Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 5, No. 10, October 1960

A Real, Live Murderer by Donald Honig

When we glance over our shoulders reminiscently, we see the golden glow of the good old days. Then, murderers were decidedly quaint. As for ghouls, why we have nothing today to match those of yesteryear.

I was waiting on the back porch, a trifle mistrustful of the dark. It was overly quiet and the trees seemed to be watching me dourly as if they knew I was going to do something I shouldn’t. Even the wind had stopped. I could hear Pa snoring through the upstairs window in slow, breaking rhythms.

It felt as though I’d been standing there for hours, but it wasn’t more than fifteen minutes. I’d gotten out of bed at ten of twelve and the midnight bells had come tolling over the meadows about five minutes after I’d come down. I was almost hoping that Pete wouldn’t show up. But I knew he would. He was always out late at night anyway. He was the only one allowed out so late; or maybe he wasn’t allowed; but either way, he was always around, looking for some mischief.

Pete had seen the murderer last night and had told me about it this afternoon while I was watering Pa’s horse at the trough in front of the Dooley House. He’d promised to take me tonight, if I could get out. It had to be very late, he said, because we had to be sure the murderer didn’t see us because he was going to be hanged shortly and everybody knows it’s bad luck to be looked at by somebody who is going to be hanged. We couldn’t go to look at him during the day because he’d be sure to see us. So we had to be sure he was asleep. I really wanted to see him too. I’d never seen a murderer before and I wasn’t going to be done out of it now no matter what.

I heard him coming then. He was coming through the elms across the road. I could hear him in there. I went down the porch steps as light as I could and went across the back yard and climbed over the picket fence. I met him in the middle of the road. A full white moon had come over the trees and you could see almost like it was morning.

“I made it,” I said.

“That’s good,” Pete said. He had his thumbs hooked inside his suspenders. He was wearing the Union Army forage cap that Clay Taylor had recently brought back from Virginia for him. Pete was the only one in Capstone who owned a hat like that and he wouldn’t trade it for anything. He said it was as near as he could come to fighting Rebs; the War was in its second year then.

We went down to the crossroads and then along Grant Avenue’s moonlit emptiness.

“You sure he won’t see us?” I asked.

“Nothing to be worried about,” Pete said. We walked between the ruts that the wagons made, on the shaggy grass that grew there.

“How many times have you seen him?”

“Twice,” Pete said. “The last two nights.”

“What does he look like?”

“You’ll see. You’ll see him good tonight. The moon is just right.”

The jail stood off by itself, a long, low, oblong building. Down further were the Dooley House and Gibson’s tavern and the stores, but they were quiet now, very quiet.

We lightfooted around behind the jail. High up in the long, whitewashed wall were the little cell-windows. Pete had moved the rain barrel under one of them and that was where the murderer was. Pete climbed up onto the barrel first and took hold of the bars and looked in, bending his face in close.

“Is he there?” I whispered, clasping my hands.

“Shhh,” he said.

“Let me up,” I said.

He moved aside on the barrel and I climbed on. I hooked my fingers into his belt and pulled myself up and took hold of the bars and held my breath and looked down into the cell.

He was lying on the cot, the murderer was, on his back, sleeping. The moon fell full and bright through the bars and showed him good. I recognized him now as a man I’d seen about town from time to time, Jimmy Grover. Mostly I’d seen him drunk. He was not a very large man but was sort of round. He had a short beard which lent a peculiar sadness to his reposing face. His hands were clasped over his chest and he looked just like any other man who is asleep.

“That’s him,” Pete whispered.

“He don’t look so special,” I said.

Then his eyes opened. They opened slow and mysterious and were looking right up at our faces in the bars. And he looked worse with his eyes open — he looked like he was dead. The way they had just opened like that, it was uncanny; they had opened and found us there, or more properly caught us, and were holding us, and there was nothing we could do about it. We couldn’t move. We couldn’t do anything but stare back, our fingers caught around the bars.

At first his eyes showed nothing, as if our faces peeping there were a continuation of his dream. Then they became startled and I could detect a tremor go through his body. But he didn’t move yet. I think if he would have moved — if he would have so much as parted his hands — we would have gone over backwards off the barrel.

He spoke first.

“What do you want?” he said. He was a little afraid and perhaps a trifle indignant.

Neither of us spoke, could answer. He asked it again, his voice not so harsh this time.

“We don’t want anything,” Pete said.

“You must want something,” the murderer said.

“Honest we don’t,” Pete said.

