A short heavy man stepped into the light.
He carried a new white pick handle.
Casy went on,
“You don’ know what you’re a-doin’.”
The heavy man swung with the pick handle.
Casy dodged down into the swing.
The heavy club crashed into the side of his head with a dull crunch of bone, and Casy fell sideways out of the light.
“Jesus, George. I think you killed him.”
“Put the light on him,” said George. “Serve the son-of-a-bitch right.” The flashlight beam dropped, searched and found Casy’s crushed head.
Tom looked down at the preacher.
The light crossed the heavy man’s legs and the white new pick handle.
Tom leaped silently.
He wrenched the club free.
The first time he knew he had missed and struck a shoulder, but the second time his crushing blow found the head, and as the heavy man sank down, three more blows found his head.
The lights danced about.
There were shouts, the sound of running feet, crashing through brush.
Tom stood over the prostrate man.
And then a club reached his head, a glancing blow.
He felt the stroke like an electric shock.
And then he was running along the stream, bending low.
He heard the splash of footsteps following him.
Suddenly he turned and squirmed up into the brush, deep into a poison-oak thicket.
And he lay still.
The footsteps came near, the light beams glanced along the stream bottom.
Tom wriggled up through the thicket to the top.
He emerged in an orchard.
And still he could hear the calls, the pursuit in the stream bottom.
He bent low and ran over the cultivated earth; the clods slipped and rolled under his feet.
Ahead he saw the bushes that bounded the field, bushes along the edges of an irrigation ditch.
He slipped through the fence, edged in among vines and blackberry bushes. And then he lay still, panting hoarsely.
He felt his numb face and nose.
The nose was crushed, and a trickle of blood dripped from his chin.
He lay still on his stomach until his mind came back.
And then he crawled slowly over the edge of the ditch. He bathed his face in the cool water, tore off the tail of his blue shirt and dipped it and held it against his torn cheek and nose.
The water stung and burned.
The black cloud had crossed the sky, a blob of dark against the stars.
The night was quiet again.
Tom stepped into the water and felt the bottom drop from under his feet.
He threshed the two strokes across the ditch and pulled himself heavily up the other bank.
His clothes clung to him.
He moved and made a slopping noise; his shoes squished.
Then he sat down, took off his shoes and emptied them.
He wrung the bottoms of his trousers, took off his coat and squeezed the water from it.
Along the highway he saw the dancing beams of the flashlights, searching the ditches.
Tom put on his shoes and moved cautiously across the stubble field.
The squishing noise no longer came from his shoes.
He went by instinct toward the other side of the stubble field, and at last he came to the road. Very cautiously he approached the square of houses.
Once a guard, thinking he heard a noise, called,
“Who’s there?”
Tom dropped and froze to the ground, and the flashlight beam passed over him.