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.

He spied Sergeant Lockamy facing down the white crowd. “Are you just going to let this happen?” he said.

“I’ve got six men. You tell me.”

Walker Taylor rode up on a horse that looked too small to carry him. He had three men with him, also mounted. “Walk, can’t we get that Mick under control?” MacRae said.

“Exactly,” Walker Taylor said, wheeling his horse dramatically, “what I propose to do.”

The Negroes weren’t advancing. They remained in a defensive posture. Walker Taylor noted that and admired it. Inside Free Love Hall, three or four riflemen could shoot over the heads of their own people and decimate the white mob. Somebody was thinking. Because the white mob was disorganized, Walker Taylor knew that if he could turn the Red Shirts back, he could stop the whole thing. Mobs were stupid creatures. But after a certain stage, they could be dangerous. Some threshold would be crossed, and then nobody could claim control anymore—events would be propelled by sheer momentum. The thing would start to want to happen, and then it would. He had seen it happen in South Carolina once.

Luckily, this mob was still brewing. He could sense its half-heartedness. These men were out for mischief, not murder. Some were just starting on a drunk, while others were just sobering up.

Walker Taylor found Mike Dowling—disheveled, red shirt unbuttoned nearly to his waist—and two of his lieutenants on farm horses. They were passing a bottle.

“You’re messing where you have no business, Mr. Dowling,” Walker Taylor said.

“You country-club people really thrill me, and that’s the truth.” Dowling swigged on the bottle and then tossed it away, toward the Negro crowd.

Walker Taylor watched it thump into the sand and hoped to God nobody would use it as an excuse to shoot in his direction—he was a pretty broad target.

“These swamp niggers is keeping good men out of work, and you’re siding with them,” Dowling said. “Well, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!”