Several of
the young scouts had ridden close up to the column with tantalizing
shouts and insulting gestures and then dashed back to recount their
own audacity; until, just as the Stars and Stripes began to show
over the last gullied hill, one of them, desirous of outdoing his
comrades in bravado, drew his revolver, flourished it over his head,
and cast a shower of insulting epithets upon the colored pilgrims
to the shrine of ballatorial power. He was answered from the dusky
crowd with words as foul as his own. Such insult was not to be
endured. Instantly his pistol was raised, there was a flash, a puff
of fleecy smoke, a shriek from amid the crowd.
At once all was confusion. Oaths, cries, pistol-shots, and a shower
of rocks filled the air as the young man turned and spurred back
to the town. In a moment the long covered-bridge was manned by
a well-armed crowd, while others were seen running toward it. The
town was in an uproar.
The officers of election had left the polls, and in front of the
bridge could be seen Hesden Le Moyne and the burly sheriff striving
to keep back the angry crowd of white men. On the hill the colored
men, for a moment struck with amazement, were now arming with stones,
in dead earnest, uttering loud cries of vengeance for one of their
number who, wounded and affrighted, lay groaning and writhing by
the roadside. They outnumbered the whites very greatly, but the
latter excelled them in arms, in training, and in position.
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