The murderer moved now, slowly, almost deliberately slowly so as not to alarm us. First his hands slid away and then he sat up on the cot, watching us.

“You’ve come to look at me, haven’t you?” he said. “You must think I’m a strange specimen.”

“Yes sir,” Pete said, not precisely agreeing, but trying to be agreeable.

“If you’ve come to see a murderer, then you’re wasting your time,” the murderer said, sitting there in the moonlight and looking up at us as if we were the peculiar ones.

“You mean to say you’re not a murderer?” I asked.

“I never killed anybody,” he said.

“Then why are you here?” Pete asked.

“The jails are full of innocent men.”

“But everybody says you’re a murderer,” Pete said stubbornly, as though trying to convince him.

Then he commenced to tell us his side of what had happened those few days ago when he’d got into his trouble.

“We’d been drinking some, Eddie Larsen and I,” he said. “We’d got ourselves a jug from Gibson’s and gone over towards the marsh in good spirits. On the way we passed the Misses Tabers and Doctor Howell, and Eddie, being in his state, sorta sassed them and I had to cuff him on the head to make him stop and he yelled at me for it and we went off arguing into the woods. That’s what the Misses Tabers and the doctor told at the trial and they were right as far as they told; what was wrong was the conclusions that were made of it.”

“You couldn’t blame people for thinkin’ it,” Pete said.

“Maybe not. But it ain’t right to hang a naan for what people happen to conclude,” Jimmy said hotly. Then he subsided a bit. “I’ll tell you the rest, if you want to hear.”

“We want to hear,” I said.

“We finished the jug, Eddie and I, and he wanted some more. He said that there was probably some in Mattick’s shed and that he’d go over there and steal a jug. I was in good spirits, but still in control of myself. No, I says, you can’t go onto a man’s property and steal from him, especially a man such as Mattick. But Eddie, he was of a mind and when he got like that there was no standing him off. The last I saw of him he was reeling down the road to Mattick’s place. The next thing I know is two days later I’m arrested for the murder, for which they have not even found a corpse...”

“But lots of blood marks on the rocks near the road,” Pete said.

“It’s a far cry from real evidence,” Jimmy said.

“They say you killed him and buried him somewheres,” Pete said.

“Hang it, boy, I know what they say. And I say they’re liars.”

“They say you was awful drunk and did it without knowing and that now you don’t remember,” Pete said.

“That’s what they say, and that ain’t evidence,” Jimmy said. He rose now and stood there in all dignity, the moon halfway up him, his legs standing in shadow. “You’re looking at an innocent man, boys,” he said.

“Then who is the murderer?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“But you’re stuck for it,” Pete said.

“Unless a miracle happens,” Jimmy said.

“Well you hang on,” said Pete, “and maybe the miracle will come true.”

We got down off the barrel then and went away. We walked up along the middle of the empty road.

“I don’t know,” Pete said, “but he looks innocent to me.”

“Innocent or not, they’re going to hang him sure. Pa said it yesterday.”

“I don’t like it,” Pete said, starting to brood on it.

“A man can look innocent and not be.”

“Or might well be too. I’ll tell you, Gascius, once they hang a man it don’t make no difference to him if they find later he was innocent after all. They can name a park or a horserace after him, but he’s finished all the same, poor chap.”

“But if he’s innocent then where is Eddie Larsen? It’s been more than a week now.”

“Could be anywhere. Maybe waiting for them to hang old Jimmy and then come out of the woods and say wasn’t it a fine joke he done. Some fellows has got humors like that.”

“So what can we do?” I asked.

“We give it our every thought,” Pete said as he hooked his thumbs into his suspenders.

Pete would think of something, I knew. The prospect was both intriguing and intimidating because often he let ingenuity outgallop prudence. His ideas often sounded as if they had been propounded in a nightmare and then been chased for two miles over stones and then fallen down a precipice into a rapids and gone over a waterfall and been thrown back onto dry land still on hind legs and still running.

I suppose I felt sort of sorry for old Jimmy. Justice in Capstone in the 1860’s was brief and positive. Public opinion — which was the prejudices of the men who sat on Dooley’s porch — generally decided if a man was guilty or not, and so the trial was generally a mere formality. If enough men said, “I reckon Jimmy Grover murdered Eddie Larsen,” then that was the way it was to be no matter how hard Jimmy Grover’s lawyer ranted.

So they had the gallows all fixed and waiting for Jimmy and it looked sure like he was going to dance on it.

The next day, just past noon, Pete popped up out of the bushes back of my yard, the Union Army cap askew on his head, his brown hair hanging out from under. That’s all he did, never said a word, and then went back down into the bushes again. But that was enough. I went across the yard and into the bushes.

