Lyin' Like a Dog, The Yankee Doctor, The Danged Swamp! 3-Volume set

by Richard Mason

  “Okay, get your scrawny ass moving, and damn it, hurry.”

  Well, if you’ve ever had to plow your way through a whole forest of blackberry bushes, you know it takes long time.

  “Oh, for God’s sakes! We gotta go through that,” said Len.

  “Uh, well, we could go back in the swamp and circle around, but it’d take a whole lot longer.”

  “Come on Len, a few little blackberry stickers ain’t gonna hurt ya,” said Sam.

  I turned my head and smiled as I ducked down under the first big clump of vines and Sam plowed in right behind me. After about 10 minutes, when we were almost in the middle of the biggest bunch of vines, Sam began to swear that he was gonna kill me if it was the last thing he did. Heck, I wondered if getting them all stuck up was such a good idea. It took almost an hour to cross the field because Sam and Len stayed tangled up in blackberry vines with their hands and legs raked by the thorns.

  We finally reached the other side of the field, and for the first time since I’d been kidnapped, I took a close look at them. The blackberry scratches, mosquito bites, red bug bites, mule kicks, snake bites, and ticks bites ran together. They were the two most miserable men I’d ever seen, and now they were really mad.

  “Look at my arms and legs,” said Len, “We’ve gotta get out of these woods! I’m itching all over, and I’m scratched up something terrible!”

  “Kid!” Sam yelled, “we’ve had it! You have one damn hour to get us to those railroad tracks and then, that’s it for you!

  “Sam, I promise, we don’t have far to go.”

  “I shoulda kilt you in the barn yesterday!”

  While we’d been crossing the blackberry patch I’d been thinking of some way to escape, and I had a plan.

  “This way! It’s just across the next ridge, but we gotta cross the creek to get there.”

  I knew of a place where a big cypress log had fallen across the creek, and it was right below a bluff with some real thick woods and a big cotton field. As we’d walked through the woods that morning, I’d tugged at the rope tied around my neck until it loosened enough to where I could slip out of it. This was my plan: I’d decided that when we crossed the creek, walking on the cypress log, I’d yank the rope and make Sam fall off the log. Maybe that would give me enough time to slip the rope off and run into the woods, but before we had gone another hundred yards I heard them hounds.

  “Hoooo! Hoooo!”

  The bloodhounds had picked up our trail, and they were baying at the top of their lungs.

  “Damn! Len, listen! Hear them dogs! We better start moving a lot faster, or they’s gonna be on us!”

  Sam was right. The dogs and posse sound real close, and I thought about trying to escape, but Sam yanked the rope, and yelled, “Run, kid, or I’ll kill you right here on the spot.”

  “I’m runnin’! I’m runnin’!

  We started trying to run for the creek and the cypress log, but we were so danged tired that the posse and dogs were catching up. Then I heard a shout.

  “There they are! Get ’um boys!” It was a whoop from the posse. I looked back, and there were at least a dozen men led by three bloodhounds coming through the open woods at a trot. They couldn’t be more than 200 yards away. I tried to slow down, but Sam ran up and slapped me across the back with the rope and yelled, “Damn it, boy, if you don’t start running faster, I swear I’ll kill you right here!” I picked up the rope and started running as fast as I could.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop or I’ll shoot!” yelled the state trooper leading the posse.

  Boom! Boom!

  Two shots and then everyone started to shoot. I could hear bullets tearing though the trees above our heads. I guess they could see me, and they were afraid to shoot directly at the escapees.

  “Run! Run! Run!” screamed Len. I could see Flat Creek and the cypress log dead ahead. We were still at least 75 yards ahead of the posse when we reached the creek.

  “The creek’s too deep,” I yelled. “We have to cross on the log!”

  “Okay, kid, get going and hurry!”

  We were just about to start across the log when the first dog tore out from the woods not 50 yards away with the a trooper right behind him. I looked back just as he loosed all three dogs.

  “Get ’em! Get ’em, boys!—Stop or I’ll shoot!”

  “The hounds is comin’ Sam! They gonna get us!”

  Three big bloodhounds started for us and, my gosh, I’ve never heard such a racket. I was nearly dying I was so scared.

  “Hurry up, kid, get across the log! Get moving!” Sam yelled, slapping me with the rope.

  I gotta do something. This is my only chance. As we started across the log, I pulled the first knot of the double knot loose from my neck and then jerked the rope as hard as I could. Sam was right over the middle of the creek when I yanked the rope, and as the rope jerked he started to fall.

  “Damn you, kid! Take this, you little bastard!” As he started to fall, he let out a string of curse words and pointed the gun right at me.

  Boom!

  I heard a deafening sound and felt a sharp pain in my side about the time Sam hit the water.

  “Oh! Oh! Ahaaa!” I put my hand on my side. It was wet and bloody.

  “Help! I’ve been shot!” I screamed, and toppled off the log.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Wounded and Trapped

  Dang! You’ll never believe in a million, million years how scared I was when that sorry Sam pointed that gun at me and then—when he shot—I thought I was dead as a doornail, a goner, shot like some old squirrel. Boy, when I felt that bullet hit me I yelled like nothing you’ve ever heard in your whole, entire life. And when I felt blood a-dripping down my side I screamed again, and I forgot about untying the knot and escaping. Before I could do anything the rope went tight and Sam yanked me in the water. I figured since I could flop around and move my arms, I wasn’t dead, and sure enough I’d only been grazed, but it hurt like heck.

  “Ohooo! My side! Help! Help! I’ve been shot! Somebody help me!”

  But the posse was too far away and before they could get to me, Sam gave the rope a yank.

  “Come on, kid! Get out of this damn creek!” The posse and the bloodhounds were running toward us, but he managed to drag me up the bank before they could get there.

  “Help! Help!” I was screaming out to the posse as I reached the creek bank.

  “Stop! Stop! Stop or we’re gonna shoot!” The posse was closing in, and the dogs were almost to Len.

  “Damn it, kid, get moving! Run!” We sprinted toward the little ridge beside the creek bank.

  “Keep moving, kid! They ain’t got us yet! Len! Get moving! Them dogs is ’bout on you. They gonna chew your ass up!”

  “You on the creek bank, stop or we’ll shoot!” Len looked around, jumped up on the log, and started across. Then I heard someone yell, “Shoot him!”

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Before Len could cross the creek, a shot hit him in the leg, and he tumbled back on the ground beside the log. He looked at Sam, who was running and pulling me up the little ridge beside the creek.

  “Oh, God! I’m hit! Sam! Help me! Ahaaaaaaa! The dogs! The dogs!” As Sam and I climbed the little ridge, we looked back in time to see Len, who was screaming and clutching the back of his leg, try to get away from the first dog. He didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. The first big bloodhound leaped right on top of him, sinking his teeth into Lens’s back.

  “Ahaaaaa! Oooh! Oh! Get ’em off me! Help! Help! Ahaaaaaa! Ahaaaaaaa!”

  Now, the second and third dogs reached Len. One of them had Len’s arm, and the other latched onto his leg. Len was screaming and rolling on the ground, and me and Sam was still trying to climb the little ridge which was slick from leaves and mud.

  “Run or I’ll break your neck, kid! Get up this bank! Quick!”

  “Stop! You on the ridge!”

  Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!

  They was
shooting up in the trees to keep from hitting me so Sam just kept on yanking me along.

  “Run! Run faster, kid, or I’ll kill you right here,” yelled Sam as he dragged me the final yards up the ridge. “Damn it! Don’t stop now! They’re right behind us!” He started running across the field, pulling me behind him.

  Then Sam spotted an old cotton house right in the middle of the field.

  “Come on, kid, run for the house! They’re coming over the ridge!”

  “Get inside! Quick!” We made it to the front door of the old cotton house just as the posse reached the top of the bluff. The old cotton house hadn’t been used in years. It was built out of trimmed whole logs, but cracks between the logs were so wide you could see out. Spider webs were everywhere, and on most of the rafters and windowsills big red wasps had built large nests. Since it was early fall, the young wasps which had hatched out during the summer were still in the nests, and boy they was all just a-buzzing, and I knew it wasn’t gonna take much to have a bunch of them get after us.

  But then I saw it. Wow, I ain’t never in my whole, entire life seen a wasp nest that big. It was right over the window where we were crouching, and the wasps had made it where it was hooked to the top of the sill. Dang, there were hundreds, maybe thousands, of big red wasps on it, and their wings were a-buzzing. It wasn’t gonna take much for them to come after us. I’m not the smartest kid around, but I know enough to keep from getting stung, so I crouched down on the floor against the wall, knowing if I stayed completely still, them wasps wouldn’t get me.

  “That’s a good place for you, kid! If you as much as move toward that door, I’ll break your scrawny little neck!”

  “Yes sir.”

  I looked through a crack between the logs, and I could see the posse lining up down the fence row.

  Come on guys, come get this sorry son-of-a-gun.

  “Okay men! Let’s go!” yelled the state trooper who was in charge of the posse.

  Sam looked through one of the cracks between the logs, and then yelled out the window, “You ain’t gettin’ me! Take that!”

  Boom! Boom! Boom!

  Sam shot a bunch of times out the window in the general direction of the posse, and one of his shots hit a man who grabbed his arm and yelled, “Ahaaa! I’m hit! He shot me!”

  The big convict ducked down below the windowsill to reload, and I flattened out on the floor like a pancake.

  “Posse! Fire!” yelled the trooper.

  Oh, my good Lord in heaven above, in all my ever-born days I’ve never heard anything like that. And was I scared? Well, you bet you’ve ever-loving soul, I was so scared I hugged the floor like I was trying to be a board. A hail of buckshot and bullets hit the window frame where Sam had been standing and it busted the wood, sent glass a-flying and even ripped off the boards holding the windowsill up. Then I looked up. The huge red wasp nest that had been attached to the windowsill, was just sailing across the room, and there weren’t a wasp on it.

  “Uh, oh.” I pressed my face to the floor and the last thing I saw before I put my head down was this huge wave of reds wasps heading our way. Well, that stupid Sam was still jumping around the window yelling, shooting and screaming. I sneaked a peak.

  “Oh, my God!” I looked up just as that cloud of red wasps roared through the dust heading right for Sam’s head. I froze on the floor holding my breath. The first wave of red wasps went straight for his head, and before he could even move, they were in his hair and stuck to his face. Sam didn’t even see them until they began to sting.

  “Ahaa! Ahaa! My God! My God! Wasps! Wasps! Get ’em off me! Get ’em off me! Damn! Damn! Damn it!” (’Course he said some other stuff that I could never repeat because my momma would have my hide if she heard me.)

  Well, Sam did exactly what you’re not supposed to do when wasps get after you. He was fighting them. He’d slap off one, but four would take its place. The air was filled with buzzing wasps, because not only did the wasps from the windowsill nest get after him, but all the shooting had the other wasps from the ceiling joining in the fight, and it was the most God-awful thing you’ve ever seen in you whole life, as Sam danced around, slapping and cursing, but, shoot, he was fighting a losing battle ’cause he was outnumbered about 5,000 to one, and every time he’d knock off one, a bunch would takes its place.

  Well, for quite a while all you could hear was the sound of slapping and cursing as Sam tried to stop the wasps from stinging him. The more he yelled and slapped at them, the madder them wasps got, and if I hadn’t been so scared I’d have laughed, but shoot, lying there on the floor with a crazy convict getting stung all to heck, and with him waving a gun around, wasn’t really a good time to laugh. The wasps finally ran out of stingers, and Sam stood there and rubbed the welts that covered his face.

  “Oh! Oh! Oh!” he was moaning. His eyes were almost swollen shut.

  “Oh, my God! They has stung me all over!” Then he looked down at me. I was still huddled on the floor. Wasps had been all around me, but not one of them had stung me.

  “Kid, all of this stuff is your fault! The damn snakes, the mule kicking me, and now these stinking wasps. Them wasps might not have stung you, but you ain’t making it out of here alive, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  Sam grabbed the rope and pulled me across the room to another window away from the wasps.

  “Ahaaa! Stop! Stop! Sam, please, my neck is cut!”

  Sam looked out the window and yelled to the posse.

  “You better back off!”

  After firing the first bunch of shots, the posse had pulled back to the tree line, and they were tending to the wounded man. A state police officer stepped out of the woods into the field and called out, “You in there! Come out with your hands up!"

  Sam yelled back out the window, “I have a kid in here, and if you keep shooting I’m gonna kill him!”

  He yanked my rope and put me in front of the window long enough for everyone to see me. Sam pulled me back out of the window and sneered at me, “Sit down, kid. They don’t know I’m gonna kill you no matter what.”

  Sam then yelled out the window to the posse, “You saw the kid, didn’t you? Well, if you don’t line up me a car and let me out of here, I’m gonna kill ’em!”

  “The Arkansas State Police don’t make no deals with criminals,” the state trooper shouted back.

  Sam was mad now, and he was gritting his teeth as he shook his head.

  “Damn! They better listen up!” he muttered to himself.

  “Sam, they’re gonna kill you. Why don’t you don’t give up?”

  “Oh yeah, sure, that would save your scrawny little ass wouldn’t it? Well, you’re out of luck kid. They gonna hafta kill me right here. If I give up, then they’ll be some cooked-up trial, and before you can turn around, they’ll be strapping me to old Sparky. No sir, you little bastard! They might get me, but I’m damn shor gonna take you with me!”

  I sank back against the log wall of the cotton house so scared I could hardly breathe.

  Then Sam started yelling out the window again and threatened all kinda stuff, but the state trooper just kept saying no. Sam looked over at me, nodded his head like he’d thought of something, and then shot his pistol into the floor. I was wearing a white, thin pullover short-sleeved shirt, and the shirt had blood on it where the bullet had grazed me.

  “Come here, kid!” He yanked me over to the window. Then he fired a shot into the floor.

  “Stand up, and let ’um get a good look at you!” Sam pushed me in front of the window as he yelled out to the posse.

  “You bastards! Look at this kid! I want a car put at the end of this cotton field, and if you don’t do it, I am gonna shoot him again and again until I kill him.”

  I looked out through a crack between the logs, and I saw Daddy talking with the state trooper. He was waving his hands, and I could tell he was talking about getting me out alive. In a few minutes, the state police officer yelled back through his megaphone: “We�
�re trying to get approval to give you a car. It may take awhile to get the okay and get the car here.”

  Sam stuck his head out the window and yelled back to the state trooper, “You have one hour, and then I’m gonna shoot the kid again!”

  It had almost been an hour when the negotiations started again.

  “You in there!” yelled the state trooper. “The car is here! Let the boy go, and we’ll let you drive off!”

  “I’m not that stupid!” Sam screamed. “I’m keeping the kid with me until I drive off.”

  The state trooper went back to the posse, and in a few minutes he stepped out again.

  “Okay, let the boy go when you are in the car and before the car starts to move.”

  Sam smiled. He sneered at me and strutted over to the window.

  “Listen to me!” He yelled. “If no one is following me, I’ll push the kid out of the car and drive off. If I so much as see anyone move toward that car, I’ll blow this kid’s brains all over this damn cotton field!”

  He looked over and whispered to me, “Yeah, I’m gonna push you out of the car all right, but you’re gonna have a bullet through your skinny head by the time you hit the ground. You’ve caused Jim to get kilt by that snake, poor Len has been chewed up and shot, and I’ve been kicked by a mule, eat up by mosquitoes, and almost been stung to death, just because of you! Kid, you’ve got about five minutes to live!”

  In a few minutes the state police officer called out, “Proceed out of the cotton house. The car is at the end of the field.”

  We got up and started to the door, and when Sam opened the door we could see an old black Ford sitting on the edge of the field about a hundred yards away.

  “Wait a minute, kid. I ain’t about to let you get out of this barn on the end of a rope. If you’re 9 feet in front of me, they’ll shoot me in a minute. Come here!” Sam reached down, grabbed me around the waist, and pulled me against him.

  Sam was a big man and since I don’t weigh much, he didn’t have any trouble pulling and carrying me. The pistol was in his left hand with the barrel right against my head. He stopped in the doorway and yelled to the posse, “Listen up! Stand back and give me room! If anyone does anything or fires a shot, I’ll blow this kid’s head off!”