied in a disappointed tone. “One of these darkies is the overseer on my Nigger-Heel plantation.”

“You asked me over the telephone if one of them was yellow?” Ulloa said, pointing to Pap Curtain.

“Pap’s yellow, all right,” Gaitskill smiled. “But he’s not the man. He’s the well-digger of Tickfall. The coon we want is a nigger named Mobile Boone. He was seen early Sunday morning coming this way with my bag of money.”

Sheriff Ulloa opened his mouth to speak; then he closed it without saying a word.

“Marse Tom,” Mustard asked, “wus Mobile a yeller nigger wid a gold toof in his mouf an’ a scar on his jaw?”

“Yes.”

Mustard sprang to his feet with a loud laugh and gave Pap Curtain a mighty kick.

“Git up, Pap,” he howled. “Less go git Marse Tom’s money fer him!”

When a moment later the big automobile swung into the Massacre road leading to the old Kerlerac plantation house, Pap Curtain leaned over and whispered:

“Mustard, how you know dat Mobile is hid dat money under dat rock? S’posen you go dar an’ don’t find it? Whut’ll happen den?”

Mustard turned almost white. Then he answered:

“Pap, ef I don’t git dat money dese here white men will hang up my Chris’mus socks widout takin’ me out of ’em!”