Pale Horse Coming (11 page)

Finally Pepper said, “
Go!
” and the six took off like nags from a gate, yelping their excitement as they gobbled up the Samness of the track, and plunged, muscles working, jowls slobbering, toward the woods.

“Oh, they got it rich,” Pepper said. “Watch them pups hunt. They are hunters and they got locked in on that ol’ boy. Going to bring in the meat.”

The dogs plunged ahead, almost in formation, so strong was the Sam-smell, and for just a second the sheriff allowed himself a whisper of pleasure.

They had it so strong. They were so sure. It was going to be easy.

But then the pack seemed to explode. Each dog picked a different direction. One raced into brambles, another circled back around, two more began barking at a tree, and the last two simply stood stock-still and began to whimper. They’d stopped before they’d even got going.

“What’s happening? They lose it?”

“Goddamn,” said old Pepper. “Goddamn him, that goddamned tricky bastard.”

“What happened?”

“He done laid a false scent. He brings the dogs here where he’s smeared up ever-thing with Arkansas scent. He must have had some clothes or something, and he riled up a big scent trap here, and my pups is all messed up in their heads. It ain’t that there’s no scent, it’s that there’s too goddamned many scents.”

The sheriff felt the frustration rising in him like a column of steam, pressure increasing, heat rising, pain swelling.

“Goddamn him! Goddamn him all to hell.”

“That goddamn lawyer is smart,” said Opie Brown, one of the younger fellows.

“Lawyer nothing. Some other bird’s in on this one, don’t you see. He been watching us and thinking this thing through a while. Who else set that fire last night, God himself?”

“No, sir.”

“Pepper, what we do?”

“Well, sir, got to start over. Got to run a perimeter until my pups can find the true scent, then we be off.”

The sheriff knew this would take hours: he and his party and the dogs inscribing a large, slow circle around the compound until one of the dogs came up with a Sam-smell unaffiliated with this riot of Sam-smell here.

Then the hunt would begin in earnest.

“We’ll get him, Sheriff,” Opie cried. “Goddamn, I know we will!”

T
HEY
ran out of loops of rope too early.

“Goddammit,” said Earl.

“What?”

“We’re ahead of schedule.”

It was still dark in the woods. Around them loomed the shapes of trees rearing up, which men with undisciplined imaginations might have seen as monsters assaulting them, or foreshadowings of impending doom. But Sam didn’t have enough imagination to let run wild, and Earl was too locked into the absolutely necessary. Though a flicker of dawn showed behind them, the sun was still more than half an hour away.

“That’s good, isn’t it?” said Sam, breathing hard.

“Nah, it’s bad. Means we just sit here till it’s light enough to take a compass reading, goddammit.”

“You can’t—”

“No, sir. Can’t see far enough to set a compass reading, shoot an azimuth. Got to sit here till I can make out a landmark half a mile ahead.”

“We’re hours ahead of them, and they can’t bring any horses in here.”

“You’d be surprised how hard men can move when they’re motivated. And that sheriff’s got plenty of motivation. He’s been humiliated in his own little world, and he don’t want that getting out, ’cause everything he has is based on the idea that he is the toughest, smartest, meanest sumbitch in the territory. Seen it in my father, same goddamn mule-pride craziness. He will come after us both barrels, and now we’re stuck just sitting here for a half an hour. How you holding up?”

“Ah. Okay. I’ve got a blister on my foot.”

“Got bandages and some aspirin at my goods cache, but that’s still a few miles ahead. That’ll be some help.”

“Good. I didn’t wear the right shoes for a hike.”

They both looked at Sam’s leather brogues from Brooks Brothers in St. Louis, a smooth, beautiful shoe in rich mahogany, a successful man’s shoe, and so out of place in the woods it was almost laughable.

“You just keep on pumping,” Earl said. “You do that, I’ll have you home to your kids in two days.”

“The hell with my kids. I just want to see Connie Longacre.”

“She is some gal—”

“Earl, an experience like this, gets a man to thinking, and I—”

“Save it, Mr. Sam. Not for now. Save your breath. You’ll need every little bitty piece of it before this here thing is run out.”

