by Ronald Kelly
"Me and Josh, we've been out delivering firewood most of the day," Clay told him. He and his son sat around the potbellied stove, mugs of hot coffee cradled in their frostbitten hands. "Thought we'd stop by the store here and bum a cup off Woody before we headed home."
Woody poured the sheriff a mug full, and the lawman accepted it eagerly. He removed his hat, setting it on the front counter. His huge face was pinched with the pink flush of bitter cold, and his eyes were troubled. "Clay... I've got some bad news for you, and I don't know exactly how to say it."
"No need to hold out, Taylor," Clay assured him. "Tell me what's on your mind." The tobacco farmer felt a cold dread creep into him, the same sensation he had felt upon the news of Johnny's death. What's happened now? his mind raced. Is it Maudie and the kids? Has something happened to them? He prepared himself for the worst, but even then he was not entirely prepared for what the constable had to say next.
"Bully Hanson and Claude Darnell are on the loose. They're out there right now somewhere, running from the law."
Clay was stunned. "But how? I thought they were in custody in Nashville. Their execution is only a couple of weeks from now. How'd they get out of the state pen?"
"They were never there," Sheriff White growled in disgust. He settled into a cane-backed chair, knowing he had a long explanation to give. "You see, due to overcrowding in the state penitentiary, they stuck Bully and Claude over in Brushy Mountain Prison for safekeeping. I reckon I should've told you that from the very start, but I didn't see any need to. Anyway, early this morning two state troopers took them into custody and started for Nashville. They were to deliver them to the state pen this evening to wait out their stay till the first of January. But something happened along the way. They never showed up.
"Nobody knew anything was wrong until a motorist spotted two men lying facedown in the snow an hour or so ago. It was the troopers. The way we figure it, the patrol car slid off the highway into a snow bank. The troopers were a couple of green rookies, shouldn't have ever been put in charge of men as desperate as convicted killers in the first place. Well, they got the bright idea of putting Bully and Claude to good use. They removed their cuffs and leg irons and had them out there pushing the car out of the ditch. You can imagine what happened next. Once they got the thing back on the road, Bully and Claude overpowered the two, killed them with their own weapons, and dumped their bodies in a gully. We figure those bastards have been on the road for nearly six hours now… a helluva head start in this nasty weather."
"Surely you don't think they'll head back to Bedloe County," Woody Sadler scoffed. "They'd be damned fools to come back here again."
The sheriff shrugged. "We gotta be ready for that possibility. Frankly, I think they're well over the Kentucky line by now. But you never know. Bully had such a hate in him, no telling what he might do."
Clay sat near the stove, quietly listening to the discussion between shopkeeper and lawman. The awful dread that had gripped him before still had a hold on him, even more now. He also experienced an underlying fear, one that strangely enough did not seem to be wholly his own. It was as if he were feeling someone else's mortal terror as well … someone very close to him.
Abruptly, he was out of his chair, the coffee cup slipping from his grasp, spilling hot java upon the dusty floorboards. Josh stared at his father in sudden surprise, as did Sheriff White and Woody Sadler.
"What's the matter, Pappy?"
Clay grabbed his hat. His face was pale and rigid. "We've gotta get out to the house right fast. I got a bad feeling something's wrong there. Oh, Lord, I know that something's wrong!"
"I'll follow you over there," the Bedloe County constable offered. He had not seen his friend so shaken since that sweltering summer day in Brewer's curing barn.
"I'm coming, too." Woody took a shotgun from beneath the counter, checked its loads, and then extinguished the kerosene lamps.
They all moved into the frigid darkness as one; Clay and Josh headed for their Ford pickup, while the other two climbed into White's patrol car. The ominous clouds and their snowfall had moved eastward, leaving a clear, moonlit sky. Clayburn looked over his shoulder as he backed the truck out onto the snowy stretch of Old Newsome Road. His Parker ten gauge was hanging in a rack in the truck's rear window.
Lord, let it be a wild goose chase! he prayed beneath his breath. But deep down inside, he knew that it wasn't. He could still hear Bully's threat of vengeance, could still see the murderous fury in his cold, gray eyes.
