"It's grown on you. You're fixing to lynch your first white man now. If you do, you'll lynch an-other easier. You'll lynch one for murder and the next for stealing hogs and the next because he's unpopular and the next because he happens to dun you for a debt. And in five years life will be as cheap in Watson County as it is in a New York slum where they feed immigrants to the factories.
You'll all be toting guns and grudges and trying to lynch each other.
"The place to stop the thing is where it starts.
You can't have it both ways--you've got to stand pat on the law, or else see the law spit on right and left, in the end, and NOBODY safe. It's either law or--""But," says Grimes, "there's a higher law than that on the statute books. There's--""There's a lot of flub-dub," says the colonel, "about higher laws and unwritten laws. But we've got high enough law written if we live up to it.
There's--"
"Colonel Tom Buckner," says Buck Hightower, "what kind of law was it when you shot Ed Howard fifteen years ago? What--""You're out of order," says the chairman, "Colonel Buckner has the floor. And I'll remind you, Buck Hightower, that, on the occasion you drag in, Colonel Buckner didn't do any talking about higher laws or unwritten laws. He sent word to the sheriff to come and get him if he dared.""Boys," says the colonel, "I'm preaching you higher doctrine than I've lived by, and I've made no claim to be better or more moral than any of you. I'm not. I'm in the same boat with all of you, and I tell you it's up to ALL of us to stop lynch-ings in this county--to set our faces against it.
I tell you--"
"Is that all you've got to say to us, colonel?"The question come out of a group that had drawed nearer together whilst the colonel was talking.
They was tired of listening to talk and arguments, and showed it.
The colonel stopped speaking short when they flung that question at him. His face changed.
He turned serious all over. And he let loose jest one word:
"NO!"
Not very loud, but with a ring in it that sounded like danger. And he got 'em waiting agin, and hanging on his words.
"No!" he repeats, louder, "not all. I have this to say to you--"And he paused agin, pointing one long white finger at the crowd--"IF YOU LYNCH THIS MAN YOU MUST KILL ME FIRST!"I couldn't get away from thinking, as he stood there making them take that in, that they was some-thing like a play-actor about him. But he was in earnest, and he would play it to the end, fur he liked the feelings it made circulate through his frame. And they saw he was in earnest.
"You'll lynch him, will you?" he says, a kind of passion getting into his voice fur the first time, and his eyes glittering. "You think you will?
Well, you WON'T!
"You won't because _I_ say NOT. Do you hear?
I came here to-night to save him.
"You might string HIM up and not be called to account for it. But how about ME?"He took a step forward, and, looking from face to face with a dare in his eyes, he went on:
"Is there a man among you fool enough to think you could kill Tom Buckner and not pay for it?"He let 'em all think of that for jest another minute before he spoke agin. His face was as white as a piece of paper, and his nostrils was working, but everything else about him was quiet. He looked the master of them all as he stood there, Colonel Tom Buckner did--straight and splendid and keen. And they felt the danger in him, and they felt jest how fur he would go, now he was started.
