“He probably coulda lived through that, but Mary wasn’t about to let him. She went over to him and stepped on his head, and that was all she wrote. That was one dead trainer. The blacksmith run out of his shop right then with a 32-20 pistol and put a couple of shots into her, but it didn’t do no good. They say she didn’t even act like she felt it. I wasn’t there when it happened. That was in Kingsport. They got her on back to the circus with the rest of ’em and she was in the show that same evening.
“By morning, though, people had been a-studying about it and decided that if she’d gone and killed a man, she’d best be made to pay the price. They couldn’t do the job in Kingsport, though. Warn’t no gun around that could put her down. I’ve heerd they tried to electrocute her, but that didn’t do no good. Said she just danced a little, that’s all.
“Then somebody took a notion they ought to hang her, and the circus came on over to Erwin. It mighta been acoming here anyway. Mary was still a-working. Wasn’t no place to lock her up. They used her to push the wagons off’n the freight cars and set the tent poles up, and that afternoon, when the show was over, they took her down to the railroad yards, where they kept the big derrick-”
“Get in the house!” The voice in Sam’s head was drowned out by the same voice from behind him, the quiet kind of yelling that really meant business.
Sam looked up at his father. For a moment he thought that Dad was angry about his elephant game, but then he saw that he wasn’t even looking at Sam. He kept glancing toward the backyard. Before Sam could get to his feet, Dad jerked him up by the scruff of his trousers, and gave him a swat on the bottom.
“I said: git!”
Sam got.
He ran for the house without a word, because he could tell from Dad’s voice and the look on his face that something was up. Dad was still standing there in the yard. Sam glanced over at the woodpile beside the car shed. The ax was stuck in a log, just where Dad had left it. He took the steps two at a time and slammed the front door behind him.
In the small parlor, Sam looked around. Mom was still in the kitchen, seeing to the biscuits, or maybe she was in their room feeding Frances Lee. Anyhow, she hadn’t seen him come in. He hoped she hadn’t heard the door. Walking as quiet as he could to make up for the door-slamming, Sam slipped off to his room at the back of the house. The window beside his bed looked out on the backyard and the railroad tracks. It was a little, bitty square of a window set high up the wall just to let light in, but Sam knew that if he stood tiptoe on the top of his mattress he could just see out of it. He used to count the cars on the night train that way when the folks thought he was already asleep.
Sam scrambled up on his bed, and braced his hands against the wall to steady himself. When he stood up on tiptoe, his eyes and nose just cleared the sill of the window.
Dad was standing a foot or two away from the side of the outhouse, his hands in his pockets, like he was waiting, but Sam couldn’t see for what. No train was coming. The track in front of him was empty, and past it was Old Man Larson’s pasture, then the woods, then Buffalo Mountain, like the back of a big green elephant against the red sky. Sam turned his head again to see what Dad was doing, and a movement down the tracks caught his eye.
Down the tracks walked a young black-haired man in a gray suit coat and bib overalls. He was a good long way away, but he kept walking slowly down the tracks, between the rails, not on the rails like Sam did when he was playing tightrope walker. Sam looked to see where he was headed, and by then he had got it figured out. Up the tracks came a tall, sandy-haired man in white painter’s overalls.
And Sam had a ringside seat!
The two of them kept walking toward each other, not saying a word. When one of them got level with Aunt Till’s house and the other got level with Sam’s, Sam saw Dad duck behind the outhouse, and he heard the crash and whine of revolvers. He just had time to see the gun in Black Hair’s hand before the man fell on his back. Sandy Hair stood still for a minute watching him, and then he turned and walked into Sam’s yard, where Dad met him. They talked to each other for a moment and Sam could see Sandy Hair pointing to the blue-steel revolver he still carried. Dad nodded, and Sandy walked past him into the car shed. Dad made no move to follow him. He came out almost at once and left. Sam noticed that he wasn’t carrying the gun anymore.
He turned to look at Black Hair on the railroad tracks. An older man in a black coat had reached him, and was getting him to his feet. Sam could see the red splotch on the bib of Black Hair’s overalls. The older man had put his shoulder under Black Hair’s arm and was half carrying him down the railroad embankment and into Sam’s yard. Dad spoke to the older man for a few moments-the hurt man had his eyes closed and didn’t say anything.
Then Dad went into the car shed and backed out the Model T Ford. He helped lay the hurt man in the backseat of the car, and then he got behind the wheel, nodding for the older man to get in. The man motioned for Dad to wait and disappeared into the car shed. In less than a minute he came hurrying out and got in the car. Dad backed down the driveway, and Sam ran to the front window to see which way they were headed. He got there in time to see a flash of black turning up dust in the direction of Johnson City.
“Reckon we’ll eat,” said Mom, coming up beside him.
It still wasn’t dark. Dad had come back home and parked the Ford in the driveway, but he didn’t come in the house to eat. Sam waited until Mom got busy in the kitchen with the washing up and then he slipped out the front door. Dad had a bucket of water and a rag, and he was cleaning off the backseat. Sam watched him scrub the leather seat covers with the rag and then wring it out red into the water bucket.
“Is he gonna be all right?”
“Like as not,” said Dad, without looking up. He didn’t turn around or leave off scrubbing until he heard the other car pull up into the driveway. The second black Ford stopped a few feet behind Dad’s car, and the driver got out and came toward them. He was a big man with a white coat and a Wyatt Earp mustache. On his finger was a big ring in the shape of a snake, with two red stones for eyes. Sam knew him from church: he was the High Sheriff of the County.
“Go on off and play,” said Dad.
Sam trudged off as slow as he could safely go, to the spot by Aunt Till’s hedge where the elephant was still hanging. He took it down from the hedge twig and stuffed it in his pocket. If he took it back to the house now, he could walk past the cars and hear what was being said. Sam took the elephant back out of his pocket so that his errand would be conspicuous, and, dangling it on a string in front of him, he started back for the house. The High Sheriff was standing there with his hands on his hips, looking at Dad with his head cocked sideways like a rooster.
“I wish I could help you, Sheriff,” Dad was saying as Sam drew close. “But I didn’t see a thing.”
“You sure now?”
“Well, I was in the car shed here, arranging some tools when it happened, so I-”