By the light of a coal oil lamp, Maudie busied herself with her sewing. She glanced up every so often to eye the cuckoo clock in the outer hallway. The ornamental hands showed the time was well past eight o'clock. Worry creased her face, but she tried not to let it show. Polly was spending the night with one of her girlfriends in town, leaving her alone with Cindy and little Sam.
The children were leafing through the toy pages of the Sears & Roebuck catalogue, picking out which gifts they wished Santa to bring. It was all in fun, of course. Both youngsters knew that things were hard and that there would be no red fire engines or china dolls with frilly lace skirts beneath the tree that year. It hurt Maudie to know that she and Clay could not provide for the wants of their children like some of the folks in town could. The Depression had hit the rural families the hardest, and she knew that some parents would purposely tell their children that Santa was not coming that year, so as not to get their hopes up. Maudie and Clay would not do that, however. They refused to dash their youngsters' Christmas spirit with the harsh reality of poverty. Santa Claus would come that winter as he had the year before, even if only to leave a navel orange and a peppermint stick in each child's stocking.
The veil of uneasiness passed over the woman again like a tangible shadow. She laid her sewing aside on the kitchen table and sat in the glow of the lamp. It was true that Clayburn and Josh had promised to be back home in time for supper, and it was more than two hours past, but she knew that was not what pressed on her mind so heavily. She had felt a strange sensation of foreboding all day, and she had not been the only one either. Cynthia Ann had shown signs of anxiety since awakening that morning. Saying nothing, she had simply stared at the sweeping blanket of snow as it cascaded silently earthward. Maudie had questioned the girl once, asking if there was anything wrong. "I don't know, Mama," the nine-year-old had said quietly. "I don't know yet."
Maudie was getting up from her chair when the rumble of an engine echoed down the road. It grew louder, then sputtered into silence as it stopped out in front of the house. Doors slammed, accompanied by the faint crunch of fresh snow being trodden underfoot.
"It's Pappy and Josh!" piped four-year-old Sam. He jumped from his chair and started for the front door. Maudie grabbed him by the arm, pulling the boy to her before he could reach the hallway.
Cindy also knew that something was wrong. She calmly closed the catalogue and turned the wick of the lamp until the room grew dark. The three waited there in pitch blackness, their labored breathing the only sounds to be heard. That and the steady click of the hall clock's pendulum swinging to and fro.
For a long moment only frigid silence encircled the little farmhouse. Then heavy footfalls sounded on the front porch. They clumped across the breadth of the boarded floor, slowly and purposefully. They were the footsteps of two men, but not the ones of their loved ones. Maudie had listened to Clay's footsteps upon the floor for twenty years, and that was long enough to determine that these sounds belonged to strangers.
A heavy rapping came upon the front door. It rattled the very door in its frame, such was the force of the man's knocking. Maudie backed toward the rear door of the kitchen, the one that led to the enclosed back porch and the yard beyond. Sam accompanied her easily, but Cindy stood frozen to the spot. A great shudder of realization shook her thin body like a spasm, and she gasped in shock.
"I know now, Mama," she whispered softly. "I know who it is now."
The glass pane of the front
door exploded inward as the caller's impatience reached its limit. A gloved hand groped over the jagged sash, locating the skeleton key in the lock. The door swung open with the creak of unoiled hinges. Moonlight flooded the narrow hallway, revealing two dark forms in the garb of policemen. But there was no one there to witness their abrupt entrance. The house was empty.
Maudie and the children moved sluggishly through the heavy snow, twenty-degree weather stinging their exposed skin, cutting through their thin clothing as if they wore nothing. The woman started for the rear of the house, toward the double doors that led down into the root cellar, but Cindy tugged at her hand, stopping her. "That's one of the first places they'll look," she whispered, then led the way across the snowy yard in the direction of the smokehouse.
