At the top of the steps he paused to rest his arms and get another grip upon the children he was carrying. He laid the boys side by side, took one under each arm like a bundle, and started on. Then it happened. He attempted to enter a narrow door and a little woolly nigger head hit the sharp edge of the door jamb on each side with a thump!
The two pickaninnies let out a howl which turned Skeeter’s blood to ice water.
Any effort toward concealment was useless now, and Skeeter was consumed with desire to get out of that house. He galloped down the front steps, turned into the rear hall, and stepped out upon a side porch.
Sheriff John Flournoy met him at the steps!
Flournoy turned the electric flashlight he had been using at the garage into Skeeter’s face, and the blinded, terrified darky reeled backward and dropped the two howling nigger babies upon the porch floor.
“Turn on the light, Skeeter!” Flournoy commanded.
Skeeter reached up above his head and switched on an electric light suspended from a cord.
Flournoy looked down at the howling nigger babies and grinned. He saw nothing unusual in the fact that Skeeter was coming out of his home at eleven o’clock at night, for Mrs. Flournoy had left Skeeter in charge of the house a thousand times in their absence. Nor did the two black babies excite anything more than amusement, for several negro families lived on his place and their cabins were full of children.
“Did you steal those nigger babies, Skeeter?” Flournoy drawled in his easy, smiling way. The remark was merely to make talk.
“Naw, suh,” Skeeter stammered. “Naw, suh!”
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” Flournoy chuckled. “Since the Lamana kidnaping case, the Legislature has passed a law making the penalty for stealing children very severe in Louisiana.”
Skeeter attempted to moisten his parched lips with a dry tongue. Then he asked through jaws which felt like they were locked:
“Whut--whut--whut am de penalty, Marse John?”
Then an oath of surprise popped from his throat. Skeeter had crumpled like a broken weed and had fallen face downward between the two squalling black babies.
Flournoy leaped forward and turned the prostrate man over on his back.
Mrs. Flournoy appeared upon the side porch and quieted the babies by the simple process of giving each of them a piece of fried chicken.