“I’m going to turn around—go down Eighth and go in the back way. Hang on.” The horse was easier to handle heading away from the clamor. He slowed for the corner and then clucked her along Eighth until they reached Nun Street. As they turned down Nun, they started seeing faces—Negro faces—staring up at them as they passed. A crowd of Negro men and boys surrounded Free Love Hall. One of them held their horse. “What y’all want to come down here for?”

“I need to see Manly. Warn him. There’s a mob—”

“Manly’s gone.”

“Where? I need to—”

“Someplace safe from the Red Shirts—you think I’m going to tell you? You best ride on out of here before things get hot.”

Suddenly, the buggy seemed surrounded by hostile black faces. Some of their hands held tool handles and brickbats. A couple of old double-barreled shotguns poked up among the crowd.

“You want me to tell him you were here?” It was a man dressed in a suit. A lawyer—Sam had seen him around town but didn’t know his name.

Sam looked for Frank Manly but didn’t spot him. He was distracted. He needed to get Gray Ellen out of here. “What?”

“Have you got a name? I’ll tell him you tried to do him a good turn.”

“Yes, yes. Tell him Sam—” Gray Ellen grabbed his arm. “Never mind,” Sam said.

He turned the buggy and eased the horse through the crowd. Behind them, they could hear shouting, the clopping of horse’s hoofs, the low, dangerous murmur of a mob of men getting set to do things that couldn’t be taken back.

Gray Ellen craned her neck to watch as long as she could. Sam looked straight ahead. “Giddap!” he yelled at the horse, then whipped her across the rump.

The commotion was happening five long blocks from Hugh MacRae’s mansion. As J. Allan Taylor and the Pinkertons they had hired apprised him of the situation, he paced the length of his library, furiously smoking a cigar. A lynching now would spoil everything. President McKinley would have federal troops here before morning.

The only solution he could think of was to go himself and try to reason with that fool Dowling. The white trash were sometimes worse than the nigrahs—unpredictable, didn’t know their place.

“Get my buggy,” he told his man. “Get it quick.” To the Negro Pinkerton men, he advised, “Disappear.” They went out through the smugglers’ tunnel.

By the time he got to Free Love Hall, the situation was serious. After that foolish newspaper piece, word had gotten around that Mike Dowling was going to hang Manly from a street lamp. A hundred or so Negroes now surrounded the Record to prevent him. Some of them were armed. There were no women or children—it was a fighting mob.

The Red Shirts were drunk and in disarray. Boys were mixed in with men. Some of the men had Winchesters, but plenty of them were just curious to see what was going to happen.