Grant clapped him on the shoulder and stopped him, held up his finger for silence. Scott strained his ears. Far off, like distant surf, he could hear a vague murmur. “Hear that?” Grant said. He prodded Scott on, keeping to the right side of the street. A hundred yards away, in the yard of the armory, uniformed troops were drilling with bayonets. An officer with a sword gave the commands. Each rank of skirmishers advanced toward a line of straw dummies hanged from a gallows. The gallows was newly framed of clean, blond wood.

With each thrust of the bayonets, the rank of soldiers shouted in unison. Their sound was a kind of roar. The bayonets ripped into the burlap dummies.

“Know why they yell?”

Scott shook his head. He was afraid to ask.

“So they can’t hear the cartilage tearing,” Grant explained in a whisper. Scott was rattled.

Up ahead, men jammed the street. Scott and Grant were only a block and a half from Waddell’s house. Between them and it lay First Baptist Church, on the left corner. The roar of the drilling infantrymen was nothing compared to the roar that suddenly rose from the mob in the street.

“Mass meeting,” Grant said, head cocked to listen. “Somebody’s giving another speech. Whatever he said, they liked hearing it.”

Scott stared at him dumbly.

“See their torches?” Grant said. Market Street was bathed in light—from the gaslights on the corners, as well as from a hundred kerosene torches flaring orange and smoking into the clear night. Once they emerged from under the shadows of the trees, they would surely be spotted.

“Church rally,” Grant whispered. “Can you beat it? Calling on our humble Lord to bless their mischief!” They both stared toward First Baptist Church, which rose above the crowd like a medieval fortress. “They’re voting on who to lynch.”

Armond Scott was afraid. There must be five hundred white men here, he thought, and their mood is ugly. “We could circle round, come up from the other side.”

“You don’t think they’ll be waiting on that side, too? Use your melon.”

Scott was stymied. A few minutes ago, carrying the message to Waddell’s house had seemed like a minor chore. Now, it seemed suicidal. Scott wrung his hands. He looked up Market, daring himself to walk farther.

Grant put an arm around his shoulder. The boy was trembling. Grant spoke slowly, gently. “Take it to the post office. Let some white man wearing the proper uniform deliver it for you.”

He could backtrack down Market Street, walk north on Front for two blocks, and be rid of it. “But that’s not the plan! I promised—”

“You promised you’d get it there. Right?”

“Well, yes, Reverend, but—”

“If they shoot you down in the middle of Market Street, is the note going to get there?”