Pale Horse Coming

by Stephen Hunter

  “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.”

  “GODDAMM 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.”

  “Sheriff, ain’t nobody got this far before.”

  The sheriff knew that to be the case. It clouded his brow with darkness. Usually the runners headed the other direction, because for them the river meant freedom; there was something in the Negro head, something ancient and unperturbable, that connected crossing a river with freedom. The sheriff didn’t understand it, but he knew that the colored went east, to the bayou, and because they thought the dogs couldn’t track through water, but the dogs were really good and didn’t lose a scent easy, and the runners left enough about on weeds and vines and wet logs and leaves for the dogs to stay with, and the swamp slowed them down and sometimes killed them, sparing the sheriff and his boys the trouble. Nothing personal: it was just that a running nigger was a guilty nigger, whatever the infraction might be, and a bullet was as easy a solution to the case as time in the Farm, and it meant a good deal less paperwork for everybody.

  But this goddamn white boy had been smart. He’d gone out through the piney woods, which meant he had a compass and was good in the wild, and he’d thought hard about beating the dogs. He’d worked it out real solid.

  No, nobody had gotten that far before.

  “So, we got to circle until we pick up that scent again, is that right?” he demanded.

  “Yes, sir,” said Pepper.

  “Tell you what,” said the sheriff, thinking into the problem. “You put them dogs back on chains. I want two teams of three dogs each. You run one team, Opie’ll run the other. Instead of one big circle, we’ll each take a half. Whichever team picks up the scent first, whether it’s one or t’other, you fire a shot. Then you mark it. You see. You mark it with a handkerchief or something, Opie, you can figure out to do it, right?”

  “Yessir, b’lieve I can,” said Opie.

  “Yes. And the first team goes on after them boys, and the second team cuts cross the circle, finds the mark, and it commences after the first team. That seems like it could save us a mess of time, don’t it?”

  “Yes, it do,” said Pepper. “Sheriff, you one right smart man.”

  “Okay, let’s get her done. I figured out where they’re headed, by the way.”

  “Where, Sheriff?”

  “Track. The Alabama and Great Southern track cuts across the woods another six, seven miles out. So they goin’ to catch a train ride, they think. You boys best catch ’em, you hear? We don’t want nobody gitting out to tell fantastical stories about Thebes County now, do we?”

  “HOW much further, Earl?” said Sam. The ordeal was wearing on the older man. He’d twisted his ankle back there a ways, and now hobbled painfully onward. The going wasn’t easy, for vines and sawtooth clotted the passageways between the trees and palmettos with sharp leaves that cut at them like cutlasses. Worse, every now and then they’d come upon a trail, and the easy passage, beckoning them onward, tempted their spirits away from Earl’s compass plot sorely and broke their hearts when they had to find the discipline to say no to its comely ways.

  “We’re getting close,” said Earl, lying. He knew they weren’t “close,” only “closer.” But no longer did they hear the barking of the dogs, and now it was just the two of them alone in the dark woods.

  “I am running low on steam.”

  “I am, too, Mr. Sam. Neither of us banked on this. But by now them boys is goddamned good and mad, so we’d best keep going. If they catch up to us, there be all kinds of hell to pay.”

  “I’m only thinking we’ve done beat them. That trick of yours buffaloed them good. We could take a rest, maybe.”

  “Mr. Sam, that earned us an hour. But the deputies is younger and stronger and well motivated. They will not be stopping, no sir. They will keep on coming, I guarantee it. Best thing is, don’t think about other stuff. Keep your mind hard.”

  “I suppose you are right on that one. I—oh, shit.”

  “Goddammit,” said Earl.

  Far back, they heard a shot.

  IT was the bitch Lucy who picked it up, and the sheriff’s team, with Opie on the dogs, who got it.

  Lucy began to shiver and whine; she leaped up, her wet tongue licking at Opie.

  “Goddamn mutt,” he said, pushing her back.

