The feller had been talking like he was a lawyer, so I asts him what crime we was charged with. But he didn't answer me. And jest then we gets in sight of that schoolhouse.
It set on top of a little hill, partially in the moon-light, with a few sad-looking pine trees scattered around it, and the fence in front broke down.
Even after night you could see it was a shabby-looking little place.
Old Daddy Withers tied his mule to the broken down fence. Somebody busted the front door down. Somebody else lighted matches. The first thing I knowed, we was all inside, and four or five dirty little coal oil lamps, with tin reflectors to 'em, which I s'pose was used ordinary fur school exhibi-tions, was being lighted.
We was waltzed up onto the teacher's platform, Doctor Kirby and me, and set down in chairs there, with two men to each of us, and then a tall, raw-boned feller stalks up to the teacher's desk, and raps on it with the butt end of a pistol, and says:
"Gentlemen, this meeting will come to order."Which they was orderly enough before that, but they all took off their hats when he rapped, like in a court room or a church, and most of 'em set down.
They set down in the school kids' seats, or on top of the desks, and their legs stuck out into the aisles, and they looked uncomfortable and awkward. But they looked earnest and they looked sollum, too, and they wasn't no joking nor skylarking going on, nor no kind of rowdyness, neither. These here men wasn't toughs, by any manner of means, but the most part of 'em respectable farmers. They had a look of meaning business.
"Gentlemen," says the feller who had rapped, "who will you have for your chairman?""I reckon you'll do, Will," says another feller to the raw-boned man, which seemed to satisfy him. But he made 'em vote on it before he took office.
"Now then," says Will, "the accused must have counsel.""Will," says another feller, very hasty, "what's the use of all this fuss an' feathers? You know as well as I do there's nothing legal about this. It's only necessary. For my part--""Buck Hightower," says Will, pounding on the desk, "you will please come to order." Which Buck done it.
"Now," says the chairman, turning toward Doctor Kirby, who had been setting there looking thoughtful from one man to another, like he was sizing each one up, "now I must explain to the chief defendant that we don't intend to lynch him."He stopped a second on that word LYNCH as if to let it soak in. The doctor, he bowed toward him very cool and ceremonious, and says, mocking of him:
"You reassure me, Mister--Mister--What is your name?" He said it in a way that would of made a saint mad.
"My name ain't any difference," says Will, trying not to show he was nettled.
"You are quite right," says the doctor, looking Will up and down from head to foot, very slow and insulting, "it's of no consequence in the world."Will, he flushed up, but he makes himself steady and cool, and he goes on with his little speech:
"There is to be no lynching here to-night. There is to be a trial, and, if necessary, an execution.""Would it be asking too much," says the doctor very polite, "if I were to inquire who is to be tried, and before what court, and upon what charge?"There was a clearing of throats and a shuffling of feet fur a minute. One old deaf feller, with a red nose, who had his hand behind his ear and was leaning forward so as not to miss a breath of what any one said, ast his neighbour in a loud whisper, "How?" Then an undersized little feller, who wasn't a farmer by his clothes, got up and moved toward the platform. He had a bulging-out fore-head, and thin lips, and a quick, nervous way about him:
"You are to be tried," he says to the doctor, speaking in a kind of shrill sing-song that cut your nerves in that room full of bottled-up excitement like a locust on a hot day. "You are to be tried before this self-constituted court of Caucasian citizens--Anglo-Saxons, sir, every man of them, whose for-bears were at Runnymede! The charge against you is stirring up the negroes of this community to the point of revolt. You are accused, sir, of representing yourself to them as some kind of a Moses. You are arraigned here for endangering the peace of the county and the supremacy of the Caucasian race by inspiring in the negroes the hope of equality."Old Daddy Withers had been setting back by the door. I seen him get up and slip out. It didn't look to me to be any place fur a gentle old poet.
While that little feller was making that charge you could feel the air getting tingly, like it does before a rain storm.
Some fellers started to clap their hands like at a political rally and to say, "Go it, Billy!" "That's right, Harden!" Which I found out later Billy Harden was in the state legislature, and quite a speaker, and knowed it. Will, the chairman, he pounded down the applause, and then he says to the doctor, pointing to Billy Harden:
"No man shall say of us that we did not give you a fair trial and a square deal. I'm goin' to appoint this gentleman as your counsel, and I'm goin' to give you a reasonable time to talk with him in pri-vate and prepare your case. He is the ablest lawyer in southwest Georgia and the brightest son of Watson County."The doctor looks kind of lazy and Bill Harden, and back agin at Will, the chairman, and smiles out of the corner of his mouth. Then he says, sort of taking in the rest of the crowd with his remark, like them two standing there pay-ing each other compliments wasn't nothing but a joke:
"I hope neither of you will take it too much to heart if I'm not impressed by your sense of jus-tice--or your friend's ability."
"Then," said Will, "I take it that you intend to act as your own counsel?""You may take it," says the doctor, rousing of himself up, "you may take it--from me--that I refuse to recognize you and your crowd as a court of any kind; that I know nothing of the silly accusa-tions against me; that I find no reason at all why Ishould take the trouble of making a defence before an armed mob that can only mean one of two things.""One of two things?" says Will.