They could hear the men going through the house, turning things over, searching for frightened souls cowering in the dark. Then the shooting began. Windows winked with the thundering flash of lightning as a shotgun fired a half-dozen times. Buckshot pelted blindly through darkened rooms, rupturing glass panes and tearing faded wallpaper.
But no blood was drawn by the angry assault; no painful screams were uttered.
At least not yet.
"They must be outside," one muttered. The two stalkers stepped out into the backyard, their eyes searching for signs in the moonlit snow. The skinny one turned toward the door of the cellar. However, the big man was cleverer in his tracking. Spotting the profusion of deep tracks leading toward the greywood smokehouse, he laughed loudly. "This is gonna be like shooting quail," Bully said. He dug shells from his coat pocket and began to reload.
"They're coming for us, Mama," Cindy gasped, her breath escaping in small white clouds. "We've gotta get away."
"Where to?" her mother asked. Her voice seemed distant and without emotion. "We've no place to run to. They're gonna kill us, baby. Just like they killed your brother."
"No!" said Cindy. She took her mother by the shoulders and shook her roughly, pulling Maudie from the numbing throes of shock. "It won't be that way. Not if we run. We've gotta get to the woods. Do you hear me, Mama?"
"Yes," Maudie answered. "To the woods." They all three left the rear of the old shack and quickly descended into the wooded hollow. They slid down the steep slope, skirting the leafless trees that lined Green Creek.
When they reached the frozen channel of the small branch, they paused and listened. A great fit of growling and barking erupted from near the henhouse. The protective attack of the family's bluetick hound ended in the deafening boom of a shotgun blast.
"Old Tippy!" cried Sam, tears rolling down his face. "They got Old Tippy!"
Crossing the creek at its narrowest point, they moved onward. "Where are we going, Cindy?" Maudie asked several times. Receiving no answer, she and the boy followed nevertheless.
Cynthia Ann trudged onward through the snow, silently contemplating the murderous nature of the men who hunted them. There was only one place to run to now. And, although Cindy had vowed never to set foot there again, she somehow had known all along that the killing must end where it had first begun.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Clay pulled his truck into the driveway, then doused the headlights. Sheriff White braked to a halt close behind. As they left their vehicles, they paused to study the dark sedan parked at the edge of the road. The constable eyed the license plate in the glow of his flashlight. "Yep, it's that state patrol car, all right."
"Damn!" grated the farmer. He looked toward the house. From where he stood by the mailbox, he could clearly see that the front door stood open, the glass of the pane shattered. "We're too late," he groaned hopelessly. The shotgun sagged heavily in his trembling hands as he proceeded toward the porch with caution.
"Be careful now, Clay," warned the sheriff, starting around the side of the front porch. He held the big flashlight in one hand, his service revolver cocked and ready in the other. "I'll take the back way."
Expecting the worst, Clayburn mounted the low porch and ducked through the open door. The muzzles of the old Parker probed the darkness ahead. He stood there for a moment in the hallway vestibule, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the murky shadows. He could see the moonlit windows of the parlor and his bedroom from where he stood. The glass of the panes had been blown away, the curtains shredded by buckshot. The big chifforobe had been viciously overturned in some horrible fit of rage. The signs of violence chilled Clay to the bone, increasing the awful dread tenfold.
"Stay here for a moment," he told Josh and Woody. He felt his way through the darkened bedroom. Reaching the chest of drawers, Clay rooted through his underwear and found the .45 in the paper sack. Taylor had returned it to him shortly after the murder trial, and there it had remained, hidden and forgotten amid threadbare long johns and woolen socks.
He checked the magazine, then rejoined the others. The Parker was handed to Josh. "I trust you to do the right thing with this, if the need arises."
The boy was flattered by his father's confidence. "You can count on me, Pappy."
There came the crackle of broken glass beneath footsteps farther down the hallway, from where the kitchen was. Their attention and their guns were drawn to the source of the noise. Clay called out, "Who's there?"
"Just me," said Sheriff White. He appeared in the doorway, his gun held muzzle up. "There's something back here you oughta see."
Clay prepared himself for the shock of bad news. "Did you find . . . Maudie and the young'uns?"