In twenty minutes Earl found just enough light to shoot his azimuth to a terrain feature, and they were off again, and an hour after that found Earl’s goods cached out of sight behind a log, in some high, dry grass.

Earl unscrewed his canteen and Sam took a good long draft. Earl got clean, dry socks out of his pack, and a bandage, and Sam took off his shoes, threw away the socks, bandaged his foot and pulled on the dry socks, which, being thicker, fit not quite so well in the tight, sodden shoes.

“That’s okay,” said Earl, “they’ll loosen, you’ll be fine.”

Then he reached further into his pack and pulled out a .45 automatic, which had been worked on a few years back: it had a larger than usual rear sight welded to the receiver and some kind of shelf on the safety.

“Here. This is for you.”

“Earl, I can’t accept that. I cannot kill to get away. That invalidates anything I have ever stood for, which is the law.”

“Mr. Sam,” said Earl, as he reached further into the dry grass to pull out his Winchester ’95 carbine, “do you see much in the way of
law
out here? We are on our own, and no law’s going to help us.”

“Earl, I know you to be a moral man, a decent man, a good man. They say you are the best policeman in the state, and I know in the war you done fine work for our side. But I must say it amazes me how quickly and well you convert to the other side. It’s as if your great gifts for action, well-conceived thought, for capability beyond all men, could go either way. I hope your boy grows up to be the straight and narrow you, and if you have another son, I hope he doesn’t grow up to walk the crooked, violent road.”

“Are you ready?” Earl said, returning the untaken pistol to his pack.

“Earl, you cannot kill with that rifle. Kill a man and you have crossed over.”

“I will not kill except to save you, Mr. Sam. Except a dog. I may have to kill a goddamned dog or two. That I will not enjoy, but if it has to happen, it will.”

And that was when they heard, far off and scratchy, the sound of the hounds.

“My, my,” said Earl. “I do believe they are still in the hunt.”

T
HE
dogs had something.

“The pups got ’em. Yes sir, got one of ’em treed.”

The pitch of their barking changed. It was not the unfocused yipping of the tracking animals who made noise to keep themselves amused and because it was their way. It was focused, ferocious, and intense.

As they came into a clearing, they all saw them gathered.

“Yes sir, by God, got a one of ’em treed, you can see, ha, goin’ to git that sumbitch, yes, sir, oh, them wunnerful doggies!” cried Pepper, his throat phlegmy with glee.

The hounds circled a large pine, three on point, the other two trying to leap up the trunk, snarling fiercely. Only the big blue was apart, as if not sanctioning this development.

“Okay, fellows,” yelled the sheriff, “now you git around ’em and be care—”

One shot sent a Winchester bullet blowing through the clusters of pine needles, and then they all opened up, shot after shot after shot laying into the tree, puffing it with green haze as the bullets ripped through. Dust and pulverized bark rose from the tree, a limb hit precisely tumbled off under its own weight.

“
Cease fire, goddammit!
” yelled Sheriff Leon, and one by one the men stopped firing.

“Take cover, and keep the tree covered, goddammit. Just wait and see what you bagged.”

The men scurried to cover, and the dogs, who had scattered at the first reports, reassembled under the tree and recommenced trying to leap and nip at it.

The sheriff waited another three minutes, then slowly drew his Smith .38/44 Heavy-Duty.

“Y’all cover me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Opie, you don’t be shootin’ me, you hear?”

“Yes, sir,” replied Opie.

The sheriff slid on the angle toward the tree, and as a veteran of several gun battles—he’d worked on the New Orleans police force before being cashiered for corruption back in 1932, at which time he’d started his new career as a prison guard at Thebes, which led ultimately to this position—he knew what he was doing. Keeping the gun out before him aggressively, his finger caressing the trigger, he at last ducked under the skirt of boughs and pointed upward to see what he could see.

“Well,” he finally said, when he emerged, “why’n’t you boys come see what you have killed.”

The deputies raced to the tree.

About ten feet up, hanging on a sheared-off limb and surrounded by the pock and puncture marks of too many rifle bullets, they could see two black socks hanging limply.

“You killed that lawyer’s socks,” said the sheriff. “Pity he ain’t in them.”