  “No, she’s got it,” said the sheriff. “She wants her reward. Opie, give her a kiss.”

  “Ain’t kissing no dog.”

  “Yes you is, Opie. Seen goddamn old Pepper do it. Get to it.”

  As Opie bent and faked love to the squirming, prideful hound, the sheriff turned and drew his Heavy-Duty and fired a shot.

  “Okay, boys,” he said. “Let me tell you how we goin’ do this thang. That track can’t be more than three miles ahead. So now it’s a goddamned race, and I am too much a old man. I will slow you down. Opie, you and Skeeter take off them packs. We will leave the packs here. I just want you with your rifles running after them dogs. The dogs will show the way. They hunt good. They’ll hunt ’em down, you hear? I will wait here for them other fellas. When they arrive, we’ll run them dogs too, and they will follow along right quick, I do believe. But you our best chance. You get to them boys and you shoot ’em dead. I don’t want no confusion here now, you understand. Your job is to bring ’em back dead and not alive, so that no one ask no questions, not now, not never. Got it, fellas?”

  Both men were hunters; both men appreciated the opportunity that had been presented them; both men looked upon it as the greatest of fun.

  “Now you go, dammit. I will wait for t’others.”

  Opie set the hounds free, and they bounded off. Packless, but carrying their Winchesters with the glee of men about to have some fun, the young deputies took up the chase.

  “DOGS,” said Sam. “Oh, Christ, dogs.”

  “Ain’t as many of them,” said Earl. “He done split up his team, and only a few marked us.”

  “Can we make it?”

  “We got to pick up the pace. We can’t tarry. Sorry, Mr. Sam, but it’s going to be a running thing now.”

  “Then,” said Sam, “I will give it my best effort.”

  They accelerated their movements, bucking ahead with more abandon now. Sam did something unprecedented as testament to the seriousness of his situation: he actually loosened his tie.

  “Hope no supreme court justices see you with that tie all reckless like that,” said Earl. “You could git in trouble with your career if that happens.”

  “Don’t you tell a soul now, Earl. This one’s between you and me, and as soon as we catch that train, the tie comes up again. You never can tell who you may run into hoboing on a freight.”

  Earl appreciated that Sam could still joke a bit. When a man’s sense of humor went, it meant he was near going under. In the war, he’d always looked for a chance to make his boys smile at some fool thing or other. It made ’em that much looser and gave ’em, however tiny, just that much more chance.

&
nbsp; The land began an incline, howsoever gentle, and the height worked against them as well. Soon both were bent double, puffing hard, feeling the sweat leak off them, lost in the intensity of the ordeal.

  Earl had plotted onto a lone pine a half mile ahead. They increased their pace, achieving almost a jog, just the steady, easy lope of men at urgent extension, pushing themselves ever onward, trying to ignore the multitude of discomforts that built toward pain as they rushed along, their minds tunneling through everything toward the possibility of escape.

  Earl had pieces of metal scattered through his body, most of it Japanese shrapnel. Now and then a piece worked loose and nudged a nerve or something and sent a searing pain up to his brain. He’d been shot in the war a whole bunch of times, treated roughly by combat as combat will do to a man. He thought he was beyond the rough stuff, and he wasn’t.

  Still, he clung desperately to the rifle. It was an old gun bought secondhand from a retiring trooper, what you call a trunk gun. It rode in the cruiser, wrapped in a blanket, picking up nicks and scratches over the years. But if a trooper ever needed something heavy to plow through the bones of a wounded animal or a barricaded robber, the heavy old Government .30 Model of ’06 bullet would do the trick, and Earl knew he had but a hammer snick to accomplish before he fired the first of five packed in there.

  He hoped he didn’t have to shoot. But he knew if he did, he would. It was his way.

  THEY reached the crest of the hill.

  “Lookie, goddamn,” cried Opie. “Seen ’em. They just ahead.”

