Cora Jones was white-faced and shaking, and she clutched her plastic handbag like a life preserver. George said: “I’m sorry we got you into this, Mrs. Jones.”

“So am I,” she replied.

The cars ahead pulled aside at last and the bus passed them. But the ordeal was not ended: the convoy was still behind. Then George heard a familiar popping sound. When the bus began to weave all over the road he realized it was a burst tire. The driver slowed to a halt near a roadside grocery store. George read the name: Forsyth & Son.

The driver jumped out. George heard him say: “Two flats?” Then he went into the store, presumably to phone for help.

George was as tense as a bowstring. One flat tire was just a puncture; two was an ambush.

Sure enough, the cars in the convoy were stopping and a dozen white men in their Sunday suits were piling out, yelling curses and waving their weapons, savages on the warpath. George’s stomach cramped again as he saw them running toward the bus, ugly faces twisted with hatred, and he knew why his mother’s eyes had filled with tears when she talked about Southern whites.

At the head of the pack was an adolescent boy who raised a crowbar and gleefully smashed a window.

The next man tried to enter the bus. One of the two burly white passengers stood at the top of the steps and drew a revolver, confirming Maria’s theory that they were state troopers in plain clothes. The intruder backed off and the trooper locked the door.

George feared that might be a mistake. What if the Riders needed to get out in a hurry?

The men outside began to rock the bus, as if trying to turn it over, all the while yelling: “Kill the niggers! Kill the niggers!” Women passengers were screaming. Maria clung to George in a way that might have pleased him if he had not been in fear of his life.

Outside, he saw two uniformed patrolmen arrive, and his hopes lifted; but, to his fury, they did nothing to restrain the mob. He looked at the two plainclothesmen on the bus: they looked foolish and scared. Obviously the uniformed men did not know about their undercover colleagues. The Alabama Highway Patrol was evidently disorganized as well as racist.

George cast around desperately for something he could do to protect Maria and himself. Get out of the bus and run? Lie down on the floor? Grab a gun from a state trooper and shoot some white men? Every possibility seemed even worse than doing nothing.

He stared in fury at the two highway patrolmen outside, watching as if nothing wrong was happening. They were cops, for Christ’s sake! What did they think they were doing? If they would not enforce the law, what right did they have to wear that uniform?

Then he saw Joseph Hugo. There was no possibility of mistake: George knew well those bulging blue eyes. Hugo approached a patrolman and spoke to him, then the two of them laughed.