“Let’s go,” he said. I followed him across the road and into the elms where it was cool out of the sun. When he stopped I noticed he had in his hand three mighty peculiar things to be holding all at once: a hammer, a chisel, and a bugle.

“What’s all that truck for?” I asked.

“We’re going to spring old Jimmy,” Pete said. I didn’t bother to ask him how those things would fit in. The explanation wouldn’t have made sense anyway, nor sounded feasible. So I just followed along, as I had learned to do with him, waiting for some powerful revelation.

When we came into sight of the jail, Pete stopped and pulled me behind the livery stable.

“Now listen here,” he said handing me the bugle. “I know you can play this. I want you to go in there and give the sheriff a serenade.”

“Play him a serenade?” I asked.

“Sure. Play him all those fancy tunes you regaled the town with at the last picnic. Get in there and make lots of noise.”

“Suppose he won’t let me?”

“Tell him you’ve got to rehearse in a place that’s got walls around, ’cause you got to play at the church dance on Saturday. The sheriff is a simple-hearted fellow with compassion for his brother man. He’ll let you play for as long as he can stand it. By that time I’ll have broke the bars and hauled Jimmy out of there. Now get on.”

I went around to the jail and stepped up onto the boardwalk. The cider barrels under the shed, where the men usually sat, were empty; the men never liked to sit there when somebody was inside waiting to be hanged. I opened the door and saw Sheriff Rice just coming out from the passageway where the cells were.

“Hello, Gascius,” he said.

“Can I practice my bugle here, Sheriff?” I asked. “I’m up to play at the social on Saturday night and I need a place to practice. They ran me out of my house.”

“Why don’t you go into the woods?”

“You can’t judge it too good out of doors. The sound waves go off and don’t come back.”

“Well,” the sheriff said thoughtfully, a trifle dubious, “it probably constitutes undue cruelty, but we ain’t got but one prisoner at the moment and he’s getting a hempen collar soon anyway — so I guess it’s all right.”

So I stood straight up and hook in a good breath and brought the bugle up to my puckered mouth and began blasting out some military calls my Uncle Herm had taught me. It got too much for the sheriff to bear and he went out and sat down on a barrel while I filled the place with fine brassy noise. And it was a good thing too that he went out, because each time I paused to pull in some fresh air I could hear Pete hammering and chipping in the back like a woodpecker with an iron nose. I must of stood there for a half hour, until my head most cracked and I felt that my next deep breath would surely turn me inside out, and I had to stop. I cocked my ear and couldn’t hear Pete anymore and so I went outside. Sheriff Rice was sitting clear across the street now, under a tree.

“You all finished, Gascius?” he called.

“Yes,” I said. “And I thank you kindly, Sheriff. I sure thank you.”

“That was mighty nice playing,” he said coming across the road. He took a seat on the steps and I was glad for that. I didn’t want him going inside just yet.

Then I went down the road, putting my footprints in the dust as nonchalant as a prize heifer, and then cut back into the alley behind the livery stable and ran as quick as I could to the back of the jail. There waiting for me was an unusual sight indeed. Pete had knocked the bars out all right, but he was having considerable trouble trying to get Jimmy to fit through the little window. He had him out to his waist and in fact you couldn’t see any window at all and Jimmy looked as if he was bolted onto that wall without legs; his arms were going like they were demonstrating swimming. And Pete was jumping there, every so often grabbing an arm and giving it a tug but unable to do much good.

Then Pete saw me and whipped off his cap and whirled it round and round to put me into haste, and I came on the fly. He ran to meet me and grabbed me by the shoulders.

“We’ve got to get him through!” he said, all heated up.

I stuffed the bugle down into my pants and ran after him. We stopped under Jimmy and looked up at him and he looked back at us, hung up there like a fixture, bald head covered with sweat-beads, mouth open in the little beard but unable to speak anything (though that round wordless orifice spoke louder than any words), and his body jerking and quivering which led me to suspect that his legs were doing considerable thrashing behind him.

“Now take hold,” Pete said to me reaching up and taking an arm, “and take hold good. We’re going to heave him out.”

“Easy now, boys,” Jimmy said.

“You leave out your breath and let it be that way,” Pete told him.

