We hustled after them, keeping to the bank to leave an easy trail. But my trick wouldn’t be worth a damn if they didn’t get out of the water pretty soon and start laying down a track of their own. Twenty yards farther on, they did. Where the creek turned off into the deeper swamp, their new tracks angled out and held on a bearing parallel to the levee. We kept after them, right on top of those footprints.
The pack was now so loud I expected to feel teeth in my ass any second. Then I realized the yelping was coming from my left—they had already overshot the spot where we came down the levee. And then the dogs realized it too and their timbre changed and fell away as they started backtracking. Their cries rose again when they recovered the scent, and they came yowling down the slope.
By then we’d caught sight of Garrison and Witliff. They were thirty yards ahead, slapping aside the brush with the barrels of their carbines as they went. They hadn’t seen us, and we slowed down and moved deeper into the shadows in case they looked back. Garrison kept glancing in the direction of the levee. He must’ve been puzzled by the changing direction of the yapping of the dogs. He had expected to hear them catch us on the levee. That would’ve been the end of any scent for the hounds to follow up there. The hunting party might’ve searched around a little more after that, but they likely would’ve reckoned that the two cons still on the loose had headed into the swamp and would die there and good riddance. Once the party turned back, Garrison and Witliff could’ve cut back up to the levee and pushed on for Baton Rouge.
A neat plan, but I had a neater one—if it worked. The dogs sounded like they were no more than fifty yards behind us. I pointed to a spot up ahead where the ground to our left gave way into the shallow water of a cypress stand. Chano nodded, his eyes enormous. We jumped off the trail and into the shallows and went highstepping and scrabbling into the thick tangles of roots and then hunkered down in the water to our chins. My heart was lunging up into my throat.
They went by not fifteen yards from us—a dark crazed pack of howling beasts. A minute later their cries went even higher and there was a carbine report and then another and a dog was shrieking in pain and then the men’s agonized screams were mingling with the dogs’ wild snarlings. Then the hunting party went hustling by, a dozen men or more with longarms, huffing and cursing and laughing, saying they had the sumbitches, by God.
As soon as they were past us we were up and splashing through the trees and stumbling over roots and the only screaming we heard now was of the wounded dog. There came several gunshots and then only the high baying of the pack and the whooping of the hunters.
When we reached the edge of the swamp and caught sight of the levee we got down on our bellies in the shadowy muckwater to rest and wait for darkness. We stank so high it was a wonder the dogs didn’t smell us from wherever they were—a wonder the men couldn’t smell us. It was the first clear day in nearly two weeks and a pretty one, sunlight showing gently through the dense branches overhead, the sky beyond the trees cloudless and pale blue. I told myself to stay alert, be sharp, it wasn’t over yet, and then fell asleep, though I didn’t know it until I woke to the faint barking of dogs.
Less than a hundred yards north of us the hunting party was back on the levee. The sun was past its meridian. Chano was sleeping on his folded arms, his chin in the water, and I shook him awake and pointed. The dogs were on leashes now, milling and yapping, and the dogboys were loading them onto the wagons. The manhunters carried their rifles slung on their shoulders and were passing bottles around and smoking and their distant laughter rose and fell and then rose again. A pair of convicts in stripes emerged from the trees and started up the slope, carrying a body between them, and then two more cons came behind them with the other one. The bodies looked like they might be naked but I couldn’t be sure from that distance, and I couldn’t tell which was Garrison and which Witliff. I likely would’ve had a hard time telling them apart up close.
Even after they all left we stayed put. We took turns sleeping and keeping watch, listening hard for any searchers that might still be prowling the area. We drank from the water we lay in, waiting for dusk. And when at last the sun was down we got moving.
We kept a fast pace, sometimes jogging, mostly fast-walking. The weather helped to keep us stepping lively—the night was cold enough to show our breath, and our ragged skunk suits weren’t much help against the chill. But at least there wasn’t any wind. Now and then we went down the levee to drink from the river. I’d heard it said that drinking from the Mississippi was like drinking a mix of piss and mud but I didn’t see how the river could be any worse than the swampwater we’d been drinking. I was anyway too tired to care. Every time I lay down to drink, it took a greater effort to get back on my feet. Every muscle ached and my joints felt like they’d rusted. The last couple of times we drank, Chano had to help me back up the levee. I had height and weight on the little bastard but not toughness.
The sky was crammed with stars. The moon rose late and cast the landscape in an eerie sepia glow and deep black shadows. Shortly before dawn the swamp began to give way to pastureland and rail fences and we spied a light about a quarter-mile off the levee and decided to see if we could find something to eat there. We went down the slope and into the pines and soon came to a clearing marked by a narrow road that passed through a scattering of ramshackle houses, some of them no more than tarpaper shacks. Several of them were now showing lamplight at their windows and it wouldn’t be long before the whole hamlet was awake.
A dog started barking somewhere down the road, and then two others, a little closer by. We stood fast in the darkness under a tree, waiting to see if they’d come for us or if somebody would step outside to see what was nettling them. I wondered if Chano was thinking what I was—if he was remembering the talk at Camp M about how people who lived near the levee prayed every day for the chance to shoot a runaway convict and collect the state reward. But the dogs must’ve been penned or not very brave and we didn’t see anybody come out for a look.
The nearest house looked to be one of the better ones, with a front porch and a tin roof, its side window dimly glowing in the shadow of a live oak, its chimney churning bright white smoke in the moonlight. We caught the aroma of something cooking and I went light in the head. Chano nudged me and I nodded and we snuck up to the window in a crouch and stood to one side of it with our backs to the wall. The windowsill was shoulder-high, the sash raised a few inches and letting out that wonderful smell. I sidled over and looked inside.
The kitchen. An oil lamp stood on a table set with three tin plates and forks and cups. The warmth of the black-iron stove carried to the window—and the aroma of ham frying in a skillet next to a steaming pot of coffee. An uncut loaf of bread was warming beside the stove. Chano peeked around me and turned up his palm in question. I was wondering the same thing: where in hell were they? We looked all around but there was still no sign of anybody out and about. The dogs had quit barking, which meant somebody had shut them up, which meant somebody was awake—but I didn’t care, not with the smells of that ham and coffee calling to me. I pushed up gently on the sash and it rose with a tiny creak. I gestured for Chano to give me a boost. He formed a stirrup with his hands and I put my foot in it and he hoisted me. I stepped in through the window and for a long moment stood absolutely still, listening hard but hearing nothing other than the sizzling of the ham.
As I started to tiptoe toward the stove a man stepped into the room with an old single-barrel ten-gauge leveled squarely at my face. An old darkie with thick shoulders and white hair and bloodshot yellow eyes—and no expression on his face except a readiness to kill me if it came to that.
“Move even a little bit I blow off your dumbshit head,” he said. The muzzle looked big as a porthole.
I thought, Ah hell, and put my hands up.
He gave a sidelong look to the window and I glanced over and saw Chano with his hands up, facing somebody I couldn’t see.
“Any more you?” the old man said.
I shook my head. “No sir.”
He ran his eyes over my ragged skunk suit and made a face of disgust. “Don’t like convicts come in my house, stink it all up.”
“Don’t blame you,” I said. I wasn’t close enough to even try snatching for the gun.
“You run that old levee?” he said.
“Tried to.”
“
Jesus, I thought, so damn
A small boy leaned around the door and said, “You gone shoot em, Granddaddy?”
“Hush up, John Adams,” the old man said. “Go get two pair my pants, two my shirts. And a pillowcase.” The boy scooted away.
“There’s tote sacks in that cabinet back you,” the old man said to me. “Get you one.”
