“Don’t shoot, men. We want to get him alive.”

“Close in on him!”

“He must be in them bushes there by the porch.”

“Look!”

And suddenly shots rang out. The door opened. Cora saw flashes of fire spitting into the blackness, and Bert’s tall body in the doorway. He was shooting at the voices outside in the dark. The door closed.

“Hello, Ma,” he said. “One or two of ’em won’t follow me no further.”

Cora locked the door as bullets splintered through the wood, shattered the window panes. Then a great volley of shots struck the house, blinding head-lights focused on the porch. Shouts and cries of, “Nigger! Nigger! Get the nigger!” filled the night.

“I was waitin’ for you, honey,” Cora said. “Quick! Your hidin’ place’s ready for you, upstairs in de attic. I sawed out a place under de floor. Maybe they won’t find you, chile. Hurry, ’fore your father comes.”

“No time to hide, Ma,” Bert panted. “They’re at the door now. They’ll be coming in the back way, too. They’ll be coming in the windows. They’ll be coming in everywhere. I got one bullet left, Ma. It’s mine.”

“Yes, son, it’s your’n. Go upstairs in mama’s room and lay down on ma bed and rest. I won’t let ’em come up till you’re gone. God bless you, chile.”

Quickly, they embraced. A moment his head rested on her shoulder.

“I’m awful tired running, Ma. I couldn’t get to the swamp. Seems like they been chasing me for hours. Crawling through the cotton a long time, I got to rest now.”

Cora pushed him toward the stairs. “Go on, son,” she said gently.

At the top, Bert turned and looked back at this little brown woman standing there waiting for the mob. Outside the noise was terrific. Men shouted and screamed, massing for action. All at once they seemed to rush in a great wave for the house. They broke the doors and windows in, and poured into the room—a savage crowd of white men, red and wild-eyed, with guns and knives, sticks and ropes, lanterns and flashlights. They paused at the foot of the stairs where Cora stood looking down at them silently.

“Keep still, men,” one of the leaders said. “He’s armed…. Say where’s that yellow bastard of yours, Cora—upstairs?”

“Yes,” Cora said. “Wait.”

“Wait, hell!” the men cried. “Come on, boys, let’s go!”

A shot rang out upstairs, then Cora knew it was all right.

“Go on,” she said, stepping aside for the mob.

IX

The next morning when people saw a bloody and unrecognizable body hanging in the public square at the Junction, some said with a certain pleasure, “That’s what we do to niggers down here,” not realizing Bert had been taken dead, and that all the fun for the mob had been sort of stale at the end.

But others, aware of what had happened, thought, “It’d be a hell of a lot better lynching a live nigger. Say, ain’t there nobody else mixed up in this here Norwood murder? Where’s that boy’s brother, Willie? Heh?”