Then we were pulling. At first it didn’t seem as if he’d ever come out of there and then it seemed as if we were pulling him in two and I had a vision of the town hanging just his legs while the rest of him was being wheeled away by us, but then his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth too and his face grimaced and he was on the way. There was an awful scraping and scratching and ripping, but he was coming, inch by inch. The sides of the window gave off a little spurt of dust and then he popped right out, fast and unexpected — and Pete and I were both pulling suddenly a flying force and falling back and down as Jimmy fairly flew out of there and plummeted chest-down between us.

We lay there for a second, the three of us, tuckered out with exhaustion and surprise. But we’d done it. Jimmy groaned and tried to get up.

“What’s the matter?” Pete asked as we got up and whipped the dust from us.

“It’s my leg,” Jimmy said. “I can’t put weight on it.”

He’d given it a good solid whack when he’d come down and now he couldn’t walk. So Pete and I lifted him up erect and he put his arms around us and skipped along on one foot as we hurried him into the woods. We took him a little ways into a very secluded spot in the elm grove and sat him down in the bushes next to the brook.

“Here you are,” Pete said. “At least you’ll have some water if you want, till we can scare you up a horse.”

“My leg feels like ’twas mule-kicked,” Jimmy said, lying back, shutting his eyes. He looked a sight, what with the dust all over his vest and trousers and his trousers considerably ripped from his slide through the window.

“Anyway it’s a far sight better than being hanged,” Pete said, with that unimpeachable wisdom of his.

Jimmy opened his eyes and looked up at us, the sun and the leaves making speckles of shadow on his face, and his eyes filled with tears.

“I reckon I’m mighty obliged to you lads,” he said.

“That’s fine,” Pete said. “Now you just lay quiet till we can rustle up some transportation for you. These bushes hide you pretty good, so you don’t have to worry.”

We left him there and hurried on back.

“Where do you reckon we can get a horse?” I asked Pete as we skipped through the woods.

“I don’t know just yet,” Pete said. “From a careless man probably. Let’s just keep our eyes open.”

When we got back, we found the place in a general furor. Men were running about and a group on horseback was gathering in front of the Dooley House. The dust was flying thick as smoke.

“See here,” Pete asked a young lad in overalls, “what’s going on?”

“Old Jimmy’s got away,” the lad said breathlessly.

We heard somebody shout out, “We should’ve hanged him when we had him.”

I hadn’t ever seen such activity in Capstone. It seemed that everybody was there, all the storekeepers in their aprons and the men from the tavern that never came out in daylight and all the farmers and their sons. Most everybody who had a horse was mounted and so there wasn’t an idle horse about at all. The sheriff and his deputies went by us and the sheriff looked at me and I shuddered but he kept right on going toward a wagon full of men with rifles, never suspecting anything at all I guess, and jumped up into the wagon as fierce as a bear. Just then Eddie Larsen’s father ran up onto Dooley’s porch and shouted out:

“Listen here, you men!” And he held up two fingers and said, “Two hundred dollars reward to the man that brings him in, dead or alive!”

I looked at Pete and his face lighted up as if he’d received a benediction. His face was a map to his every thought and scheme.

“You can’t do it, Pete,” I said.

But he had his hand inside my arm and was steering me off into the alley. “I didn’t say I would,” he said. “But isn’t that a pile of money? Think of the suit of clothes and the derby hat and the buckboard a fellow could buy with that. And it looks like they’ll catch old Jimmy anyway since he don’t have a horse and we can’t get him one. It’d be a pity to have one of those far-spittin’ farmers carry off that money, don’t you think?”

“No, I don’t think,” I said. He was moving along real quick into the woods now and I had to skip over fallen trees to stay with him. “You can’t do it,” I said.

“You listen here,” he said. “We don’t know for sure if he’s innocent or not anyway. He says he is of course, but I don’t suppose he’d have much trouble influencing himself of that. We’re going against the whole town, ain’t we? What’s the chances of us being right and everybody else wrong? I ask you that.”

“I’m against it,” I said.

“Then the whole two hundred belongs to me.”

“It’s blood money.”

“But he’s most likely a murderer. The more I think on it the more I feel convinced.”

The idea was hot in his head and there was no stopping him. I told him I’d have no part of it and so he went on ahead, slipping through to the elm grove as quiet as smoke. I sat down on the trunk of a fallen tree and clasped my hands in my lap and tried not to believe anything that had ever happened. A little bit of trumped-up disbelief can go a long way in mitigating a nervous conscience, or so I thought.

Then I heard Pete whistling through the woods and I jumped up and went hurrying, sure he’d changed his mind. But he hadn’t. When I came to the brook he was standing there and Jimmy was stretched out as peaceful as last night.

“I tapped him with the chisel,” Pete said. “He never saw me either, so he can’t tell.”

