Blind Tiger by Sandra Brown

Elray’s face muscles began working like a child’s on the brink of tears. “Somewhere, anywhere, to lay low for a while.”

“Why do you need to lay low?”

He choked on a sob. “If they find out I was here talking to y’all they’ll…they’ll…no telling what they’ll do to me.”

“Who?”

“Cain’t say.”

“Your family?”

Elray wiped his dripping nose on his sleeve. “Goddamn Wally.”

“What about him?”

“He was always stirrin’ up trouble, then skippin’ out, leavin’ it to everybody else to clean up his mess.”

“Is that what’s happening now? A cleanup?”

Elray didn’t answer.

Bill said, “Has something come to light about who killed Wally?”

Elray’s eyes darted between Bill and Thatcher, then he lowered his head and shook it no.

“Then why were you hoping to get away?”

“Just tired of everybody being all worked up over it, is all.” He sat up straighter, gave a belligerent roll of his shoulders, and looked across at Thatcher before coming back to Bill. “He don’t know what I wasn’t at the stable only to take a gander at the guy who shot that rattler. I weren’t in there more’n a few seconds and didn’t steal shit. Anyhow, I got nuthin’ more to say.”

Bill looked over at Thatcher, who raised a shoulder and said, “He’s not worth the trouble it would take to hang him. I doubt Mr. Barker would want to bother with pressing charges of trespassing.”

“Then what do you suggest?”

He gave another laconic shrug. “Notify his kin to come take him off your hands.”

Bill recognized it as a bluff, but Elray didn’t. He surged to his feet again. “No!”

Bill grabbed him by the waistband of his britches and jerked him back down onto the cot. “What’s got you scared, son? You tell me, or I’ll hand-deliver you to your great-granddaddy. What’s Hiram up to? Vengeance for Wally?”

Elray hiccupped several times, then said, “He’s been on a rampage. He ordered all us to comb the hills. Every square inch we could cover. Any stills we found, tear ’em up, he said. ‘Wreak havoc on anybody making moonshine who ain’t a Johnson’ is how he put it.”

He made another swipe at his nose. “The other night one of my cousins—we call him Tup. Don’t ask why. Me and him were explorin’ and picked up the scent of wood smoke. We followed it to a still. Two, actually, but only one man was camped out there. What had drawn us was the smoke from his cookfire. He weren’t doin’ a run, just tinkerin’ around.

“We watched him hide a crate of ’shine in a hole in the ground. After he went into his tent, we waited to make sure he was down for the night, then snuck up to the hidin’ place, and took his whiskey.”

“How much?” Bill asked.

“Ten crates.”

“Ten crates?”

“It was a deep hole. Like a grave, only covered up good with brush. Had to make several trips to get it all back to our truck.”

“Did you know the man?”

“Don’t think so, but it was dark so I couldn’t see him good.”

“Do you think he saw you?”

“I know he didn’t. He had firepower within reach. If he’d’ve seen us, he would’ve used it. We got away clean.”

Stroking his mustache, Bill mulled that over. “Sounds to me like Hiram ought to be happy with you and your cousin.” When Elray didn’t respond, Bill asked, “Or isn’t that the end of the story?”

Thatcher hadn’t moved or taken his eyes off the boy. He said, “I don’t think it is, sheriff. He’s spooked.”

“Is he right, Elray?” Bill asked.

“Things is gettin’ crazy,” he said, his voice cracking.

“This path of vengeance Hiram is on?”

Elray nodded several times. “Old Hiram—he ain’t my great-grandaddy, he’s my great uncle—he told Tup and me that those two stills we happened on sounded like easy pickin’s. The ’shine we stole was quality, too.”

“He wouldn’t like that,” Bill said. “Competition.”

“Yes, sir. He told us to go back, steal all the liquor that was bottled, dump out the barrels of fermentin’ mash, bust up the stills, and…” He lowered his voice. “And hurt whoever was there. Make ’em sorry they’d ever heard the name o’ Johnson, he said.”

“Wreak havoc.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You jumped to carry out his orders to hurt people?”

“I weren’t given no choice, sheriff. And Tup, who has a mean streak a mile wide, was looking forward to it. So we went back last night.”

“Who’d you hurt and how bad? Did you kill the moonshiner?”

“No! Tup and me waited till late and snuck up, same as before. Nobody was around. The cookers weren’t thumping, and the cookfire had burned down to coals. We crept over to where the hole’s at. Tup reached into the brush covering it and—” He stopped and swallowed several times. “I ain’t ever heard a scream like that, not from nobody, not even from a woman.”