' business to tend
to with them two fellers yo' totin' to town."

CHAPTER XIX

_Thirty_ men with guns would be considerable of a proposition to buck
against, so we didn't try it. They took us out of the wagon, and they
pinted us down the road, steering us fur a country schoolhouse which
was, I judged from their talk, about a quarter of a mile away. They took
us silent, fur after we found they didn't answer no questions we quit
asking any. We jest walked along, and guessed what we was up against,
and why. Daddy Withers, he trailed along behind. They had tried to send
him along home, but he wouldn't go. So they let him foller and paid no
more heed to him.

Sam, he kept a-talking and a-begging, and several men a-telling of him
to shut up. And him not a-doing it. Till finally one feller says very
disgusted-like:

"Boys, I'm going to turn this nigger loose."

"We'll want his evidence," says another one.

"Evidence!" says the first one. "What's the evidence of a scared nigger
worth?"

"I reckon that one this afternoon was considerable scared, when he give
us that evidence against himself--that is, if you call it evidence."

"A nigger can give evidence against a nigger, and it's all right," says
another voice--which it come from a feller that had a-holt of my wrist
on the left-hand side of me--"but these are white men we are going to
try to-night. The case is too serious to take nigger evidence. Besides,
I reckon we got all the evidence any one could need. This nigger ain't
charged with any crime himself, and my idea is that he ain't to be
allowed to figure one way or the other in this thing."

So they turned Sam loose. I never seen nor hearn tell of Sam since then.
They fired a couple of guns into the air as he started down the road,
jest fur fun, and mebby he is running yet.

The feller had been talking like he was a lawyer, so I asts him what
crime we was charged with. But he didn't answer me. And jest then we
gets in sight of that schoolhouse.

It set on top of a little hill, partially in the moonlight, with a few
sad-looking pine trees scattered around it, and the fence in front
broke down. Even after night you could see it was a shabby-looking little
place.

Old Daddy Withers tied his mule to the broken down fence. Somebody
busted the front door down. Somebody else lighted matches. The first
thing I knowed, we was all inside, and four or five dirty little coal
oil lamps, with tin reflectors to '