“You might’ve killed him,” I said. “There’s a difference in knocking a man out and killing him. Now you give me a hand with him if you want to have a hundred dollars and be a hero too.”

So we gathered him up by the wrists and the ankles and started toting him through the woods.

“I don’t like a bit of it,” I said.

“You ain’t so pure yourself,” he said. “Standing there and playing that fool bugle makes you liable for jail yourself.”

We carried him back to the yard behind the jail and laid him down.

“We’d best bring him around the front,” Pete said.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” I said. “They’re going to hang him as soon as they let eyes on him. It won’t be so pretty either, if you’ve never seen a man hanged, and you’re going to have to stand there and watch and know that you done it.”

Well, that sobered him proper. He looked down at Jimmy and began nodding his head like a man who sees he’s been standing in syrup.

“I reckon they would too,” he murmured.

“They’re riding mean right now.”

“Well, what are we going to do?”

“What we intended on doing in the first place — help him get away. And the first thing is to get him away from here.”

“I reckon you’re right,” he said, and that was more than a casual admission for Pete Mariah to make. It was like a man crossing party lines. “You’re the first one ever to talk me out of something I’d fixed on,” he said.

“And a good thing too,” I said. “Let me go around to the front and see what’s going on.”

While Pete did that, I dragged Jimmy into the edge of the woods and hid him in the brush. He was sleeping real good. Pete had given him quite a good tap it seemed.

A few minutes later Pete came hurrying back, shoving his cap around on his head. He jumped into the bushes and crouched down.

“We’ve had some luck,” he said. “There’s an empty wagon standing with a team right in front of Dooley’s. Now here’s what we do: I’ll get up there and drive her off and swing her around behind the stable. You carry Jimmy over there and we’ll load him on and take him down to Shantytown. They just love to hide fugitives there.”

So, with some effort, I dragged Jimmy into the tall grass behind the stable and hid him there. I became a little uneasy thinking about the consequences I might have to face if I happened to be caught in it. That was one thing about Pete Mariah: he never concerned himself with the idea of consequences. You have to be born inordinately fearless to be like that. But if I could tell lies like Pete could then I reckon I’d be the same as him. He could turn mighty artful when the moment called for it.

So I hid there with Jimmy, without a lie or an explanation to my name, my head just like a pocket that’s been picked clean. I put my ear on Jimmy’s chest to test him out and he was still there, thank the Lord, with a rasp in him like dry straw.

Then Pete came swinging into the alley with the wagon, sitting up on the seat holding the reins. He swung the rig in behind the stable and jumped down.

“Come on, let’s heist him in,” he said.

“Won’t it be risky,” I said, “riding along with him in there like that?”

“It won’t either,” said Pete. “We’ve had some more luck.”

The luck was in the shape of a long pinewood box that looked to me like a coffin. In fact I thought for sure it was a coffin until Pete, using the hammer and chisel which had sure become a couple of all-purpose instruments — pried it open and we saw that it didn’t hold anything but some rocks. We threw the rocks away in the bushes and then picked up Jimmy and got him into the wagon bed and then into the box. He fit in pretty neat too. Then Pete made a couple of hole* in the side for air; after that he put the lid back on.

“There,” he said. “Now we can ride off and not worry about more’n we have to.”

We got up on the seats and Pete lifted the reins and made the team turn around and go back down the alley. We came out onto Grant Avenue and rode past the Dooley House — and that was a long moment because we didn’t know for sure where the owner of the wagon was — and down the grade. Once we cleared the crest of the grade, we put on a little speed and went rattling and bumping down the dirt road towards Shantytown where all the disreputables lived.

We’d gone a little ways when we heard ourselves being hailed from behind. Turning around we saw seven or eight men on horseback coming down on us.

“No sense trying to outrun them,” Pete said. So he reined in and we sat there in uneasy quiet while the hoofbeats clattered louder and then we were surrounded by the man. Deputy Ned Casey was among them and I noticed Jack Mattick too and several other men I knew.

“This your rig?” Casey asked Mattick.

“That’s it,” Mattick said. “We left it in front of Dooley’s while we went in for a sentimental drink. When we come out it was gone.”

“We found it strayin’ by itself,” Pete said, just as nonchalant as a butterfly. “Just meanderin’ along. Figured it belonged to somebody down near the creek.”

“Well, it belongs to Mattick,” Casey said. They all had a look at the box in the back and I figured this would be a fine time for Jimmy to wake up and start hollering. But he didn’t. We jumped down and stood in the road. I looked at Pete, but he was offering nothing but profound innocence. He still had the hammer and chisel stuck in his belt, but nobody remarked on them.

