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

Several grinned at Billy Harden as he set down,
and three or four laughed outright. I guess about
half of them there knowed him fur a wind bag, and
some wasn't sorry to see him joshed. But I seen
what the doctor was trying to do. He knowed he
was in an awful tight place, and he was feeling that
crowd's pulse, so to speak. He had been talking
to crowds fur twenty years, and he knowed the
kind of sudden turns they will take, and how to
take advantage of 'em. He was planning and
figgering in his mind all the time jest what side to
ketch 'em on, and how to split up the one, solid
crowd-mind into different minds. But the little
bit of a laugh he turned against Billy Harden was
only on the surface, like a straw floating on a whirlpool.
These men was here fur business.
Buck Hightower jumps up and says:
"Will, I'm getting tired of this court foolishness.
The question is, Does this man come into this
county and do what he has done and get out again?
We know all about him. He sneaked in here and
gave out he was here to turn the niggers white--
that he was some kind of a new-fangled Jesus sent
especially to niggers, which is blasphemy in itself--
and he's got 'em stirred up. They're boilin' and
festerin' with notions of equality till we're lucky
if we don't have to lynch a dozen of 'em, like they
did in Atlanta last summer, to get 'em back into
their places again. Do we save ourselves more
trouble by stringing him up as a warning to the
negroes? Or do we invite trouble by turning him
loose? Which? All it needs is a vote."
And he set down agin. You could see he had
made a hit with the boys. They was a kind of a
growl rolled around the room. The feelings in
that place was getting stronger and stronger. I
was scared, but trying not to show it. My fingers
kept feeling around in my pocket fur something
that wasn't there. But my brain couldn't remember
what my fingers was feeling fur. Then it come on
me sudden it was a buckeye I picked up in the woods