An excerpt from The Pontotoc Conspiracy:
There was enough first light to make out a dozen or more bundled figures walking around a flimsy barn a hundred yards down the track from Ada's Frisco railroad depot. The figures would stop and peer through cracks between boards of the barn wall, then move to another opening, as if the dark inside might be more yielding there.
Their talk was muted. Most of the voices were mens', though there were at least two boys outside the barn to hear them. They were excited and exasperated with the dark, not being able to see what they feared to see.
"I can make out four of 'em!" one of the boys announced to his friend in a strangled whisper.
Two men came over to see if somehow the boys had found an opening big enough to actually see anything in the barn, or if it was young imagination and excitement at work. Then, from the other side of the barn, a deep voice, "there's four of 'em alright."
The barn door was closed, heavy latch in place, but no sign of a lock. There was nothing to keep the boldest of the intense band around the barn from pulling the door open and looking inside ... nothing except by being there as the night ended, they knew they were already trespassing on a grave conspiracy.
The sun couldn't break through the gloomy overcast, but minute by minute a shadowless light came over the scene, seeped into the barn. Bundled figures kept going from one gap in the boards to the next, trying to get the best look, though it was agreed by now there were four men hanging by the neck inside, lifeless, hands wired behind them. Only a white horse, Old John, moved once in a while looking for the best hay.
A one‑horse buggy came up at a trot. The town photographer had arrived with his equipment. He searched quickly for a place to poke his camera lens through the boards for the picture he wanted. He couldn't find the right spot, then, without much trouble, pulled a board aside for his historic photograph.
A wagon with three men aboard arrived. The men were Ada's chief jailer and his two assistants. They swung open the barn door on squeaking hinges, filed inside, pulled the door closed behind them. Orders were given urgently, in such hushed tones nobody on the outside could understand. Five minutes passed. The barn door opened again.
The crowd outside gathered around the door. Four men, hands no longer bound behind them, no rope around their necks, were stretched out on the barn floor side by side, ready to be put in the wagon. The chief jailer and an, assistant hurried outside, jumped up on the wagon bed. The chief said to the assistant still at the barn door, "Gi'mme the hands."
Two of the bodies dragged from the barn then hoisted into the wagon were those of fit‑looking, middle-aged men; another looked like that of an overweight accountant. The last appeared to be the body of a church deacon in a dark suit with a black fedora hat still on his head.
"Who done it, Walter?" an onlooker squeezed against the door frame asked the chief jailer. The chief jailer kept pulling and lifting lynch victims and wouldn't answer.
"Walter—who done it?"
"How the hell would I know!" the agitated chief jailer finally shouted.
The story unfolds in The Pontotoc Conspiracy...
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