maybe.'
'Mr. Sam, that earned us an hour. But the deputies is younger and stronger and well motivated. They will not be stopping, no sir. They will keep on coming, I guarantee it. Best thing is, don't think about other stuff. Keep your mind hard.'
'I suppose you are right on that one. I?oh, shit.'
'Goddammit,' said Earl.
Far back, they heard a shot.
It was the bitch Lucy who picked it up, and the sheriff's team, with Opic on the dogs, who got it.
Lucy began to shiver and whine; she leaped up, her wet tongue licking at Opic.
'Goddamn mutt,' he said, pushing her back.
'No, she's got it,' said the sheriff. 'She wants her reward. Opic, give her a kiss.'
'Ain't kissing no dog.'
'Yes you is, Opic. Seen goddamn old Pepper do it. Get to it.'
As Opic bent and faked love to the squirming, prideful hound, the sheriff turned and drew his Heavy-Duty and fired a shot.
'Okay, boys,' he said. 'Let me tell you how we goin' do this thang.
That track can't be more that three miles ahead. So now it's a goddamned race, and I am too much a old man. I will slow you down.
Opic, you and Skeeter take off them packs. We will leave the packs here.
I just want you with your rifles running after them dogs. The dogs will show the way. They hunt good. They'll hunt ' down, you hear? I will wait here for them other fellas. When they arrive, we'll run them dogs too, and they will follow along right quick, I do believe. But you our best chance. You get to them boys and you shoot ' dead. I don't want no confusion here now, you understand. Your job is to bring ' back dead and not alive, so that no one ask no questions, not now, not never. Got it, fellas?'
Both men were hunters; both men appreciated the opportunity that had been presented them; both men looked upon it as the greatest of fun.
'Now you go, dammit. I will wait for tot hers Opic set the hounds free, and they bounded off. Packless, but carrying their Winchesters with the glee of men about to have some fun, the young deputies took up the chase.
'Docs,' said Sam. 'Oh, Christ, dogs.' 'Ain't as many of them,' said Earl. 'He done split up his team, and only a few marked us.'
'Can we make it?'
'We got to pick up the pace. We can't tarry. Sorry, Mr. Sam, but it's going to be a running thing now.' 'Then,' said Sam, 'I will give it my best effort.'
They accelerated their movements, bucking ahead with more abandon now.
Sam did something unprecedented as testament to the seriousness of his situation: he actually loosened his tie.
'Hope no supreme court justices see you with that tie all reckless like that,' said Earl. 'You could git in trouble with your career if that happens.'
'Don't you tell a soul now, Earl. This one's between you and me, and as soon as we catch that train, the tie comes up again. You never can tell who you may run into hoboing on a freight.'
Earl appreciated that Sam could still joke a bit. When a man's sense of humor went, it meant he was near going under. In the war, he'd always looked for a chance to make his boys smile at some fool thing or other.
It made ' that much looser and gave ', however tiny, just that much more chance.
The land began an incline, howsoever gentle, and the height worked against them as well. Soon both were bent double, puffing hard, feeling the sweat leak off them, lost in the intensity of the ordeal.
Earl had plotted onto a lone pine a half mile ahead. They increased their pace, achieving almost a jog, just the steady, easy lope of men at urgent extension, pushing themselves ever onward, trying to ignore the multitude of discomforts that built toward pain as they rushed along, their minds tunneling through everything toward the possibility of escape.
Earl had pieces of metal scattered through his body, most of it Japanese shrapnel. Now and then a piece worked loose and nudged a nerve or something and sent a searing pain up to his brain. He'd been shot in the war a whole bunch of times, treated roughly by combat as combat will do to a man. He thought he was beyond the rough stuff, and he wasn't.
Still, he clung desperately to the rifle. It was an old gun bought secondhand from a retiring trooper, what you call a trunk gun. It rode in the cruiser, wrapped in a blanket, picking up nicks and scratches over the years. But if a trooper ever needed something heavy to plow through the bones of a wounded animal or a barricaded robber, the heavy old Government.30 Model of '06 bullet would do the trick, and Earl knew he had but a hammer snick to accomplish before he fired the first of five packed in there.
He hoped he didn't have to shoot. But he knew if he did, he would. It was his way.
They reached the crest of the hill.
'Lookie, goddamn,' cried Opic. 'Seen '. They just ahead.'
His eyes were good. They'd picked up on a flash of movement a quarter mile down the slope from them, nothing demonstrably human but nevertheless clearly the flash of something moving urgently.
'Them dogs be on ' soon,' Skeeter declared. 'Tear ' up real damn good.
Then we pop '. Like bear hunting'. Hunt bears with dogs.
Dogs drive ' back, tire ' out, bleed ', y'all git close and you can pot yourself a bearskin rug for the winter.'
'You ain't never hunted no bears, Opic.'
'Well, that's right, goddammit. My people wasn't bear-hunting people.
But that's how it be done, by Christ, that I know. You ain't never hunted no bears neither.'
'There, goddammit,' Skeeter yelled. 'Seen ' too. Let's git them old boys. Whooooie, goin' to be fun a- coming!'
'Fun a-coming!' yelled Opic.
The two lanky youths gathered themselves heroically, and once again started loping through the pines toward the last view they'd had of the fleeing men. The track was easy. The running dogs chewed up the soft pine needles where they galloped, and three of them left a big enough sign for an idiot. On the balls of their feet, Opic and Skeeter danced forward. The prospect of action, of success, of getting home after all this shit lightened their steps and their spirits. Their natural hunter's exuberance amplified the chemicals in their blood, and they soared ahead. sam stumbled and fell, caught himself, and kneeled, chest heaving, face wet with sweat.
'Earl, I'm about finished. I think I'm going to have a goddamn heart attack! You go on. You git. You leave me here. You done your best.
I just wasn't up to this goddamn thing.'
'Mr. Sam?'
'No, Earl. I formally relieve you of any obligation to me. It's the '<! right thing. You go on back to Arkansas and raise that boy and?'
'Mr. Sam, give me your coat.'
'Your coat. Goddamn, we haven't much time at all. And that hat too, give me that goddamn thing.'
'Earl, I?'
'Goddammit, Sam, do what I say!'
Sam was stunned that Earl, who understood the elaborate system of deference that underlay Southern society as well as any man, would actually raise his voice at him. It seemed so out of character. One yelled at Negroes or, occasionally, workingmen, women and male children, particularly of the teenaged years, but one never Earl lost all patience with the shocked man and picked him up by the lapels, spinning him, stripping him of his coat. Then he plucked the straw hat.
'Now your shirt.'
'My shirt?'
'Your goddamned shirt!'
Quickly, Sam shucked the damp garment. Earl quickly shed his hunting coat and extended it to the bare-