Mattick dismounted and tied his horse behind the wagon and then climbed up into the seat and took the reins and shook them against the team.

“I reckon we’ll be able to finish our business now,” he said. He turned the wagon around and began moving slowly back up the grade, the men following. They were all very solemn and quiet.

We followed along after, watching the wagon bump along.

“We’ll have to tag along till they set that box down somewheres,” said Pete.

“Suppose he wakes up in there?”. I said.

“I hope he’ll have sense enough to keep still. He’d better, at any rate. If he starts in a-rattlin’ around in there then there’s nothing anybody’ll be able to do for him.”

I was going to ask why Jack Mattick had bothered to seal up a box of rocks and what he might be intending to do with it, but I didn’t get a chance because what we saw next happening took the breath right out of me. Mattick had drawn the wagon off of Grant and down towards the Baker Avenue Cemetery. Pete and I both had the same realization at the same minute, but we were too scared to speak it. We just watched.

Mattick got down and unhooked the tailboard and with some of the others was sliding the box off the wagon. Further up on a knoll inside the gate, among the headstones, we saw standing the preacher and some other people.

I wanted to yell out, but Pete he just grabbed my arm and said to me without taking his eyes away from the men carrying the box on up to the knoll, “You run off and steal the first shovel you see. Then get back here as fast as your legs know how. Do it all on the fly, otherwise we’ve seen the last of old Jimmy.”

So while Pete sat down on the rocks behind the low iron fence, I dashed off for the first house in sight, away on the other side of the meadow. I whipped around into the yard and went into the shed there. I found a rake, hoe and shovel leaning against the wall and I took the shovel and went rushing away with it. A chap came down the back steps and said, “You there!” but he never had a chance; by the time he finished saying it, I wasn’t there any longer. He chased me a little ways, but I knew I was carrying Jimmy Grover’s life in my hand and there was nobody that could have flagged me down then.

When I got back to the cemetery, Pete was still sitting in the same place, cool as a winter’s moon.

“They’ve planted him,” he said, getting up, running his thumbs up and down inside his suspenders.

“What are we going to do?” I asked, lathered with sweat.

“The way I see it, we’ve got a little time.”

“Poor Jimmy,” I said.

“Never mind him,” said Pete. “If we don’t reach him in time you’ll be the one to go through life with it on your conscience. So don’t feel so sorry for him.”

The preacher and the others watched as Mattick knocked in the headboard with a stone and then they came down from the knoll and through the gate. They got on their horses and Mattick drove the wagon away with the preacher sitting next to him. We waited a few minutes until they’d gone out of sight, then Pete jumped the fence and I went after him, shovel and all. We spurted up to the knoll where the fresh earth had just been patted down. The headboard looked like the back of a chair and it had inked on it: DINK O’DAY DECEASED JUNE 8, 1862. Dink O’Day was Mattick’s handyman, a seedy nondescript who hung on around the farm and did some chores for his bed and board.

But we had no time to speculate. Pete grabbed the shovel and started stabbing with it and the dirt began to fly. The dirt hadn’t been packed down too well and Pete was able to dig it out in big scoopfuls. When his arms got tired, I took the shovel from him and then he took it back when I got tired, and then he was hip high and still going like convulsions when he struck wood. We could hear Jimmy in there then, kicking and hollering, and the first thing Pete did was take the hammer and chisel and knock in an air hole on top where it might do some good. Then he pried open the lid and Jimmy sprung up like there’d been a chain attached from the lid to his belt. His hair, what little he had left of it, was fair stood on end and his eyes looked as if they’d never seen sky before. He gulped twice before he could say a thing, his throat working and his shoulders heaving like he was trying to swallow an egg.

“Take it easy,” Pete said.

“What happened?” Jimmy said. “Where am I?”

“Somebody tucked you into a coffin and you near suffocated, if not for us,” Pete said.

Jimmy jumped up then and looked around at the headstones and the carven angels and I guess it was a mighty discomforting feeling for him. He started trembling as if his bones were coming loose and he took hold of Pete and said,

“G-get me out of here. P-please get me out of here.”

We did that, of course, but it wasn’t easy either. First we had to close up the coffin and fill in the grave again and make it look innocent. Then we had to get Jimmy out of there via the back way. Then Pete had the bright idea that with all the town looking for him, Jimmy wouldn’t be very safe again in the woods (for didn’t some mysterious stranger creep up behind him before and sock him on the head and, for some unknown reason, try to secretly bury him under another man’s name?) and that the only safe place would be in my hayloft.

