A sheriff is summoned to a sugarcane plantation, where he finds one white woman, one dead Cajun farmer and eighteen old black men, each toting a shotgun. Each man claims guilt, and all threaten to provoke a riot at the courthouse should the sheriff try to make an arrest. In the meantime they wait for the lynch mob that the dead man's father is sure to launch. Before it's over everyone involved has been surprised by something, most of all the black men by their taste of power and pride.