“Turn around and go back, gentlemen,” the sheriff said courteously. “Start your one-man band to playing another tune, and go back!” In the center of the street there was a rut which had been made by wagon wheels. The mob moved slowly forward, and stopped at this rut like children toeing a mark in a spelling-match. They seemed to feel that a contest was on, and that this rut was the dead-line. “We want them niggers, sheriff,” Barto Skaggs said. “You shall not have them,” Ulloa replied quietly and forcibly. “When you kill those blacks every man of you is a murderer. I shall not be sheriff of a parish which contains sixty murderers--men of prominence--running at large!” “Aw, come off, George!” an impatient voice exclaimed. “You’ve kilt a plenty of coons in your day!” “Yes, gentlemen, I have,” Ulloa answered quickly. “_I have never been slow to kill!_ And I was elected sheriff of this parish _by you_ for the one purpose of totally abolishing this wholesale slaughter of innocent and unoffending blacks, and for the protection of offenders from mob violence in order that the law might take its course. I shall do it.” Looking into the quiet, determined face of the officer, the mob wavered. Then the half-wit’s snare-drum voice rallied them: “Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git them niggers! Gon’er git----” The mob took one cautious step forward. Ulloa drew his pistol from his pocket. “That’s far enough, fellow citizens,” he said, and now his voice drawled like the purr of a cat and was deadly in its menace. “When you get those niggers I won’t be the sheriff of this parish. I’ll be dead. I don’t know who’ll get me, but I’ll kill the first man who takes the next step forward!” The mob packed denser, became tense, throbbed like an automobile when the power is turned on. Ulloa’s eyes gazed straight into the destructive orbs of Barto Skaggs and held him like a hypnotist. Then the half-wit began: “Gon’er git--them niggers! Gon’er git----” A back-handed blow from Barto Skaggs’s fist struck the half-wit fairly in the mouth and sent him reeling backward, disarranging for a moment the tense compact mass of men. Then from the second-story front window of the jail, just above the sheriff’s head and behind him, there came a sound which caused the sheriff’s swarthy face to whiten to the eyebrows--the most unfortunate thing which could have happened to his cause: “Oo-oh! My Gawd, my Gawd! De mobbers is comin’! De mobbers!” Instantly the mob crouched like panthers ready to spring. 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.