Two bent to him swiftly and rolled him over. He felt his arms being pinned behind his back and the cuffs coming on.
'Git me them leg irons, too. This fella's a kicker, you can double bet on that!'
The leg irons were yanked tight around Earl's ankles.
'There, he ain't goin' nowheres now, no sir.'
The young deputies sat back from their work, then rolled Earl over.
'Who are you, Mister?' the sheriff asked.
'I, uh?'
Earl could not recall the name on his phony driver's license.
'Hah? Who are you, goddammit, when I speak to you, you damn well better answer me right smart, you whelp.'
'His name's Jack Bogash,' yelled a deputy, who'd evidently found Earl's wallet off to the side, 'and he's another goddamned Arkansas fella.'
'Ain't that something? You Arkansas fellas seem to stick together, don't you? Ain't you just the fanciest things, y'all? You come down to rescue that old?'
'Sir, sir!' screamed Earl, 'I don't know what y'all are talking about.
Please don't hit me no more. I'm bleeding plenty bad. I need a doctor.
Please, sir, oh God, I will bleed to death I don't get a doctor.'
'You will be okay. You may lose some blood, but if you can't lose no blood, you oughtn't to be playing rough. And that is not nothing to do with your problem. You have a much worse problem, and that problem is me.'
This was the sheriff, screaming in his face.
'Sir, my name is Jack Bogash. I am an unemployed truck driver trying to get a hunting camp going. I came down here ' I heard there was un leased land about, with lots of whitetail. I meant to lease the rights, build a cottage, and see to bringing some Hot Springs or Little Rock high rollers down here for the season. That's all there is to it.'
'Son, we done chased you twenty miles. You burned down a coupla buildings, co shed a guard, kilt three dogs, beat the Jesus out of two strong young men and run us a merry old time.'
'Wasn't me, sir. I swear to you. Was them other fellas.'
'Other fellas?'
'Yes, sir. I's set up camp about two mile off. Looking for deer sign.
Hoping to learn the land, figure on where to build my stands. These two fellas come running out of the piney woods with some story about blackies chasing them for some hellfire reason. They offered me cash money to help ' git to the tracks. I admit now it don't make much sense, but they offered me money. The old boy talked a blue streak, he did, and before I knowed it, he'd talked me into helping. Don't recollect now why I done it, but he was a persuasive son-of-a-bitch, I will say. He done twisted up his ankle, so I helped him move along, sort of a human crutch. Don't know what happened to that other fella.
When I got the old man to the track, I was headed out when them dogs done hit me. That's every true word.' 'He's lying,' said Opic. 'I seen him shoot the dog. I seen him take a shot at me. He jumped Opic and me, and he out-boxed us both and put us both out without busting sweat, like some sort of champion. He's a lying bastard, and he's dangerous as hell.
He's playing scared now, but he's just figuring on how to kill us all, you can bet. He's a goddamn gangster.'
'I think he's a red. I think he's a red sent down here to rile up the niggers.'
'I think he's one of them FBI boys, sniffing around. Looking for trouble.'
'Sheriff, best thing is, you just string him up.'
'Please, please, fellas. I didn't do nothing. Young man, I swear to you wasn't me hurt your dogs and took a shot at you. That was that other feller, the one still loose. I don't hardly know how to shoot a gun at all. I done some boxing once, that's the only thing, and if I hit you it was because you had a gun and was fixing to shoot at me, that's all.
What choice did I have?'
'You say you are leasing hunting properties. That would make you a hunter, and unless I miss my bet, them are hunting boots you're wearing.
But you don't know how to shoot a gun? Yet someone shot three dogs moving fast. That would be this other missing fella, who left no tracks or scent for the dogs to track. Then at your age, you outbox two strong strapping young fellows, but you are just an Arkansas truck driver without a job. Mister, your story got more holes than a piece of angel food cake.'
'He's a goddamned plenty dangerous man.'
'I've had enough. Sir, you are too much for us to handle. Boys, take him to the tree, that's all. I will be done with these Arkansas people for good and all.'
It took an hour, but they knew exactly where they were headed; Earl realized they had been there before. It was a hanging tree. He guessed if they caught a runaway out here, that's where he went. Or if someone talked against them in the town, that's where he went. These boys didn't like the shooting close up, they couldn't stand the look of a man's skull all bashed in by a.45 and blown out on the other side.
The hanging tree killed easy and bloodless.
'Sheriff, I'm telling you?'
'You shut up now, Mister. I don't want your words confusing these boys.
You keep your mouth shut or I'll have Pepper do some work with his knife on your tongue, and that'll shut you up right and proper.
You'll have to meet your maker without no tongue.'
'I'll do that right now, Sheriff, you want. That's what we do to a dog killer down here in Mississippi. You kill a dog, you got to pay. Dogs is valuable, and them three was like my brothers.'
The convoy marched on through the pines, and Earl tried to lag, but rifle muzzles prodding him urgently kept a spring in his step, and the blood oozing from the many dog bites wouldn't let him relax.
Eventually, the group found a path, which speeded matters up considerably, and then they encountered a hill. Up there, at last, was one of the rogue oaks that this piney woods somehow allowed to grow, a stout tree with a limb heavy enough to support a man's full weight, a task for which no pine could be counted on.
It was barren and windswept, as such places inevitably are, and no pine would grow close to the old oak, which was barkless and crooked like a broken bone, climbing twisted into the blue sky.
'Okay, boys. You know what to do.'
'You should make him dig his grave,' said Opic, 'so's we don't have to.'
'Yes, let's put a goddamn three-foot shovel in the hands of a man that capable, and see which of us he kills with it and if he can git all of us before we get him. I swear, boy, you don't think a lick before you speak your mind.'
'Sheriff, this ain't right,' Earl said. 'I ain't done nothing. I just helped two boys say they was running from a mob of colored.'
'That's another thing. You ever hear of white boys running from niggers?
If you actually heard that story, which I doubt, and you were so stupid to believe it, then you are getting your neck stretched for being a dumb bunny, too blame ugly stupid to live. But more likely you think we're the dumb bunnies who'd believe such a crock of sawdust.
Now, I think you're some kind of hero type, down here to rescue that old goat. Hired by his family, maybe, for cash money. I hope you spent it already. You paid the goddamned price for it, and see what being a hero does for a fella in Mississippi?'
The rope went over the limb, and was then looped by one of the young fellas he had outfought around his neck, and pulled tight. Of course there was no horse for them to drive out from under him, and nothing for him to fall from; he'd die, not by the merciful snap of a neck giving way to gravity, but slowly, pulled aloft by strong stupid boys, to asphyxiate slowly, twitching, twisting, shitting, pissing, gagging.
Yet Earl was not particularly frightened now, at the last. He and death were old friends, and as a professional man killer for the Marine Corps he had sent that old gentleman many a customer in his time. He had known it would come for him, sooner or later, and now he faced it, as before, the way a predator does?without much fear, with