  His eyes were good. They’d picked up on a flash of movement a quarter mile down the slope from them, nothing demonstrably human but nevertheless clearly the flash of something moving urgently.

  “Them dogs be on ’em soon,” Skeeter declared. “Tear ’em up real damn good. Then we pop ’em. Like bear huntin’. Hunt bears with dogs. Dogs drive ’em back, tire ’em out, bleed ’em, y’all git close and you can pot yourself a bearskin rug for the winter.”

  “You ain’t never hunted no bears, Opie.”

  “Well, that’s right, goddammit. My people wasn’t bear-hunting people. But that’s how it be done, by Christ, that I know. You ain’t never hunted no bears neither.”

  “There, goddammit,” Skeeter yelled. “Seen ’em too. Let’s git them old boys. Whooooie, goin’ to be fun a-coming!”

  “Fun a-coming!” yelled Opie.

  The two lanky youths gathered themselves heroically, and once again started loping through the pines toward the last view they’d had of the fleeing men.

  The track was easy. The running dogs chewed up the soft pine needles where they galloped, and three of them left a big enough sign for an idiot. On the balls of their feet, Opie and Skeeter danced forward. The prospect of action, of success, of getting home after all this shit lightened their steps and their spirits. Their natural hunter’s exuberance amplified the chemicals in their blood, and they soared ahead.

  SAM stumbled and fell, caught himself, and kneeled, chest heaving, face wet with sweat.

  “Earl, I’m about finished. I think I’m going to have a goddamn heart attack! You go on. You git. You leave me here. You done your best. I just wasn’t up to this goddamn thing.”

  “Mr. Sam—”

  “No, Earl. I formally relieve you of any obligation to me. It’s the right thing. You go on back to Arkansas and raise that boy and—”

  “Mr. Sam, give me your coat.”

  “I—”

  “Your coat. Goddamn, we haven’t much time at all. And that hat too, give me that goddamn thing.”

  “Earl, I—”

  “Goddammit, Sam, do what I say!”

  Sam was stunned that Earl, who understood the elaborate system of deference that underlay Southern society as well as any man, would actually raise his voice at him. It seemed so out of character. One yelled at Negroes or, occasionally, workingmen, women and male children, particularly of the teenaged years, but one never—

  Earl lost all patience with the shocked man and picked him up by the lapels, spinning him, stripping him of his coat. Then he plucked the straw hat.

  “Now your shirt.”

  “My shirt?”

  “Your goddamned shirt!”

  Quickly, Sam shucked the damp garment. Earl quickly shed his hunting coat and extended it to the bare-chested man.

  “Here’s what we do. I will lead them away. It’s your scent them dogs has homed on. I will peel off to the right. You keep going straight to the track. Them boys will be on me. I will try to shuck them a few miles from here, and I will get to the train.”

  “Earl, you don’t even know there’s a train, you have no idea when on earth the train—”

  “It’s due in Hattiesville by six-thirty, which means it ought to be through this part of Greene around four, which gives you fifteen minutes. You think I’d do this goddamn stunt without a train schedule in my pocket? The whole goddamn thing is set up around that freight. Usually six cars, it slows down as it hits grade, and you ought to git aboard easy enough. I once rode from Little Rock all the way to Dago on the bum. Now, goddammit, you have rested enough. Get going.”

  “Earl, I—”

  “Just go, Mr. Sam. I will see you in Arkansas.”

  “Yes, I—”

  “And one last thing. If I don’t make it, you will want to start your program. The governor, the congressman, the police chief, the newspaper joe, all that stuff. Well, I am giving you an order: don’t you do it. If they nab me, one thing’ll keep me alive, and that’s them wondering who the hell I am. If big shots start asking questions, they will shoot me in the head and bury me out here in the piney woods. Do you hear? Do you understand?”

  “Earl, give me a time frame? How long do I wait?”

  But a train whistle sounded far-off, and Earl, rubbing Sam’s sweaty clothes on bushes and against trees, began his maneuver to the right.

