“Told me what?” the sheriff said, in a cold, level voice, bearing upon the other a gaze cold and level, the pencilled message in his hand. “What did you tell me when?” The other looked at the sheriff, outraged, desperate, frayed almost to endurance’s limit; looking at him, the deputy thought,
‘If he don’t get that reward, he will just die.’
His mouth was open though voiceless as he glared at the sheriff with a kind of bated and unbelieving amaze. “And I done told you, too,” the sheriff said, in his bleak, quiet voice, “if you don’t like the way I am running this, you can wait back in town.
There’s a good place there for you to wait in.
Cool, where you won’t stay so heated up like out here in the sun.
Ain’t I told you, now?
Talk up.”
The other closed his mouth.
He looked away, as though with a tremendous effort; as though with a tremendous effort he said “Yes” in a dry, suffocated voice.
The sheriff turned heavily, crumpling the message.
“You try to keep that from slipping your mind again, then,” he said. “If you got any mind to even slip on you.” They were ringed about with quiet, interested faces in the early sunlight. “About which I got the Lord’s own doubts, if you or anybody else wants to know.” Some one guffawed, once. “Shet up that noise,” the sheriff said. “Let’s get going.
Get them dogs started, Bufe.”
The dogs were cast, still on leash.
They struck immediately.
The trail was good, easily followed because of the dew.
The fugitive had apparently made no effort whatever to hide it.
They could even see the prints of his knees and hands where he had knelt to drink from a spring.
“I never yet knew a murderer that had more sense than that about the folks that would chase him,” the deputy said.
“But this durn fool don’t even suspect that we might use dogs.”
“We been putting dogs on him once a day ever since Sunday,” the sheriff said. “And we ain’t caught him yet.”
“Them were cold trails.
We ain’t had a good hot trail until today.
But he’s made his mistake at last.
We’ll get him today.
Before noon, maybe.”
“I’ll wait and see, I reckon,” the sheriff said.
“You’ll see,” the deputy said. “This trail is running straight as a railroad.
I could follow it, myself almost.
Look here. You can even see his footprints.
The durn fool ain’t even got enough sense to get into the road, in the dust, where other folks have walked and where the dogs can’t scent him.
Them dogs will find the end of them footprints before ten o’clock.” Which the dogs did.
Presently the trail bent sharply at right angles.
They followed it and came onto a road, which they followed behind the lowheaded and eager dogs who, after a short distance, swung to the roadside where a path came down from a cotton house in a nearby field.
They began to bay, milling, tugging, their voices loud, mellow, ringing; whining and surging with excitement.
“Why, the durn fool!” the deputy said. “He set down here and rested: here’s his footmarks: them same rubber heels.
He ain’t a mile ahead right now!
Come on, boys!” They went on, the leashes taut, the dogs baying, the men moving now at a trot.
The sheriff turned to the unshaven man.
“Now’s your chance to run ahead and catch him and get that thousand dollars,” he said. “Why don’t you do it?”
The man did not answer; none of them had much breath for talking, particularly when after about a mile the dogs, still straining and baying, turned from the road and followed a path which went quartering up a hill and into a corn field.
Here they stopped baying, but if anything their eagerness seemed to increase; the men were running now.
Beyond the headtall corn was a negro cabin.
“He’s in there,” the sheriff said, drawing his pistol. “Watch yourselves now, boys.
He’ll have a gun now.”
It was done with finesse and skill: the house surrounded by concealed men with drawn pistols, and the sheriff, followed by the deputy, getting himself for all his bulk swiftly and smartly flat against the cabin wall, out of range of any window.
Still flat to the wall he ran around the corner and kicked open the door and sprang, pistol first, into the cabin.
It contained a negro child.
The child was stark naked and it sat in the cold ashes on the hearth, eating something.
It was apparently alone, though an instant later a woman appeared in an inner door, her mouth open, in the act of dropping an iron skillet.
She was wearing a pair of man’s shoes, which a member of the posse identified as having belonged to the fugitive.