At this moment there was a vigorous blowing of the horn of an automobile in the road behind them, and in a cloud of dust a gleaming new car bore down toward them. To the banker's surprise, Webb paused in the center of the road and made no effort to move.
"Look out!" Mostyn cried, warningly. "Here, quick!"
"Humph!" Webb grunted, still refusing to move, his eyes flashing sullenly. "I'm goin' to pick up a rock some o' these days an' knock one o' them fellers off his perch."
Still immovable he stood while the honking car, with brakes on, slid to a stop a few feet away.
"What the hell's the matter with you?" the man at the wheel, in a jaunty cap and goggles, cried out, angrily. "You heard me blowin', didn't you?"
"I ain't deef," John flashed at him. "I wanted to see what 'the hell'--to use your words--you'd do about it. You think because you are in a rig o' that sort, Pete Allen, you can make men an' women break the'r necks to git out o' your way. If you had touched me with that thing I'd have stomped the life out o' you. I know you. You used to split rails an' hoe an' plow, barefooted over in Dogwood. 'White trash,' the niggers called your folks. You've been in town just long enough to make you think you can trample folks down like so many tumble-bugs."
"Well, you have no right to block the road up," the driver said, quite taken aback, his color mounting to his cheeks. "There is a law--"
"I don't care a dang about your law!" Webb broke in. "I'm law-abidin', but when a law is passed givin' an upstart like you the right to make a decent man jump out of your way, like a frost-bitten grasshopper, I'll break it. The minute a skunk like you buys a machine on credit an' starts out he thinks he owns the earth."
Still flushed, the man grumbled out something inarticulately and started on his way.
"I hit 'im purty hard," John said, as Mostyn rejoined him, "but if thar is anything on earth that makes me rippin' mad it is the way fellers like that look an' act."
They found thirty or forty men, women, and children at the store awaiting the coming of the preacher. The building was a long, one- story frame structure made of undressed planks whitewashed. It had a porch in front which was filled with barrels, chicken-coops, and heavy agricultural implements. The people were seated in the shade of the trees, some on the grass and others in their own road-wagons.