Koss gave an involuntary shudder; even Jay Rutherford started. Huckins stopped digging.
“What was that?”
Ira’s laugh was a short cackle. “Don’t you fellers worry about that. That’s just a coyote over in Johnson’s timber. That can’t hurt you.”
“A sound like that,” Huckins said hoarsely, “takes all the music out of a man.”
Ira cackled again. “The White Man don’t howl. Them that has seen him says he walks quiet, mostly.”
“You crazy old coot!” Jay Rutherford boomed. “Shut up about that White Man. And Huckins, you dig faster. We can’t stay here all night.”
“Ain’t late yet,” Ira observed. “Ain’t more’n a few minutes after supper time, right now.”
The group lapsed into a silence broken only by the thud of Huckin’s spade. Ira’s jaws worked in a chewing motion. He knew he was very likely to die. After these men had finished, they would probably put a bullet into his carcass. Dead men didn’t talk. Perhaps they would roll his lifeless body into the grave and cover it. He would never be found; no one would think to look into the grave. The cold smell of raw earth entered his nostrils and he shivered.
The spade clanged against something solid. Huckins straightened, kneeding the small of his back.
“There’s a steel bell coverin’ the coffin,” he said.
“It’s goin’ to be a job,” Ira yapped, “hoisting that coffin out. We’ll have to get ropes from the shed—” His gaze flicked to the yew trees that lined the edge of the cemetery. Along the road, still a good distance away, something white glimmered in the moonlight. “Let me get into that grave,” Ira added. “I think there’s a handle on that bell that we can hook ropes through.”
He eased himself into the grave, then said dryly, pointing toward the road:
“Look there, would you... Looks like a man all in white.”
Ira stooped and in the damp darkness ran his hand round the inner base of the grave. At last his fingers contacted what they had been seeking — a small canvas bundle. He unwrapped it and cautiously peered over the pile of earth.
Ira said, “He’s comin’...”
The figure was turning in at the gate. From the top of his cap to the bottom of his trousers, he was a striding study in white. The moonlight glistened on him.
“That’s him, all right,” Ira cackled.
Jay Rutherford Longworth was beginning to tremble. His automatic still pointed at Ira. Huckins mumbled incoherently and scrambled out of the grave. Otis Koss was shaking like a whipped dog.
“Koss!” the fat man ordered. “Take hold of yourself.”
Suddenly, Ira pointed his left fore-finger at the approaching figure and uttered a long screech.
“My God! — I can’t stand it!” Otis Koss gasped. The fat man gripped his wrist. With a jerk Koss tore himself loose, spinning his companion half round, and plunged off through the moonlight. Instantly, Jay Rutherford aimed his automatic at the white figure.
A spurt of red, accompanied by the report of a gun, came from the grave. Another followed, then a third.
The man with the automatic crumpled heavily to earth. Koss’s arms shot upward, and he stumbled forward on his face; while Huckins, running for freedom, whirled, let out a yell, and dropped.
Ira climbed from the grave. He did not seem afraid of the white figure trotting toward him. Indeed, he spoke to it:
“Evenin’, Tim Bennett. Glad to see you. Fact is, I was never so glad to see anyone—”
“What—?”
Ira explained. And he added, “Your wife came by here this afternoon and told me she was baking fresh bread. She said she’d send you down with a loaf this evenin’ if I’d wait here, and when these fellers came, I remembered that.” Ira reached out and took the loaf of bread from Bennett’s hand. “And I got to thinkin’. You being a painter — workin’ today painting Jed Sullivan’s house — I figured you’d still have on your white overalls...”
“But,” Tim Bennett exclaimed, “you say you didn’t have a gun. And—” He pointed at the revolver in Ira’s hand.
“Uh-huh. You see, I had ’em open Wild Jack Perkins’s grave instead of Nancy’s. Wild Jack used to be an Indian fighter, and he got the idee from them — of havin’ his weapon buried with him. Last week, on his death-bed, he told me he was afraid his relatives would think it a fool idee, an’ he give me his old six-shooter. He made me promise to wrap it in canvas, an’ put it on top of his coffin before I filled his grave. Mighty glad I kept that promise...”
Tim Bennett exclaimed, “Ira, you may be crazy, but if you are, you’re crazy like a fox. It was pretty smart for you to open Wild Jack’s grave instead of Nancy’s.”
“I wouldn’t have opened hers, nohow,” Ira declared. “Not if they’d shot me for refusin’. Not even the president of this here country could make me disturb the rest of my twin sister, Nancy.”