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By Root 5692 0

now any time she wants, provided him and the sheriff ain’t out with the dogs. He ain’t trying to run—not with that thousand dollars hanging over his head, you might say. I reckon he wants to catch Christmas worse than any man of them. He goes with them. They take him out of the jail and he goes along with them, and then they all come back to town and lock Brown up again. It’s right queer. Kind of a murderer trying to catch himself to get his own reward. He don’t seem to mind though, except to begrudge the time while they ain’t out on the trail, the time wasted setting down. Yes. I’ll tell her tomorrow. I’ll just tell her that he is in hock for the time being, him and them two dogs. Maybe I’ll take her to town where she can see them, all three of them hitched to the other men, a-straining and yapping.”

“You haven’t told her yet.”

“I ain’t told her. Nor him. Because he might run again, reward or no reward. And maybe if he can catch Christmas and get that reward, he will marry her in time. But she don’t know yet, no more than she knowed yesterday when she got down from that wagon on the square. Swolebellied, getting down slow from that strange wagon, among them strange faces, telling herself with a kind of quiet astonishment, only I don’t reckon it was any astonishment in it, because she had come slow and afoot and telling never bothered her: ‘My, my. Here I have come clean from Alabama, and now I am in Jefferson at last, sure enough.’ ”

Chapter 5

IT was after midnight. Though Christmas had been in bed for two hours, he was not yet asleep. He heard Brown before he saw him. He heard Brown approach the door and then blunder into it, in silhouette propping himself erect in the door. Brown was breathing heavily. Standing there between his propped arms, Brown began to sing in a saccharine and nasal tenor. The very longdrawn pitch of his voice seemed to smell of whiskey. “Shut it,” Christmas said. He did not move and his voice was not raised. Yet Brown ceased at once. He stood for a moment longer in the door, propping himself upright. Then he let go of the door and Christmas heard him stumble into the room; a moment later he blundered into something. There was an interval filled with hard, labored breathing. Then Brown fell to the floor with a tremendous clatter, striking the cot on which Christmas lay and filling the room with loud and idiot laughter.

Christmas rose from his cot. Invisible beneath him Brown lay on the floor, laughing, making no effort to rise. “Shut it!” Christmas said. Brown still laughed. Christmas stepped across Brown and put his hand out toward where a wooden box that served for table sat, on which the lantern and matches were kept. But he could not find the box, and then he remembered the sound of the breaking lantern when Brown fell. He stooped, astride Brown, and found his collar and hauled him out from beneath the cot and raised Brown’s head and began to strike him with his flat hand, short, vicious, and hard, until Brown ceased laughing.

Brown was limp. Christmas held his head up, cursing him in a voice level as whispering. He dragged Brown over to the other cot and flung him onto it, face up. Brown began to laugh again. Christmas put his hand flat upon Brown’s mouth and nose, shutting his jaw with his left hand while with the right he struck Brown again with those hard, slow, measured blows, as if he were meting them out by count. Brown had stopped laughing. He struggled. Beneath Christmas’s hand he began to make a choked, gurgling noise, struggling. Christmas held him until he ceased and became still. Then Christmas slacked his hand a little. “Will you be quiet now?” he said. “Will you?”

Brown struggled again. “Take your black hand off of me, you damn niggerblooded—” The hand shut down again. Again Christmas struck him with the other hand upon the face. Brown ceased and lay still again. Christmas slacked his hand After a moment Brown spoke, in a tone cunning, not loud: “You’re a nigger, see? You said so yourself. You told me. But I’m white. I’m a wh—” The hand shut down. Again Brown struggled,