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Around the crescent the dogs were furious. They were Niggertown dogs, and the sight of a white man always drove them to a frenzy. Presently in the hullabaloo, Peter heard Dawson Bobbs's voice shouting:

“Aunt Mahaly, if you kain't call off this dawg, I'm shore goin' to kill him.”

Then an old woman's scolding broke in and complicated the mêlée. Presently Peter saw the bulky form of Dawson Bobbs come around the curve, moving methodically from cabin to cabin. He held some legal-looking papers in his hands, and Peter knew what the constable was doing. He was serving a blanket search-warrant on the whole black population of Hooker's Bend. At almost every cabin a dog ran out ​to blaspheme at the intruder, but a wave of the man's pistol sent them yelping under the floors again.

When the constable entered a house, Peter could hear him bumping and rattling among the furnishings, while the black householders stood outside the door and watched him disturb their housekeeping arrangements.

Presently Bobbs came angling across the street toward the Siner cabin. As he entered the rickety gate, old Caroline called out: