“Why don’t you just ask him, Verne?”

“Where’s the fun?” Miller said. “Besides, you think he would talk that easily?”

“He’s going to scream.”

“Let him scream.”

“What if he gets killed?”

“He won’t get killed,” Miller said. “Whoever heard of a hog killing a man?”

“I have,” Harvey said. “You know, I grew up on a farm.”

“You don’t say.”

“I still have a farm,” Harvey said. “Just what do you know about me, Verne?”

“I know enough.”

Boss Shannon was wearing his finest pair of Union overalls with high-laced boots and an almost clean undershirt. He’d taken a plug of tobacco from a tin in the kitchen and was sucking and spitting as they followed a hog path down along the barbed-wire fence. Pigs wallowed and grunted in a mud enclosure, and nearby the men found a rambling cage of wire and barn wood where a huge hog looked into the lantern light with tiny red eyes.

“What do you call him?”

“ Hoover,” Boss Shannon said, spitting. “Armon named him. Ain’t that a hoot? Hoover. Don’t he look just like him?”

“You called him Armon there.”

“See?” Boss said. “I’m trying.”

“I wish he’d come down and see us,” Miller said. “We could have a drink. He might like some whiskey we brought from Kansas City. He could play organ for us. I wonder if he knows ‘We’re In the Money’?”

“I’ll tell him, but he can’t leave the house much on account of his wife’s condition. ’Sides, he only plays church music.”

“They have some company?”

“No, sir,” Boss said. “Alone, besides that ole hound. Yep, just Armon and his bride. And like I said, that dog.”

Miller drew a.45 automatic from his belt and said, “Take your clothes off, Boss.”

“You boys always joking,” the old man said with a smile.

“He ain’t joking,” Harvey said.

“Come on, now. Y’all lost your senses. I don’t have no money.”

“We don’t want money,” Miller said.

“What do you want?”

“For you to drop your drawers and crawl in the slop with ole Hoover there,” Miller said. “Come on. Let’s go.”

“You boys lost your mind. I just finished telling you that hog has something wrong with its faculties. He could right kill me.”

Miller squeezed off a round at Boss’s feet, and the man jumped like an impromptu reel had started up. Harvey laughed and turned his head so Boss couldn’t see the smile and think they didn’t mean serious business.

“Socks and underwear, too.”

“I ain’t goin’ in the cage with a hungry hog with my pecker freed.”

Miller fired off another round. And Boss danced a jig till he wore nothing but his T-shirt, like it was a long flour-sack dress. Harvey slid back the lock on the cage and waved his hand, a doorman at the finest speak in the city. “Your party awaits.”

“You two crooked sonsabitches. Want to see me cornholed by a filthy swine. That’s a sickness. The plagues will come on you tenfold. You know it.”

Harvey slid back the bolt. He got the cigar going again to a glowing red tip. He checked the time.

“How long?” Miller asked.

“I’ll say ten minutes.”

“I’ll say five or less.”

“How much?”

“Hundred dollars.”

“This some kind of sport!” Boss said. “Goddamn you both to hell in your underbritches.”

There was a guttural snort, red eyes in the passing beam of the kerosene lantern. Light scattered from Boss Shannon’s hand down into the mud and muck and pig shit before a high squeal sounded that the men took for the animal but would later figure out was only Boss.

Miller only had to ask once, “Just what have George and Kit gotten themselves into, and how can we get a slice?”

KATHRYN BOARDED THE TRAIN IN MUSKOGEE AFTER TAKING another line from Denison, Texas, and waiting it out for the Sooner Limited. The observation car had filled with a half dozen drunk businessmen with loose neckties and five o’clock shadows and two sour-faced old women who shook their heads at each other as the men told one another off-color jokes and freely exchanged bottles wrapped in brown paper bags. “This fella has a trained dog he gives twenty cents that will go to the corner for a newspaper and a bucket of beer. Well, one day he doesn’t have change and sends the dog away with five whole dollars. Some time passes, and the dog doesn’t come back, so he goes lookin’. He finds the rascal in a back alley really sticking his business to a mongrel bitch. ‘I’m surprised at you,’ the man says. ‘You’ve never acted like this before.’ And the dog says, ‘I never had the money before.’ ” She stayed there through two stops, not spotting Kirkpatrick and thinking maybe he’d begged off on the plan, but then she decided to walk through the passenger cars trailing behind them, crowded with church and civic groups from Houston, Waco, and Dallas, headed to the big city of Chicago and the big Fair. One group had a little ragtag band with them, and for some reason they launched into “You’ve Got to Be a Football Hero,” and they thought their antics hilarious as a few of the boys tossed a ball in the center aisle, nearly sending Kathryn off her feet. But she recovered and scowled, readjusting her little black hat and veil, and finding the final vestibule where, through the glass, she could make out two figures sitting on stools and watching the night pass.

She opened the sliding door, and the older of the men stood, offering her a seat.

She said thank you, but she wanted to stretch her legs.

Kathryn reached into her purse, grabbed her little cigarette case and lighter, and had a bit of difficulty in the wind. The men didn’t talk, just watched the snaking tracks, wheels groaning and scraping under them until the path righted again and they headed due north, the hard earth and parched farms flickering past. The night was as clear as could be, and the stars looked like a million winking diamonds.

“Where you men headed?” she asked.

“ Kansas City,” said the younger man, who hadn’t offered his seat.

The older man wore a cowboy hat and smoked a pipe. He got off his seat again and removed his hat. “ Chicago,” he said.

“Not traveling together?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. “Just passing the time with a friendly drink.”

“Would you like some?” asked the other man, and he got to his feet, using the rail for support. He seemed a bit nervous and a little drunk. But she as hell recognized him as Mr. E. E. Kirkpatrick of Tom Slick Enterprises. Two Gladstone bags lay side by side.

She turned her head and said no thank you, stepping back from the platform into shadow. The sound and vibration of the train coming up into her feet made her knees a bit weak. There was something about the old man that she didn’t trust or like, and, when the train stopped in Arcadia, he got up to stretch, looking across to Kirkpatrick, who shook his head. The old man wore wire-framed cheaters and a gun on his hip. He was old but had the look of the law written across his wide face.

She told the men good night and crawled off onto the platform, looking for the number George had scrawled on a matchbook from the Blackstone Hotel… If there was any cause, any cause at all, call them at this telephone number. She checked her watch and prayed there was time for a meet in Tulsa.

“THIS IS WHERE MR. SLICK DRILLED HIS FIRST WELL,” E. E. Kirkpatrick said as the Sooner pulled into the town of Tryon The big locomotive hissed and shuttered in rest while folks got on and off in the early morning. The porter brought Jones a cup of coffee as Kirkpatrick drained the rest of the little flask and then reached into his hip pocket for a spare. “Yes, sir. That was back in ’05.”

“You don’t say.”

“I wasn’t with him then,” Kirkpatrick said, taking a sizable swallow, still trying to calm his nerves. “But I know Mr. Slick had some trouble getting leases. Bought space up in the local paper and even joined the Masonic lodge. But he said Tryon people were the most stubborn folks he’d ever met, and he’d had to pull up stakes before they knew he meant business.”