“T
HEY
are truly a disciplined bunch,” said Sam, when a mile or so behind them the firing eventually stopped. “You were right. They attacked my socks. They were fancy socks, too. I don’t suppose I’ll ever get them back.”

“You never know,” said Earl. “These backwoods fellows, they don’t like to waste a thing. Probably someone named Billy or Ray Ed or something is trying ’em on right now. You could come down in ten years or so when everybody’s forgot all about this, and probably find them on his feet on Sunday at the meeting.”

The pines showed no particular tendency toward abatement, though now and then they’d come to a logged out area, which upset Earl; he would not let them pass through the open land, because a rifleman who got there before they cleared its bare spaces might get a good, clean shot off, and one was all it took.

“On the other hand,” Sam had argued, “we can make better time, because the ground is less cluttered with these goddamned vines and weeds and things. We can advance our lead and—”

“But they can make better time too. They’re following our smell. We go ’round, they go ’round. That’s it. Either that, or you figure out a way to stop smelling. When you get that one done, you let me know.”

“Should have known I couldn’t outthink Earl Swagger on some tactics issue,” said Sam.

“I got a bagful of tricks,” said Earl. “Only goddamned thing I know at all in this world.”

But he hadn’t sprung his best trick yet. He’d been looking for just such an opportunity, which demanded the congruence of stout trees, not pines, but the occasional oaks that sprung up helter-skelter in the woods. He needed a dead one, with a nice spike of splintered trunk atop it.

And at last, on the far side of a gentle hill, he found it.

“Okay,” he said. “You take a rest.”

“Earl,” said Sam, his face ashine with sweat, “you know those boys can’t be that far behind.”

“I got a little something here. This one’s real pretty.”

Earl knelt and reached into his pack. He came out with a big coil of rope. He diddled with it, until at last he’d fashioned a cowboy’s lariat with its expandable loop just perfect for bringing down running steers from close-by horseback.

“We used to see them Western-type movies in the Pacific when we wasn’t killin’ Japs. You know, with that feller John Wayne, you seen any of them?”

“Yes, Earl, of course I’ve seen Westerns. But what on earth—”

“Oh, you just watch me now.”

Earl swung the looped rope overhead, building up a nice rhythm and swoop, then let the thing fly and it soared the thirty feet or so to the spike and missed.

“Goddamn,” he barked.

“I’ll go—”

“No. You stay where you are.”

Instead of retrieval, Earl snapped the rope back slowly so that it wouldn’t catch on anything. Then he began again, flinging the rope across and—

This time he got it right, and the loop settled over the spiked trunk and slipped down.

“There we go.”

With that he went to another oak, this one alive, pulled himself up a bit, got to the second branch, pulled the rope tight but not too tight, so that it had some spring to it, and secured it by a peculiar knot to the trunk.

He scurried down.

“Now you come on.”

“What are you up to, Earl, this is the craziest—”

“You just come with me.”

They forged ahead another hundred yards.

“That’s fine. That’s right good. Now come on.”

They backtracked to the tree.

“Now sir, you git up that tree and you hand-over-hand across to the other tree.”

“Earl, I don’t see—”

“It’s the scent. It’s low to the ground. Them dogs can only smell what’s on the goddamned ground. That’s why they got to keep their noses in the mud. So we going across, we ain’t touching no ground, and when we get across, we head off from over there. They go right on by and a hundred yards up so where we stopped, they run out of trail. It’ll take ’em an hour of scouting to find us again.”

Sam looked at Earl.

“Sir,” he finally said, “if you weren’t on the side of the law, you would make a very cunning criminal. You have it in your bones, no doubt about it.”

“G
OD
DAMM
IT!”
screamed the sheriff.

“Damn,” said Pepper. “Ain’t seen a thing like it never. Trail just stops. Did they fly out by spaceship?”

“Maybe it was one of them heliochopters,” a deputy said. “Seen it in the newsreel. Them things can land straight down.”

“Don’t be no fool, Skeeter,” said the sheriff. “Ain’t no helicopters in Thebes County. They backtracked and someplace back they managed to jump trail. Don’t know how they done it, but this fellow running this thing, he’s as smart as they come.”