So we smuggled him up into there and put a horse blanket over him. Then we went back to the Dooley House. Most of the men were still out on the chase and Dooley in his white apron was sitting on the porch smoking a cheroot.

“They found him yet?” Pete asked as we came up there and leaned on the bannister.

“Nope,” Dooley said, savoring his cheroot.

“Think they will?”

“He couldn’t of got far.”

“How’d he get out?”

“Sheriff says he must’ve been working on them bars for some time.”

“Say,” Pete said, rubbing his chin as if he had just thought of it, “I noticed they buried Dink O’Day today.”

“Yep. He passed on a few days ago. Had a fit, Mattick said. They was in here taking a drink to his soul when the team strayed off, but they found it. Mattick said it was just like Dink to do that,” Dooley said with a chuckle.

We strayed away then and Pete was in a cloud of thought; I could tell because he’d become so profoundly still. I gave him his head and didn’t say anything. Sometimes, when he thought enough, it could come useful. We wandered along the road in that manner of quiet, him profound and me respectful. Every so often some men sped past on horseback pounding up the dust. The dust hung in the air, settling back like something very old. What with the men scouring the woods and back roads for Jimmy the town was most quiet, the sun hot and yellow on the houses. Just a few old men were sitting by watching things.

“First of all,” Pete said, breaking his spell, “you’ve got to feel as I do, which means to have a low opinion of Jack Mattick.”

“I’ve never thought much about him,” I said.

“Well he’s a nasty-tempered, foul-brained, whiskey-blooded son of a turtle. None of his friends are dainty I can tell you.”

“Why do you suppose he was burying a box full of rocks?”

“We’re going to inquire into that.”

“How?”

“You meet me tonight at the crossroads and we’ll see.”

“Why tonight?”

“It’s always better to do these things in the dark.”

“What things?”

“Looking around.”

“Say, you’re not going to go fooling around up at Jack Mattick’s are you?” I asked.

“You just meet me, Gascius,” he said. “Ten o’clock, at the crossroads.”

I wasn’t so cheered by the prospect, you can be sure. But I was being devoured by curiosity about what had happened to Eddie Larsen and why Jack Mattick should want to have buried an empty box. I think that next to the ague, curiosity is the most devilish affliction a body can be stung with; it’s the most humanizing thing next to being born and can’t be resisted so far as I know. So I spent the rest of the day in a state of collapsed resistance and later that night, after sneaking some food and water up to Jimmy in the loft, set off to meet Pete. He was there at the crossroads, as he said he’d be. The men were sitting on Dooley’s porch under the bug-swarmed lamps, looking all tired and sour.

“Well,” I said to Pete.

“They’re in a state of mutters,” he said, “ ’cause they haven’t found him yet. Eddie Larsen’s father is still shouting two hundred dollars for Jimmy.”

“I thought you’d got that off your mind.”

“I have. But I can’t very well get it out of my head, can I? Come on, let’s go.”

Mattick’s place was off in the back near the marsh. It wasn’t much of a place, sort of run down and not very good soil, and folks wondered how he made any living from it. The truth was he was something of a dubious character who associated in Shantytown a lot and it was probably true that he made a lot of money that he shouldn’t have. Nobody in Shantytown ever worked, but they always had money, so you can figure it out.

We went off of the road and through the night-webbed trees, hearing the silly crickets peep-peeping all around us and they gave me the impression of black little lights not fit for human eyes to see. We struck a path and followed it till it ran out, then pushed through the hawthorn that bunched around outside Mattick’s. There was a half moon just up and it gave us enough light to see where we were going. We came out next to the house — it was little more than a cabin with a porch covered by a slanted roof. There was a light going in one window, but otherwise the house was dark and no sound coming from it.

I was of a mind to tell Pete that this was futile and ill-advised and sure to touch off some bad luck, but it would have been like trying to explain to a dead dog. I followed him over towards the shed. It stood a good ways from the house, past the well and some cords of wood. Pete got the door opened and we went inside. There was a window and the moon gave a little light through it. There wasn’t very much to the shed. It had an earthen floor and there was a shelf of cider jugs, some full, some not, and an assortment of tools laying handy about and a harness and a barrel in the corner covered up by what looked like canvas.

“Doesn’t appear to be much here,” I said.

