“I left for a lot of years,” Lillie said. “You, too. Don’t let the bastards raise their fucking flag.”

Quinn was silent, heading down off Jericho Road and on toward Choctaw Lake, the land growing flat, the hills behind them. They soon saw the open expanse of water, a thick mist rising in the false dawn. There were a few ducks, a lot of geese.

“Did he stink?”

“Who?” Quinn said.

“LeDoux,” Lillie said. “Who else?”

“I’ll let you cuff him and you can decide for yourself.”

“You’re a true gentleman, Quinn Colson,” Lillie said. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”

She cut her eyes over at him and they shared a smile, rolling straight ahead, two vehicles following, Quinn turning off his lights and rolling forward slow and easy to the tin-roof clubhouse, leaning hard to the left. Within a hundred feet, a rusted single-wide had been dumped onto some cinder blocks, no lights, but smoke coming from an outdoor furnace feeding heat in through a rigged metal pipe.

Since they’d checked out the clubhouse, two trucks had parked nearby and a couple bikes.

“Fuck,” Lillie said.

“Come on,” Quinn said. “Grab your weapon.”

Quinn reached for his cell and hit the trooper captain’s cell number on speed dial. The phone rang and rang. He’d just spoken to the man.

Two men stepped from the clubhouse. Quinn lay down the phone, hit the lights and siren, and the two patrol cars followed suit, the blue-and-whites flashing, slamming on brakes, out in seconds.

Quinn was out with his shotgun, taking aim on the men. Lillie, by his side, doing the same with her gun. His four other deputies backed them up, Quinn not taking an eye off the two bikers as they stood, lit up in his headlights. He yelled for Dave, Art, and Ike to take the trailer.

“Kenny, stay with the vehicles and call dispatch,” Quinn said. “Tell those troopers to get their asses down here.”

“God damn, they’re ugly,” Lillie said, shotgun up in her arms as natural as can be.

“Is LeDoux in that trailer?” Quinn said.

The bikers had their hands up but didn’t say a word. They were young and scruffy. And silent. They were also drunk and wobbled on their feet.

Quinn heard the door to the trailer bust open and Art and Dave yelling as they entered. More yelling. No shots.

Quinn looked to Lillie, Lillie taking control of the two bikers as he walked toward the trailer with the pump. He had gotten about twenty meters when he saw Art come to the door and say they got him, Quinn running up into the trailer to find Dave Cullison cuffing LeDoux.

LeDoux had his face to the floor of the trailer, the room lit only by the deputies’ flashlights. He was laughing like a crazy man. “I wondered when you were coming.”

“How the hell would you know?” Quinn said.

LeDoux couldn’t stop laughing.

There was a rumbling outside, the sound of guttural engines gunning in unison coming down Jericho Road and straight for the clubhouse. Quinn looked to his deputies as they yanked LeDoux from the floor and pushed him forward out of the trailer and onto the dark gravel lot.

From a quarter mile away he could see the lights of the bikers shining bright.

The nurse brought Johnny Stagg a cup of water with a straw and held it up to his mouth. An early gray light filled the hospital windows as she checked the monitors and took his temperature, plumping up his pillows and asking if he needed to take a pee-pee. He said he did but could use some help. The woman, who was black and stout, helped him throw his legs to the side of the bed and held him up while he walked. She was trying to be gentle, but the feeling of those busted ribs and that fractured leg bone brought tears to his eyes. He leaned on her to keep pressure off the left leg.

“You need to sit on the commode and make a deposit?”

“No, ma’am,” he said. She held him up as he did his business, the woman saying not to be shy, she’d seen it all. She walked back with him, supporting his weight, as he moved slow, with her helping him settle into the bed.

“You need something, Mr. Stagg, just press that red button,” she said. “You see it on the side? Yes, sir. Just press that button you need to go again. They’ll be around in a little while with breakfast.”

Stagg figured he could send Ringold to the Rebel for some good food, hopefully not having to stay here for long. He’d hire some help at the house. And he’d hire more help for himself. If he could get a man like Ringold, he could get a dozen just like him.

He’d be rid of LeDoux and rid of Colson. He wished things could’ve been simpler, easier. But with the Mexes coming in, cutting off a man’s head and such, he needed violent men to do violent chores.

An orderly lay down a tray on the rolling table. She opened the cover as if revealing the finest meal ever made—some runny eggs and watery grits. The coffee was the color of river water. The orderly began to spoon up some egg and lift it to his mouth.

“Ma’am,” Stagg said. “I’m not hungry just now. Do you mind?”

The woman left and Stagg lay there, watching the morning news from Memphis, waiting to hear maybe some news about Craig Houston or the burning of those biker clubhouses. Surely Houston’s people were ready for more. But there was nothing, only talk about the rain coming in later that day and Grizzlies returning to top form.

Stagg thought of the humiliation of being beaten down by that biker and those Mexican boys. He recalled his daddy taking him behind the woodshed and taking a fat branch to his exposed backside, whipping him good until the welts began to bleed.

Stagg reached for the fork, hands shaking, having to bend his mouth down to the food because his shoulder and elbow weren’t working so good. He scooped up a little bit more the next time, some grits with eggs, and lifted it slightly higher. He chewed and swallowed, a little bit more light shining from outside that hospital window.

He’d just as soon burn down all of Jericho than surrender to them bikers and bean eaters.

•   •   •

Quinn, Lillie, and the deputies tried to make it to their vehicles but had to turn and run into the Born Losers clubhouse, toting the two bikers and Chains LeDoux, when the bullets started to fly. The bikers—Quinn counting fifteen—had rode into that gravel space off Jericho Road and opened fire on the Big Green Machine and the two county patrol cars, automatic rifles busting up glass and sending rearview mirrors flying, tires flattening real quick.

Lillie was talking with dispatch, telling Mary Alice to get those troopers down here fast or she’d be cracking some fucking heads in Jackson when this thing was over.

LeDoux was laughing, where they’d tossed his ass by a ratty old pool table.

This wasn’t the scenario Quinn had planned. He’d readied for a tactical operation, quick and clean, getting LeDoux and getting back to Jericho. They were armed with handguns and shotguns, only Lillie bringing a rifle with her. She’d busted out a window facing the road, checking the situation through the scope. “I can get six of them easy,” Lillie said. “You think the DA in Oxford would say we were being impulsive?”

“I’ve gone past giving a shit about that,” Quinn said.

“Y’all are on our property,” LeDoux said. “Our land. Y’all are the invaders.”

His two boys had been hog-tied and left in the middle of the clubhouse. They hadn’t said a word or moved from where the deputies had left them.