"No, I haven't found anyone yet," replied the lawman. "But I have a good idea where they went."
The three joined Taylor on the back porch. A wide rut of deep footprints stretched across the snowy backyard, past the shadowy hulls of the weathered outbuildings. Clay spotted something and ran out to find the still body of Old Tippy. He laid a hand on the dog's bloody carcass and found it lukewarm to the touch. The hound had not been dead for very long. He stared at the profusion of tracks. They faded into the dense darkness of the heavy forest beyond.
"We'll never find 'em out in them woods," voiced Woody Sadler. He peered into the close-grown trees with a scowl on his face.
Suddenly, it came to Clay. He almost grinned at the sheer irony of it all. "I know where they're going," he told them. "Come on. We can get there faster if we drive. I just pray to the good Lord that we get there before they do."
Like frightened animals, Maudie and her children tore through the snow-laden thicket of the old Brewer place. The overgrowth of dead vines and blackberry bramble was like a maze, opening to dark passageways and just as swiftly choking away into dead-end blinds. But Cindy seemed to remember the best way through the thicket, and soon they had broken through, exhausted and breathing great plumes of frozen air.
Maudie caught her wind and stared in horror up at the towering structure of weathered wood before them. It was the old tobacco barn. It appeared even more menacing in the frozen twilight than it had on that hot July day last summer. "I can't go in there, Cindy," she said. "Not in there of all places!"
"We have to, Mama." Cindy tugged on her mother's pudgy hand, but could not budge her. "Listen! They're coming for us."
The sounds of men crashing through the underbrush, cussing in anger, grew nearer with each passing moment.
"Hurry up, Mama!" pleaded the red-haired child. "We've gotta find some place to hide. We gotta go inside the barn!"
"But the door is locked and chained."
"I know a place we can get in," assured her daughter. Finally, Maudie consented and, lifting Sam in her arms, followed Cindy to the western wall of the curing barn. A loose board was swung aside on its nail, and they slipped easily inside.
At first only cold, murky darkness greeted them. But soon their vision adjusted. Narrow spears of moonlight shone through the cracks of the boarded walls, stitching across the earthen floor in zigzag patterns. They could make out the shallow trenches of dark charcoal, the ancient mule plow, and at the far end of the barn, the casket-shaped tool box that had onc
e served as a makeshift tomb for three unfortunate souls.
Maudie was about to speak when they heard voices directly outside.
"We got 'em cornered now. Just as well. I like a good coon hunt, but this damned cold is getting to me." There was a brief hesitation, then Bully's voice sounded again, gruff with irritation. "Well, come on. What're you waiting for?"
Claude's voice was shaky, almost feeble in its reply. "If we're gonna do this, Bully, I don't wanna use this confounded axe again. It's too damned messy. At least give me one of them pistols you took off the state troopers."
Bully laughed mockingly. "Hell, you'd more than likely shoot your own foot off. Let me handle the firearms. You got what you need, so let's go in and do it. You hear me?"
If Claude made any reply, it was much too low for them to detect. There was the crunch of heavy boots in the snow, then the coarse rasping of wood against wood as the two men began to shoulder their way through the narrow opening.
"Over there!" hissed Cindy. They fled as quietly as possible toward the dense shadows at the far end of the barn. Crouching behind the tool chest, they waited. Maudie clamped her hand over Sammy's mouth, stifling the whimper of stark terror that nearly escaped from his lips.
The rustle of clothing sounded in pitch blackness, then the voices resumed. "They're over there."
"Where?"
"Behind the tool box." Bully's voice was almost joyous in its tone. "I can hear them breathing."
"How do you wanna do this?"
Bully thought for a second. "You take the flashlight and flush them out for me." The brittle click-clack of the shotgun pump rang throughout the barn with a crisp note of finality. "I'll be ready to do my part."
Reluctantly, Claude advanced toward the dark hump of the tool box. The beam of the battery-powered light cut a pale yellow swath into dense obscurity. His other hand clutched the hatchet tightly, ready to take a lethal swipe at anyone who started his way.