“Maybe not,” Pete said, but not convinced, I could tell. “Let’s have a look into that barrel.” He went to it and pushed away the canvas. The pale film of moonlight fell right onto the barrel and so we were able to have a good look. And we looked and we saw and I wish I had never done it, because it was something I knew I’d never forget. I was old enough to join the army for the last year of the War, going as bugler in a New York regiment, and I saw some service in Virginia and saw some dead men in a field once, but I never saw anything that looked like Dink O’Day looked that night in the barrel.

Dink was stuffed into that barrel real horrible — his feet were even up with his face as if they had been shoved in there after the rest of him, and his face was rolled over on one side.

“Pete,” I said, all quavery and sick inside, “let’s get out of here.”

He saw the wisdom of that and we lit out of there. Too scared to pass the house again (it looked the most ominous thing in the world now) we went the other way, went clear across the breadth of the farm and took the long way around back to town. We found the sheriff up on Dooley’s porch with the men. Pete hailed him down and we walked a little ways into the shadows.

“Sheriff, we’ve found something of interest,” said Pete. The sheriff looked at him kind of skeptical.

“Of powerful interest,” I said, and he looked at me too. He was a big man. He had on a slouch hat, the brim hung low over his face.

“Such as what?” he asked.

“A dead body,” said Pete.

The sheriff never said another word, but he put his hands on both our backs and began pushing us along in the direction we’d come, doubtless taking for granted the body was that of Eddie Larsen, never even asking of us who, just pushing us on through that dark.

When we got up to the Mattick place he said, “Here?”

“In the shed,” Pete said.

“In the shed?” the sheriff asked, incredulous.

“Yes sir,” Pete said. “Tucked into the barrel there.”

The sheriff headed for the shed. I liked the way he walked; he didn’t care if he made noise or not. The one light was still on in the house, but Mattick didn’t come out. The sheriff went into the shed and made for the barrel and had him a good look. Then he swore and said,

“That ain’t Eddie Larsen — that’s Dink O’Day.”

“He buried an empty box, Mattick did,” I said.

That seemed to make the sheriff real sore and he headed right off for the house. While we were walking across the yard, Mattick opened the door and stood there in the lighted doorway. I guess that for a second he didn’t know who it was because he said out,

“Is that you, doctor?”

Then the sheriff, still walking, in powerful motion now, sure and steady and resolute, said, “What do you need a doctor for, Jack?” Then he was on the porch, in the light, facing Mattick, bigger than Mattick, and stronger, and with the badge, the authority; so when Mattick saw the shed door hanging open and he tried to break away he never had a chance, the sheriff moving — countermoving — with him and catching him by the arm and throwing him against the wall. Mattick gave the sheriff a fierce look like a caught animal.

“Dink died of a fit, eh?” the sheriff said. “Maybe from your fit, eh?” he said taking Mattick by the shoulders and pulling him away from the wall and then throwing him back against it again.

“Lay off, Rice,” Mattick muttered.

Then the sheriff collared him good and led him off while Pete and me followed behind and Pete said:

“I’ve got it half figured in my mind.”

But I couldn’t figure it nohow and when it was all told then Pete confessed that it had been too complicated even for him to have totally figured.

What it was was this, as we heard Mattick tell it in the jail to the sheriff and all the others:

Mattick had caught Eddie Larsen in his shed trying to steal some cider and had lit out after him with a rifle. He shot him down and killed him. Then he’d sent Dink over to that doctor in Little Village, the other side of the marsh, and sold the doctor the body (the doctor was known to rob graves to get cadavers to do research on). Then Dink started getting frisky about it and tried to squeeze a little money out of Mattick and that had set off Mattick’s fierce temper and he had choked Dink to death and then on the day of the funeral he decided he might as well sell Dink’s remains to the doctor too, and so that was why he had planted the empty box. He’d been waiting for the doctor to come that night when we were there.

After it was all said and Mattick was locked up, the men took Pete and me over to the Dooley House for a sarsparilla drink. It was then that Eddie Larsen’s father (after vowing to skin that doctor) said,

“It has just occurred to me, gentlemen, we all owe Jimmy Grover an apology.”

“Wherever he is,” somebody said.

“I know where he is,” piped up Pete.

“Where?” old Larsen said.

“Well,” said Pete, “I’ll tell you, but it seems to me the last thing I heard you say regarding Jimmy Grover was that you was giving two hundred dollars for him.”

When everybody finished laughing at the one we had on him, old Larsen said,

“Well, boy, I had offered that money to see a man hanged. It’ll do my heart better to see him not hanged; so the money is still good.”

Then the fastest thing anybody in Capstone ever did see was Pete and me rush out of there to fetch Jimmy from that loft and bring him back to respectable society.