“One more man here and we might can do it,” Dupree said, giving Harlins a look.
“Come on, Connie,” Ogg said. “Lend a hand.”
“This is bullshit,” Harlins said. “We need more guys, what we need.” But he propped the two carbines against a large piece of driftwood a few yards away and joined us at the wagon.
He was setting himself and trying to find a proper handhold when Garrison bolted for the weapons.
Harlins started after him but Witliff tripped him down on all fours. Ogg jumped up and Yates tried to grab him but he jerked away and backstepped into me and I punched him hard in the kidney and he grunted and went to his knees.
There was a gunshot and a yowl and I spun around and saw Harlins curled on his side, crying and gripping his thigh with both hands, blood running between his fingers.
Garrison chambered another bullet and stepped over to him. Holding the carbine like a pistol, he put the muzzle up close to Harlins’ temple and said, “Shut me up now, cocksucker.” And shot him. A bright thin cord of blood arced from his head and fell away and that was that.
“Oh Jesus,” Ogg said. He was sitting back on his heels and holding his side, starting horrified at Harlins.
Garrison racked the lever and an empty shell flipped out. He smiled at Ogg and said, “You wanna see Jesus, convict? Off you go.”
The carbine cracked and Ogg flopped over backward with his legs in an awkward twist.
“Well boys,” Garrison said, “it’s nothing but the noose for me now. But if a nigger could run this levee I can too. You all do what you want but I’m gone.”
He turned and started off at a trot and Witliff and Yates hastened after him.
Dupree looked from Wakefield to Chano to me. “No sir,” he said. “I seen many a one try it, me, and seen they all look like after. No, thank you.” He sat down crosslegged and stared off at the river.
I hustled past him, hearing Wakefield and Chano right behind me.
We got a great turn of luck before we’d been on the run an hour—a storm swept in, the kind you don’t usually see till later in the year, full of blasting thunder and snake-tongue lightning and a cold wind that shook the trees and slung the rain sideways to sting our faces and chill us to the balls, and it was in no rush to be done with. Not man nor dog could track us in that weather. We figured they wouldn’t even start the dogs till the rain quit coming down so hard, and we picked up our pace, trying for the biggest lead we could get before they set out after us.
We bore due south, away from the levee, skirting ponds and leaping ditches and vaulting over cattle fences, tearing through cane fields, slogging through swamp muck and splashing through water to our thighs, going by dead reckoning toward a point where the river curved back around to form the prison’s lower border. We ran in single file, Garrison in the lead, Witliff and Yates behind him, then me and Chano, with Wakefield bringing up the rear. Nobody spoke as we went—we couldn’t spare the breath. The only sounds were our ragged panting and our feet sucking through the mud. Every once in a while I’d look back and see Wakefield’s shadowy form falling farther behind.
Then it got so dark we couldn’t see each other anymore except in the intermittent flashes of lightning. When the lightning finally played out and the thunder faded, the only way I could follow Yates was by the sound of him. Wakefield had fallen so far back I couldn’t hear him.
Now and then Garrison brought us to a halt to listen for the dogs and check our bearings by feeling the bark of the trees for the moss on the north side. Each time we stoppd, Wakefield would almost catch up to us, but then we’d be off and running again, and again he’d drop behind.
Sometimes Garrison or Whitliff would slip in the mud or trip on a root, and those of us coming behind would run up on him, everybody stumbling and cursing and pushing off each other and then running again, straining through the blackness like blind men, trying to sense the hole underfoot before we stepped into it, the tree branch hanging low before we hit it with our head. Yates was wheezing hard now and had slowed down so much I kept running into him, so I finally just went around him. Chano stayed right behind me.
The rain kept falling and the wind stayed in our favor, strong and at our backs. I ran in a kind of trance, unaware of anything much beyond the feel of the ground under me and a steady burning in my throat. We came onto the levee so unexpectedly I couldn’t believe we were there. We sprawled on the slope on our backs and let the rain run down our faces into our mouths. Garrison reckoned we’d been on the run at least eight hours. Witliff said it felt like all his life.
Wakefield was no longer with us. When we’d stopped to check our heading a couple of hours earlier, he hadn’t caught up, but we’d heard him splashing in the muck way behind us. Then the last time we’d stopped we hadn’t heard him at all.
The rain had slackened to hardly more than a drizzle and the clouds had thinned out and showed the vague gray hue of the coming dawn. The air was thick and smelled of mud. Judging by the lay of the levee, we reckoned we’d come a lot more to southwestward than due south. It was a wonder we hadn’t missed the levee altogether and ended up in the heart of the swamp. On the other hand, we figured we were already a good four or five miles below Angola’s southern perimeter.
“I tell you, fellers,” Garrison said, “I never did believe God loved me, but I guess that blessed storm was His way of letting me know I was wrong. By sunup tomorrow we’ll be in Red Stick City and trying to make up our minds which whorehouse to visit first.”
I couldn’t help chuckling with the others. Then Chano touched my sleeve and I looked at him and he put a finger to his ear.
For a moment I didn’t know what he meant. And then I heard it. We all did.
Dogs.
Baying in the distance and heading our way.
We ran and ran along the snaking levee, dark river on our left and black swamp to our right. The dogs were louder but still a good ways behind. You could hear that it was more than one pack. Other camps had likely joined in the hunt. About an hour after we first heard the dogs, there were three or four quick gunshots, and after a moment, a last one. I figured that was it for Wakefield.
The eastern sky was looking like smeared copper when Chano made a high sound to get my attention and I looked back and saw that Yates was down. The way he was spread-eagled facedown in the mud it was obvious he was finished. We ran on. Fifteen or twenty minutes later the hounds’ cries went higher and I knew they had him.
We ran and we ran. The sun was above the treetops now and the river was shining the color of rum. We’d gained some distance on the pack when it stopped to deal with Yates, but then the dogs had started coming again and now they sounded no more than a mile behind us.
We went around a long bend in the levee and then Garrison stopped running and leaned over with his carbine across his thighs, huffing like a bellows. Witliff squatted beside him and braced himself on his carbine like he’d run out of sap too.
“Can’t keep up,” Garrison gasped, and motioned for me and Chano to go on. So we did. A minute later Chano looked back and his face went tight and I turned and saw Garrison and Witliff running off the levee and into the swamp.
I snapped to the trick right off—they meant to use us for dog bait. I’d heard about it from Buck. If a man running from the dogs suddenly cut in a different direction, the pack would usually run past the spot where he turned—sometimes fifty yards or more—before they realized they’d lost the trail and turned back around to find it again. The trick was to start running with some other guys and then cut away from them, let them be the bait to keep leading the dogs on. But there were counters to every trick, Buck said, and he’d taught me one in case anybody ever tried to make me the dog bait.
The pack was louder now but still hadn’t come in view around the bend. I beckoned Chano and we ran down the slope and into the trees. It was no trouble to follow their trail over that soft ground, our feet growing large and heavy with mud as we wove through the shadowy pines and cypress, cutting our hands and face on scrub brush and branches, ripping our skunk suits. We hadn’t gone fifty yards when we stumbled onto a blackwater creek, and we dropped on our bellies and lapped at it like dogs. There were no footprints on the other bank, which meant that Garrison and Witliff were running in the creek.
