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.