e yelled:

"Get them dogs started for home! They're goin' plum crazy! Get on
your hawse, Mosely! You, over there, with your fist shot up, ride
next to me. Mount, all o' you! Mount, I say! No, I'll come last.

"What's that you're sayin', Briggs? No, suh, not by a damn-sight you
won't! Not while I'm sheriff o' this county an' upholdin' law an'
order in it, you won't drag no dead nigger behind _my_ hawse--nor
yet in front of him, neither! Let the nigger lay where he is and
rot--what's left of him."

"Do you want us to bury--it?" quavered Peter.

"Bury it or burn it. What the hell do I care what you do with it?"
growled the sheriff. "He's dead, that's all I got to think about."
He ran his shrewd eyes over the posse, saw that not one straggler
remained to do further mischief, and drove them before him,
willy-nilly. In five minutes the trampled yard was clear, and the
sound of the horses' hoofs was already dying in the distance. In the
sky all other stars had paled to make room for the morning star.

Peter and Neptune, left alone, looked at each other dumbly. A thing
remained to be done. The sun mustn't rise upon the horror that lay
in the cabin yard. Neptune went to his small barn and trundled out a
wheelbarrow, in which were several gunny-sacks, a piece of rope, and
a spade.

Peter turned his head away while the old man covered the thing on
the ground with sacking, rolled it over, floppily, and tied it as
best he could. The sweat came out on them both as they saw the
stains that spread on the clean sacking. Neptune heaped the bundle
into his wheelbarrow. At a word from him Peter went into the house
and returned with a lighted lantern, for the River Swamp was still
very dark. The sun wouldn't be up for an hour or two yet. Peter held
the lantern in one hand, and carried spade and shot-gun over the
other shoulder. In the ghostly light they entered the swamp, every
turn and twist of whose wide, watery acreage was known to Neptune,
and was fairly familiar to Peter. They had to proceed warily, for
the ground was treacherous, and at any moment a jutting tree-root
might upset the clumsy barrow. Despite Neptune's utmost care it
bumped and swayed, and the shapeless bundle in it shook hideously,
as if it were trying to escape. And the stains on the coarse shroud
grew, and spread.

In a small and fairly dry space among particularly large cypresses,
Neptune stopped. At one side was a deep pool in whose depths the
lantern was r