out area, which upset Earl; he would not let them pass through the open land, because a rifleman who got there before they cleared its bare spaces might get a good, clean shot off, and one was all it took.
'On the other hand,' Sam had argued, 'we can make better time, because the ground is less cluttered with these goddamned vines and weeds and things. We can advance our lead and?'
'But they can make better time too. They're following our smell. We go ', they go '. That's it. Either that, or you figure out a way to stop smelling. When you get that one done, you let me know.'
'Should have known I couldn't outthink Earl Swagger on some tactics issue,' said Sam.
'I got a bagful of tricks,' said Earl. 'Only goddamned thing I know at all in this world.'
But he hadn't sprung his best trick yet. He'd been looking for just such an opportunity, which demanded the congruence of stout trees, not pines, but the occasional oaks that sprung up helter-skelter in the woods. He needed a dead one, with a nice spike of splintered trunk atop it.
And at last, on the far side of a gentle hill, he found it.
'Okay,' he said. 'You take a rest.' 'Earl,' said Sam, his face a shine with sweat, 'you know those boys can't be that far behind.'
'I got a little something here. This one's real pretty.'
Earl knelt and reached into his pack. He came out with a big coil of rope. He diddled with it, until at last he'd fashioned a cowboy's lariat with its expandable loop just perfect for bringing down running steers from close-by horseback.
'We used to see them Western-type movies in the Pacific when we wasn't kinin' Japs. You know, with that feller John Wayne, you seen any of them?'
'Yes, Earl, of course I've seen Westerns. But what on earth?'
'Oh, you just watch me now.'
Earl swung the looped rope overhead, building up a nice rhythm and swoop, then let the thing fly and it soared the thirty feet or so to the spike and missed.
'Goddamn,' he barked.
'I'll go?'
'No. You stay where you are.'
Instead of retrieval, Earl snapped the rope back slowly so that it wouldn't catch on anything. Then he began again, flinging the rope across and This time he got it right, and the loop settled over the spiked trunk and slipped down.
'There we go.'
With that he went to another oak, this one alive, pulled himself up a bit, got to the second branch, pulled the rope tight but not too tight, so that it had some spring to it, and secured it by a peculiar knot to the trunk.
He scurried down.
'Now you come on.'
'What are you up to, Earl, this is the craziest?'
'You just come with me.' They forged ahead another hundred yards.
'That's fine. That's right good. Now come on.'
They backtracked to the tree.
'Now sir, you git up that tree and you hand-over-hand across to the other tree.'
'Earl, I don't see?'
'It's the scent. It's low to the ground. Them dogs can only smell what's on the goddamned ground. That's why they got to keep their noses in the mud. So we going across, we ain't touching no ground, and when we get across, we head off from over there. They go right on by and a hundred yards up so where we stopped, they run out of trail.
It'll take ' an hour of scouting to find us again.'
Sam looked at Earl.
'Sir,' he finally said, 'if you weren't on the side of the law, you would make a very cunning criminal. You have it in your bones, no doubt about it.'
'goddammit!' screamed the sheriff.
'Damn,' said Pepper. 'Ain't seen a thing like it never. Trail just stops. Did they fly out by spaceship?'
'Maybe it was one of them heliochopters,' a deputy said. 'Seen it in the newsreel. Them things can land straight down.'
'Don't be no fool, Skeeter,' said the sheriff.
'Ain't no helicopters in Thebes County. They backtracked and someplace back they managed to jump trail. Don't know how they done it, but this fellow running this thing, he's as smart as they come.'
'Sheriff, ain't nobody got this far before.'
The sheriff knew that to be the case. It clouded his brow with darkness.
Usually the runners headed the other direction, because for them the river meant freedom; there was something in the Negro head, something ancient and unperturbable, that connected crossing a river with freedom.
The sheriff didn't understand it, but he knew that the colored went east, to the bayou, and because they thought the dogs couldn't track through water, but the dogs were really good and didn't lose a scent easy, and the runners left enough about on weeds and vines and wet logs and leaves for the dogs to stay with, and the swamp slowed them down and sometimes killed them, sparing the sheriff and his boys the trouble.
Nothing personal: it was just that a running nigger was a guilty nigger, whatever the infraction might be, and a bullet was as easy a solution to the case as time in the Farm, and it meant a good deal less paperwork for everybody.
But this goddamn white boy had been smart. He'd gone out through the piney woods, which meant he had a compass and was good in the wild, and he'd thought hard about beating the dogs. He'd worked it out real solid.
No, nobody had gotten that far before.
'So, we got to circle until we pick up that scent again, is that right?' he demanded.
'Yes, sir,' said Pepper.
'Tell you what,' said the sheriff, thinking into the problem. 'You put them dogs back on chains. I want two teams of three dogs each. You run one team, Opic'll run the other. Instead of one big circle, we'll each take a half. Whichever team picks up the scent first, whether it's one or tother, you fire a shot. Then you mark it. You see. You mark it with a handkerchief or something, Opic, you can figure out to do it, right?'
'Yes sir, b'lieve I can,' said Opic.
'Yes. And the first team goes on after them boys, and the second team cuts cross the circle, finds the mark, and it commences after the first team. That seems like it could save us a mess of time, don't it?'
'Yes, it do,' said Pepper. 'Sheriff, you one right smart man.'
'Okay, let's get her done. I figured out where they're headed, by the way.'
'Where, Sheriff?'
'Track. The Alabama and Great Southern track cuts across the woods another six, seven miles out. So they goin' to catch a train ride, they think. You boys best catch ', you hear? We don't want nobody gitting out to tell fantastical stories about Thebes County now, do we?'
'How much further, Earl?' said Sam. The ordeal was wearing on the older man. He'd twisted his ankle back there a ways, and now hobbled painfully onward.
The going wasn't easy, for vines and sawtooth clotted the passageways between the trees and palmettos with sharp leaves that cut at them like cutlasses. Worse, every now and then they'd come upon a trail, and the easy passage, beckoning them onward, tempted their spirits away from Earl's compass plot sorely and broke their hearts when they had to find the discipline to say no to its comely ways.
'We're getting close,' said Earl, lying. He knew they weren't 'close,' only 'closer.' But no longer did they hear the barking of the dogs, and now it was just the two of them alone in the dark woods.
'I am running low on steam.'
'I am, too, Mr. Sam. Neither of us banked on this. But by now them boys is goddamned good and mad, so we'd best keep going. If they catch up to us, there be all kinds of hell to pay.'
'I'm only thinking we've done beat them. That trick of yours buffaloed them good. We could take a rest,
