He reached his horse, swung into the saddle. Sheriff Webb still kept the rifle raised. Foster and the deputy kept the big man covered with their pistols.
“All right, you yellow pups,” snarled Big Floyd Allen, “you’ve got me now, but I’m warning you, Lou Webb, and you, too, Foster, you stealing pig, you’ll pay for this with your—”
“What’s that?” rasped Foster, fiercely.
“You’ll pay for this, you pigs,” Allen bellowed, so that the entire town of Hillsville could hear him. “You’ll be lucky if the Allens just run you out of Carroll County.”
With that he wheeled his horse and rode out of the town, leaving dynamite and fury in every hitherto peaceful home in Hillsville, or Carroll County for that matter, leaving the imprint of death on half a dozen houses.
He left the little town of Hillsville in an uproar. People swarmed up and down the streets, demanding that the Allens be jailed. Others took issue with them. They were pro-Allenites and they seemed to be in the majority. At least, inspired by the example of the full lunged Floyd Allen, they shouted loudest and threatened most and succeeded in awing, temporarily, the anti-Allenites.
Then, out of the dust of the road that led southward toward the Carolinas, came the bleeding and broken figure of Pinky Samuels. His eyes were blackened, his mouth was cut and his teeth were strewn over the dusty highway. There were cuts and bruises on his face and body and he staggered like a drunken man as he picked his precarious way to the courthouse, to collapse, in view of the outraged townsmen, on the courthouse steps.
This ignited the spark all over again. The anti-Allenites ran riot. They swept through the town, demanding vengeance. Many shouted that their lives weren’t safe with the ruthless patriarch of the mountaineers at large. They called him the gray peril and demanded that Sheriff Webb do something.
One citizen, more excited than the others, telephoned to Richmond. He reached the governor’s office. The governor was not available, but his secretary referred the indignant citizen to the attorney general. The attorney general called Hillsville back, seeking to get in touch with Foster.
He found Foster in conference with Judge Massie. The bitter partisan, Massie, took the telephone and shouted angrily back at the attorney general that he would lock every damned one of the Allens behind bars. The attorney general agreed that, for the sake of peace and the dignity of the commonwealth, this should be done, at once.
Foster leaped into the prosecution of the two boys with fierce diligence. To the amazement of the Allens, the boys were convicted and sentenced to six months in a county jail.
Floyd Allen delivered a new ultimatum. Somehow, he conceived the idea that the town people had combined against the mountain people, that they were determined to rule the county and stamp out the Allen clan. He professed a great dread of this. He began mustering his forces again. He armed the Allens and the Edwardses and the others.
Foster anticipated him. He issued a warrant for Floyd Alien’s arrest, on a charge of assault and battery, growing-out of the beating of Samuels. He gave the warrant to a deputy, or a pair of deputies, to serve. They demurred at first, but then set out to run Floyd Allen down or supposedly to run him down.
But they returned and said they could not find him. Other deputies were sent out. They came back with the same report. One returned badly beaten. Another limped from a flesh wound. They reported the mountains alive with enemies.
Then Louis Webb, with three men, went out to hunt for Floyd Allen.
All this time, Floyd Allen had been seen in his usual haunts. Once he had even dared to visit Hillsville, and had stood before the courthouse guffawing and daring the courthouse force to come out and arrest him. Later he learned that Webb was not in the courthouse on that occasion and that Samuels still was unable to be about because of the beating on the road.
It was after this gesture of defiance that Webb personally went out to serve the warrant. Foster and Massie insisted upon accompanying him. Political and official zealots, they wanted to be in at the kill. Webb refused to permit it. In his capacity of sheriff, he could.
Foster demanded to know why Webb refused.
“Because,” said the little man, “I want you and the judge here to clap him into jail when he comes in.”
He rode away before the judge and Foster could figure out just what he meant.
Fortunately, they didn’t have long to remain in ignorance.
IV
Four hours after the word got around that Sheriff Louis Webb personally had gone out to get him, Floyd Allen walked into the courthouse and surrendered.
Then they knew, Judge Massie and Foster, what the steely-eyed sheriff had meant. Allen was willing to defy them by putting himself in their power.
“All right, lock me up, you pups,” Floyd Allen roared, seeing no sign of Webb. “Go ahead — and see what it brings you to.”
They didn’t lock him up. The Allens waited for him outside, brothers and sons and nephews, ugly customers, armed to the teeth.
They paraded before the courthouse and Walter and Claude Allen entered with him. Walter was the lawyer. He demanded bail, and got it, so that Floyd Allen did not have to undergo the indignity of spending a night behind the bars. They gave him his liberty, so that he could go out and foment new trouble and make new terrors for the distressed county.
Something told Floyd Allen that he was heading into trouble. He saw, and his brothers and sons saw, the handwriting on the wall. The clan gathered nightly in conclave, waiting for the day when Floyd Allen was to stand trial.
There began a series of terroristic raids. No one knew who committed the raids. They defied the sheriff and Foster. But they were directed at the Republican voters, or those who were suspected of being Republican voters. Men were taken out and horsewhipped. Many were stripped of their clothing and left on the mountains, in the deathly fogs and cold.
Those who rode into Hillsville behind Floyd Allen the day he was halted before the courthouse and who had slunk away when Sheriff Webb confronted him with a rifle, flanked by Foster and the deputy, were victims of night riders. Citizens flocked into Hillsville for protection.
A reign of terror, that could be traced to no one, not even by the zealous Foster or the grim Webb, made a place of horror and dread of the county.
Judge Massie ordered Floyd Allen brought to trial at once. In this way, and this alone, he reasoned, could he fling the defy of elected law and order to the terrorists.
Floyd Allen, boasting of his immunity, appeared in court, smiling a sinister smile. The Allens clustered behind him. Sheriff Webb suddenly ordered all but Walter Allen and Claude, the son, out of the courtroom. Walter beat the order. The Allens, and everyone else who wished to, were permitted to remain.
The trial was a brief one. The Allens, still believing in their superiority to constituted authority, declined even to bother about presenting witnesses. The experience of the two youths had not taught them that these despised enemies were not to be scoffed at.
Pinky Samuels took the stand. Reluctantly, with the fierce eyes of Floyd Allen and his sons and brothers upon him, he told his story. Foster and Webb, together, aided by Judge Massie, had to drag it from him. Ominous rumblings filled the room.
When the hearing was completed, Floyd Allen and the Allenites arose to leave the courtroom. They declined to wait until Judge Massie had left, or had made disposition of the case. The court, controlling the rage that welled up, ordered them to take their seats.
Floyd Allen contemptuously refused. He stood, with his hat on, looking grimly at Judge Massie. His son, Claude, stood beside him. Jasper, Walter, Sidna, and the others, were grouped about him, in a sort of semicircle, a phalanx that looked capable of sweeping through the court.