DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

and cool, and he goes on with his little speech:
"There is to be no lynching here to-night. There
is to be a trial, and, if necessary, an execution."
"Would it be asking too much," says the
doctor very polite, "if I were to inquire who is
to be tried, and before what court, and upon what
charge?"
There was a clearing of throats and a shuffling of
feet fur a minute. One old deaf feller, with a red
nose, who had his hand behind his ear and was
leaning forward so as not to miss a breath of what
any one said, ast his neighbour in a loud whisper,
"How?" Then an undersized little feller, who
wasn't a farmer by his clothes, got up and moved
toward the platform. He had a bulging-out forehead,
and thin lips, and a quick, nervous way
about him:
"You are to be tried," he says to the doctor,
speaking in a kind of shrill sing-song that cut your
nerves in that room full of bottled-up excitement
like a locust on a hot day. "You are to be tried before
this self-constituted court of Caucasian citizens--
Anglo-Saxons, sir, every man of them, whose forbears
were at Runnymede! The charge against
you is stirring up the negroes of this community
to the point of revolt. You are accused, sir, of
representing yourself to them as some kind of a
Moses. You are arraigned here for endangering
the peace of the county and the supremacy of the
Caucasian race by inspiring in the negroes the hope
of equality."
Old Daddy Withers had been setting back by
the door. I seen him get up and slip out. It didn't
look to me to be any place fur a gentle old poet.
While that little feller was making that charge
you could feel the air getting tingly, like it does
before a rain storm.
Some fellers started to clap their hands like at a
political rally and to say, "Go it, Billy!" "That's
right, Harden!" Which I found out later Billy