  Sam picked himself up, pulling Earl’s coat tight about himself, and was off.

  IT was better now. Earl, alone, spread the Sam scent broadly as he worked his way back. He preferred to be alone. Alone, he could concentrate fully on what he had to do; he didn’t have to pay attention to Sam. Regretfully he tossed his pack and pistol into a hollow log; he couldn’t afford the weight.

  The dogs were loud now. He knew they’d take the bait. That was the way their minds worked. But he had a moment where he wondered if he hadn’t been wiser to have just set up and shot the dogs as they came upon them. But who knew when they’d be here and maybe he’d not have time after shooting them to get to the train himself. No, of the choices, all of them bad, this was the best.

  He worked his way along but just below the crest of what appeared to be a low hill. On the other side of the crest, the land would drop away to the tracks, possibly half a mile ahead. That would be fine. Sam should have plenty of time. He checked his watch and knew that he had enough time now to get himself to the train. He would just dump Sam’s clothes and dip over the crest.

  He wadded them into a union of pine trunk and bough and laughed at the ruckus the dogs would set up when they reached this spot. Then he ducked over the ridge, ready for his own descent. It occurred to him suddenly: They were going to make it. It was—

  At the crest, he made a terrifying discovery.

  The trees had been timbered all the way down the slope. There was no cover at all. And he could see Sam, alone, amid a forest of stumps, picking his painful way down to the tracks, now plainly visible.

  He knew what that meant.

  A rifleman on the crest would have a clear shot at Sam all the way down. If he was any good at all, he’d have Sam dead three hundred yards before he got to the track.

  Earl squatted to gather his breath for a second. It wasn’t even a dilemma. Even though he was close enough to the limit of the timbering, and had at this moment technically escaped, and had only a last downhill plunge before intercepting the train, it never occurred to him to go.

  Instead, he dro
pped back on the other side of the crest, and headed toward his pursuers.

  Now he was hunting them.

  SAM felt naked. He knew this wasn’t good, but the nearest timber was a half mile in either direction, and if he raced for it he’d miss the train. He hoped and prayed the boys behind wouldn’t get a good shot at him, and he stumbled ahead, feeling so helpless. He had no shirt, but only Earl’s hunting coat, a waxy canvas thing, and his shoes were sodden, and his ankle still throbbed from the twist, and the breath came in hard, dry spurts, as if he hadn’t enough room in his throat to get the proper right amount of air into his lungs.

  He could see the track before him, glinting in the sun like a piece of ribbon on the floor, but at the same time bobbing in his perspective because of the spastic quality of his breathing and his downward lurching. The sun was hot. He seemed to be floating through thickets of moths or butterflies. Now and then a pine stump jabbed or poked at his already torn and battered legs, but the slope helped him immensely, as did his momentum, as did the prospect of gravity.

  Suddenly he heard a shot.

  THE first dog bounded into view. It was a hound, sleek and young, a beautiful animal, gobbling up Sam’s scent as it plunged ahead.

  It saw Earl, and it didn’t pause a second, and went from tracking dog to attacking dog, flying at Earl with a fury no man could muster, its fangs bared, a guttural growl of pure insanity screaming from its throat. The eyes were red and narrowed as it leaped, and Earl took it from the hip, one shot, the bullet piercing its throat, blowing its brains out at an upward angle as it passed through the not-so-thick skull, and the dog, so beautiful, was also so dead. It collapsed in a heap.

  A bullet kicked up a gout of dirt near him, a geyser of high-powered energy. One of the deputies had fired.

  Earl threw his lever, jacked a shell out, and took up a kneeling position halfway behind a tree. The stupid boy ran ahead to see if he had bagged something and Earl put the sight blade in the center of his chest, and almost squeezed the trigger, but instead let it drop and fired a round at the running boy’s feet, throwing up his own geyser. The boy dropped, both himself and his rifle, and if the other were aiming, he took a dive when he saw the closeness of the round.