“You sonsabitches.”

“Still with us,” Harvey said, flicking the cigarette nub end over end into the dust. “Praise the Lord.”

They all heard the motor before they saw the dust and were silent, studying the automobile making its way down the long, winding country road. The shithouse door squeaked open, and Boss Shannon peeked his balding white head out, sniffing the air like a scared animal, checking to see what all the calm was about.

Harvey tossed him a pack of cigarettes and then his lighter.

“Go make some chicken.”

“Is that the sheriff?” Boss Shannon asked.

“No,” Harvey said. “That’s ‘Mad Dog’ Underhill and Jim Clark. And those two crazy bastards are gonna watch you, just like you and Potatoes watched Mr. Urschel. Now, let’s talk about George and Kathryn again.”

“She left her furs,” Boss said.

“Boss!” the old woman said.

“And her jewelry,” Boss said.

“Boss!”

“Well, it’s true. I know she’s your kinfolk, but I ain’t dangling out my bits and pieces for the likes of them.”

The car, a big green Lincoln, rolled to a stop, and Wilbur Underhill stepped from the driver’s seat and onto the running board. The white suit and straw boater looked cartoonish on the skeletal man with the big eyes and farmer’s features.

“What’d they say?” Underhill asked. Jim Clark pulled himself from the passenger door and didn’t take two paces before he whipped it on out and started to relieve himself on some skittering chickens.

“Miss Ora is gonna make us a big fried-chicken dinner and then-” Harvey said.

“And then what?” Underhill said, squinting into the sun.

“Then we gonna have a little come-to-Jesus meeting.”

“Did he just come out the shitter?” Underhill asked.

“That he did,” Harvey Bailey said.

“Well, hell. Open the door and let it air out. I needed a commode since the state line.”

THE THREE-CAR CARAVAN MADE ITS WAY NORTH WITH DETECTIVES from Dallas and Fort Worth, three government agents besides Doc White, Joe Lackey, Colvin, and Jones. One of the boys-a kid named Bryce-was promised to be a real Oklahoma sharpshooter, and, when Jones had doubted him, he’d tossed a poker chip into the air and blasted the center from it. Jones had nodded, said he’ll do just fine, and they’d loaded up a little later-three hours later than Jones would’ve liked-and now, with the sun falling across the hills, he thought about the layout of the Shannon place and having to make their way through the gate and around the house without causing some newspapermen sympathy.

“You know they have dogs,” Jones said.

He and Doc White sat in the rear of the sedan. Detective Ed Weatherford drove.

“You told me.”

“Bulldogs,” Jones said.

“I never in my life saw a trick like that kid pulled today.”

“He shouldn’t shoot so near the hotel.”

“You called ’im out, Buster.”

“Yeah. I guess I did. You see the way he pulled out the poker chip? He’d been saving it, just for this type of occasion.”

“They all aren’t college boys with neatly parted hair,” White said.

“You’re one to talk about hair.”

“Hell with you.”

Jones watched the hills smooth down to nubs and the miles pass by so low and flat you could spot a grasshopper at a hundred feet. And he didn’t like it a bit. He checked his watch, knowing the sun would be down long before they made Paradise. The sun looked like the end of a fire poker, melting across the plains. The scrub brush and mesquite flew past the window.

“Colvin tell you Urschel was flying down?” White asked.

“No.”

“He wants to go with us.”

“Hell.”

“He said he’d furnish his own weapon. A 16-gauge he uses to hunt ducks.”

“Why’d Colvin tell him?”

“He thought he’d put his mind at some ease,” Doc White said, rolling a cigarette on his trouser leg and sealing it with his mouth. “Said he’d been a mite nervous since he come back.”

“He can’t go.”

“That’s what I told him you’d say.”

“Last time I checked, Mr. Urschel didn’t sign my checks.”

“You don’t like the timing.”

“I don’t think we’ll fire a shot.”

“But if we do?”

Jones didn’t answer, just checked his timepiece and reached for the machine gun at his feet. “Let’s hope they throw poker chips at us.”

“You know how to shoot that thing?”

“I do.”

“Just seems you were against using such a device.”

“I was thinking on that. Thinking about the Indians who didn’t pick up an iron and tried to fight with the bow and arrow.”

“A.45 ain’t a bow and arrow.”

“Might as well be.”

Jones pulled the gold watch from his vest again and wound the stem.

“Would you quit checking that thing?” White said.

“Stop the machine,” Jones said.

Weatherford slowed the lead automobile, and Jones crawled out, stretching his legs and putting on his hat. He waited for the other men to join him on the long ribbon of highway. He took his time as they gathered, filling his pipe bowl with cherry tobacco and finding a stick along a gully. The sun was half down on the long plain and cast a long, hot wave of shimmering light on the hard-packed earth and through the dead tree branches.

Jones got down on one knee in front of the men and drew a box for the Shannon place, their barn, a pigpen, and a handful of outbuildings. He noted the direction of Armon Shannon’s place and where the trouble would come from if there was trouble.

“And they have dogs,” he said. “I don’t know how many. But if you got to shoot ’em, shoot ’em. But I’d prefer we keep quiet and not tip our hand.”

“How far?” Agent Colvin asked.

Jones looked up at the young man and then at the setting sun. He could feel the heat on his face as he smoked and studied their situation a bit, coming back to that long canyon so many years ago. The dead horses, and Rangers exposed, with only a few boulders for cover.

“Boys, we’ve got about twenty-six miles to go over slow roads,” Jones said. “We might reach the place before dark, but even if we did I doubt we’d be able to finish the job before it got black. There’s only one road into it, and that’s as plain as the devil. We can’t creep up on the place because it’s so flat you can see an ant a mile off. The only way to get in there is just head straight in, and for that we need daylight. I’ve done enough shooting in my time not to want to go barging into a strange place where the odds are all on the other side. My judgment is to back off, go down to Fort Worth, and get a little sleep, then hit this place at sunrise.”

21

They waited the next morning nearly ninety minutes for Sheriff Faith and the deputies he’d promised to show. Jones walked from car to car, idling on the lone highway, clicking the timepiece open and closed in a nervous fashion, while the hands crept up to six, the sun well on its way. He didn’t hesitate when he said to hell with ’em, and the caravan moved on northwest from Rhome on Texas Highway 114, passing over the railroad tracks at Boyd and motoring on through the pasture and worthless farmland till they neared the county road turnoff to the Shannon place. The morning sun shone sharp and bright into the vehicle’s windshield while Jones unhitched the circular clip of the Thompson, checking the rounds of ammunition, as Doc White loaded the two thumb busters he wore from a belt rig, smoking down the last of a hand-rolled cigarette and spying the farmhouse growing in the distance.

Agent Colvin drove the automobile this morning, some kind of Ford, or perhaps a Chevrolet, and beside him in the passenger seat-much to Gus T. Jones’s disliking-was Mr. Charles Urschel, holding a handsome duck-hunting shotgun with a French walnut stock, his pockets loaded down with more buckshot. The man had just had a fresh haircut, the back hairline shaved up high and tight above his earlobes, and you could see the white, untanned skin for a good inch on his thick neck, talcum powder on the collar. Jones shook his head. Hell, what was a man to do?