Both deputies dropped to prone and eased the hammers back on the Winchesters.
'You got to shoot high. You shoot over him, drop that bullet into him.'
'You watch where I hit, and yell corrections.'
'You ain't so dumb for a dumb hick.'
'Only thang dumber than a dumb hick is a smart city boy.'
Opic was the designated shooter. He was young, his eyes sharp, he had shot a lot and hunted his whole life. He could see his target hobbling along at what appeared to be a range of about six hundred yards, a far carry for a.30–30, but not impossible. Hell, he didn't even really have to hit him. He just had to scare him into dropping?and missing that coming train. If he done that, he done right good. The sheriff and the dogs and the other fellers could round him up.
He found the old man perched at the tip of his sight, and squeezed the worn, smooth trigger of Mr. Oliver Winchester's best gun.
The target was lost in the jump of the rifle.
He levered the gun quickly, tossing the empty, bringing a new one into the chamber.
'You's off seventy-five yards at least,' yelled Skeeter. 'You got to shoot high.'
'I know that, dadgummit. Just gittin' a feel for it.'
He held again on the man, then raised the rifle a good five man lengths over his head and squeezed.
'Goddamn, that's close. Still a mite short.'
'That's five men high. I am five men high. I'm going to six.'
He levered, found the position, and fired.
The shot plunked up a spray of dirt not ten feet from the fleeing target.
'Thattharbeit.'
'Six men high gits it done.'
He fired again, and Skeeter saw the dust puff surprisingly near Sam, who dropped immediately, scurried a few feet in the low crawl, and took refuge in a gully.
'Whoooeee,' said Opic. 'Now you shoot, Skeet. Six men high, that's it.' sam lay in the gulch, heaving for oxygen. It was quiet, and then, with a lazy puff, the earth just behind him erupted in a scuffle of dirt and broken stone. Something stung him in the neck, some fragment.
Oh Lord, he thought.
Then, a full second later, the pop of the report lazily reached his ears, as the sound took its sweet time following on the bullet.
Oh Lord, Lord, he thought.
He could hear the train. It was getting closer and he was but a hundred yards from the track. But he knew he had to stay until the very last second, calculate it just perfect, and get up and run helter skelter like some sort of Crazylegs Hirsch to catch the train, climb aboard, and drop out of sight from the bullets. He knew he had a chance, at least a small one, but he didn't like that run, over the rough ground, trying to read the speed of the train and match his own speed, worried about stumps and potholes and stones, with those boys up there whacking away at him, just desperate to get close to him and pancake him with their sticks again.
Whop!
This one lit up about an inch from his face and filled his eyes with dust.
It enraged him.
Caught. Trapped. Stuck.
It occurred to him: I will die here and nobody will ever pay, and Earl will die, and for what, justice denied the heirs of a rich Chicago man who happened to leave money to a Negro who had worked for him.
It seemed so unfair, but then he counseled himself that life wasn't fair and that things happened as they happened, and you never knew what you were getting into.
He got ready to make his run. earl came upon them from the side, and they were so intent on shooting they did not hear him, as they had forgotten their own dogs in the excitement. He had lost blood and was no longer quick, but he was determined.
As he rushed at the deputy, the boy heard him and spun, but too late, and Earl knocked into him as he rose, pulling the rifle from his hands.
As he got it, he rose and hurled it at the other boy, who was now bringing his rifle to bear. But the thrown weapon crashed into the boy, knocking him backward.
Earl rushed to him as he rose. The boy absurdly raised his fists in classic fighting style, as if a boxing match were about to commence.
There wasn't a lick of fear on his face, just pure meanness. He looked about nineteen.
Earl hammered him hard in the jaw and he went down, but then the other boy was on him, trying to drive him to earth with one arm and both legs, while pummeling him in the kidneys with the other. Earl twisted and shucked and got the boy off him, slipped and rose as the boy fired a good punch with his left fist that tattooed Earl in the jaw.
'Haw!' shouted the boy with glee, then spit a brown goober of ' off into the woods and closed in, fists rotating crazily as he tried to line up a good shot, squinting as he hunted the angle.
Earl took two ineffectual blows on the shoulder, ducked a roundhouse, then dropped the boy with a right to the point of the jaw that would have him sipping meals through a straw for a month.
Both boys were down.
Earl gathered up the two rifles, quickly cranked the levers to empty each one, and threw each empty gun as far as he could.
He stood and waved. It was too far to yell, but Sam saw him, rose and returned the wave. Earl made a get- going gesture, as if flinging an imaginary football that far distance, meaning to communicate the idea that the train was almost there, the train, the train, and Sam turned.
The huge thing pulled into view as it emerged from the trees, pumping smoke, pulling four boxcars and two flatcars loaded with farm machinery.
Earl turned to the boys. One was awake, nursing a busted jaw.
'Sorry about the dogs, but they didn't give me no choice. Now you stay put or I will beat on you some more.'
The boy had no interest in further fighting, and so Earl turned just in time to see Sam clamber aboard the train.
He knew he'd never make it, but he had to try.
He began to dash down the slope, and the train slowed, because it had to climb a bit here, and he thought he just might be all right, and then he heard the barking. sam rode for an hour, unmoving. He lay among chained pieces of equipment, the vibration of the track rattling upward, making his head buzz. No one came for him, no one inspected the train, there was no train detective; it was just him, alone, on the bed of the flatcar, between a thresher and what might have been a combine, each a brand spanking new example of Mccormick's finest machines and speaking of hopes for the bright future.
Sam felt nothing. There was no joy available for him. He had not seen Earl. He did not know what had happened to Earl. Had Earl made the train? He doubted it. The last time he had seen Earl, Earl had been up the slope, waving him onward, and he'd turned and pulled himself toward the track.
The train thundered along. It was immense. You never appreciated from afar how big they were. Worse, it was terrifying, a contraption that vibrated the very planet as it crossed its surface, vast and deadly, and as Sam pulled near to it, he became aware of the hugeness of its wheels as they glistened and sliced along the track. Helpfully, a little ladder hung off the rear of the flatcar, and he hoisted himself up it, banging a knee on something hard, experiencing a moment of horror when it felt that he was slipping off. But then he had it, he was up, and he clambered desperately for cover and fell between the chained machines and lay there, terrified.
When it occurred to him to look for Earl, he picked himself up and peered through the spokes of the machine. But it was too late. The train had passed beyond the timbered-out zone and was now in close, dense trees. He could see nothing but piney woods a few feet back from the tracks, and whatever secrets they concealed they would not surrender.
His mind was in a fog. He had not expected an ordeal so piercing this late in life, after having survived the craziness of the war and having at last found his place in the world. It was as if he couldn't wrap his mind about
