‘He won’t do it.
He can’t do it.
I know he can’t find him, can’t get it, bring it back.
He called no names, thought no names.
It seemed to him now that they were all just shapes like chessmen—the negro, the sheriff, the money, all—unpredictable and without reason moved here and there by an Opponent who could read his moves before he made them and who created spontaneous rules which he and not the Opponent, must follow.
He was for the time being even beyond despair as he turned from the rails and entered the underbrush near the crest of the grade.
He moved now without haste, gauging his distance as though there were nothing else in the world or in his life at least, save that.
He chose his place and sat down, hidden from the track but where he himself could see it.
‘Only I know he won’t do it,’ he thinks. ‘I don’t even expect it.
If I was to see him coming back with the money in his hand, I would not believe it.
It wouldn’t be for me.
I would know that.
I would know that it was a mistake.
I would say to him ‘You go on.
You are looking for somebody else beside me.
You ain’t looking for Lucas Burch.
No, sir, Lucas Burch don’t deserve that money, that reward.
He never done nothing to get it.
No, sir.’He begins to laugh, squatting, motionless, his spent face bent, laughing.
‘Yes, sir.
All Lucas Burch wanted was justice.
Just justice.
Not that he told, them bastards the murderer’s name and where to find him only they wouldn’t try.
They never tried because they would have had to give Lucas Burch the money.
Justice.’
Then he says aloud, in a harsh, tearful voice:
“Justice.
That was all.
Just my rights.
And them bastards with their little tin stars, all sworn everyone of them on oath, to protect a American citizen.” He says it harshly, almost crying with rage and despair and fatigue: “I be dog if it ain’t enough to make a man turn downright bowlsheyvick.”
Thus he hears no sound at all until Byron speaks directly behind him:
“Get up onto your feet.”
It does not last long.
Byron knew that it was not going to.
But he did not hesitate.
He just crept up until he could see the other, where he stopped, looking at the crouching and unwarned figure.
‘You’re bigger than me,’ Byron thought. ‘But I don’t care.
You’ve had every other advantage of me.
And I don’t care about that neither.
You’ve done throwed away twice inside of nine months what I ain’t had in thirty-five years.
And now I’m going to get the hell beat out of me and I don’t care about that, neither.’
It does not last long.
Brown, whirling, takes advantage of his astonishment even.
He did not believe that any man, catching his enemy sitting, would give him a chance to get on his feet, even if the enemy were not the larger of the two.
He would not have done it himself.
And the fact that the smaller man did do it when he would not have, was worse than insult: it was ridicule.
So he fought with even a more savage fury than he would have if Byron had sprung upon his back without warning: with the blind and desperate valor of a starved and cornered rat he fought.
It lasted less than two minutes.
Then Byron was lying quietly among the broken and trampled undergrowth, bleeding quietly about the face, hearing the underbrush crashing on, ceasing, fading into silence.
Then he is alone.