Big Ed Slavirey saw the gun first. Cobb watched the gluttonous mail’s greasy face twist. “Regger!” Slavirey said.
Regger snapped the .38 around as Cobb came through the window.
Without even aiming, Cobb pressed off the first trigger. The big double-barrel bloomed fire. Regger screamed. The .38 bumped on the floor, and everybody in the room stared at the ragged mess Regger now wore at the end of his right sleeve.
Thick-shouldered, his blue shirt sweated out, Cobb Mixon sat in the open window, with the twelve-gauge loose in his grasp.
He watched Slavirey’s thick lips move, mumbling unintelligible words.
“Would you take the fat man’s gun?” Cobb said evenly to Cal Drudger. But it was Drudger’s wife who acted. She took the automatic from Slavirey’s shoulder-holster, careful not to get between Slavirey and Cobb’s waiting shotgun.
She scooped up Regger’s .38 and brought both guns to Cobb.
“How could you know we needed you so, Mr. Mixon?” Vera Drudger breathed. “You’ve always been a good neighbor — but I reckon now you’ve saved our lives.”
“Lon’s been tracking them,” Cobb replied, watching the killers.
Regger was moaning and sobbing as he tried to bind the shotgun wound that had left his hand a bloody, stringy mass.
“I reckon,” Cobb said, “you’d better tell me about the killing of my boy Brad if you ever hope to save that hand.”
Regger’s eyes shot up to Cobb.
“I mean it,” Cobb said, “I can pretty well guess what happened to Brad. He wasn’t a talky boy, but there was a lot on his mind when he came home. He wasn’t a bad ’un, either, not bad enough to warrant your killing him.”
“You got us wrong,” Regger said, his face, his whole body, shaking:
“I got you dead to rights,” Cobb corrected. “Brad left with you. You killed him because you’re a pair of big city syndicate killers. I know he was mixed up with you and that he crossed you. That means a killing in your book, don’t it?”
“You can’t prove a thing,” Slavirey whispered.
“I’ll prove plenty,” Cobb said. “When you gunned my boy, you figured a quick run back to your kind of civilization. But the marshland trapped you, wrecked your car, left you afoot. And Regger here is going to tell me about it, ain’t you, Regger?”
Regger rolled his head back and forth on his shoulders. Slavirey made a motion toward him. “You keep your two-bits worth out of this,” Cobb said, showing the fat man the bore of the shotgun.
Then Cobb waited, cold and implacable. The silence in the shack echoed the wheezing of Regger’s breathing. “That’s your life messing up Drudger’s floor,” Cobb reminded, almost gently. “You’d better admit I’ve guessed this whole thing right.”
“It wasn’t my idea.” Regger’s voice was a muffled scream. “Slavirey bossed it all.”
“All right,” Cobb said. “Miz Drudger, get some iodine and we’ll see if we can keep him from dying of blood poisoning or bleeding to death.”
Slavirey exuded his thick-lidded hate for Regger as Cal Drudger’s wife fetched iodine. Regger screamed as the raw medicine hit the wound. The woman whitened but bandaged the wound stolidly.
“I’m beholden to you,” Cobb told her. “Now I’ll take these two along.”
He prodded the pair ahead of him across Drudger’s clearing. In twenty minutes Regger was staggering. The fat man mumbled a hope that Regger would die. Cobb’s prodding gun kept Regger going.
Sweat poured out of the fat man like molten lard. He pulled off his felt hat and carried it in his hand for a while. Then he hurled it aside in the palmettos. He kept dragging his arm across his steaming face, his breathing loud and rasping.
Regger fell twice before they crossed the bare yard to Cobb’s empty smokehouse. The second time, Cobb had to threaten to shoot off the little man’s left hand to get him to his feet at all.
The corrugated tin roof of the smokehouse reflected the last rays of the afternoon sun. Cobb called for Lonnie, but there was no answer. The boy had forgotten. He was probably playing some game of his own in the marshes.
Cobb held open the rough, thick door of the smokehouse. He made them stand just outside it and empty their pockets. Knives, brass knuckles, wallets, even their sodden handkerchiefs were dropped to the sand.
“All right,” Cobb told them. “Inside.”
Slavirey waddled in and Cobb shoved Regger after him.
Regger stumbled on the floor, and lay panting against the greasy boards.
Cobb looked at the two men peering at him from the gloom of the breathless room, and the memory returned of how they’d stripped Brad’s body and left him to the vultures.
Across the yard, he recognized Lonnie’s ambling shuffle. Cobb smiled with relief, and then his face blanched.
Lon was dragging the vulture he’d killed beside Brad’s grave.
As he came near, the sandy-haired boy dropped his eyes, abashed at the condemnation in his father’s face. Clearly, the boy wanted his father’s approval above anything else in the world, but he couldn’t resist the horrible fascination of this bird.
Cobb kept his voice gentle. “I want you to go for the sheriff, Lonnie. Will you do that for me?”
“Sure mike!” Eagerly, Lonnie bobbed his head. He dropped the buzzard at his father’s feet and raced bent-shouldered across the yard. But Cobb saw the boy had already slowed before he reached the line of trees down by the road.
Slavirey wiped away the sweat and looked about the narrow, dark oven of a room. “How long will it take him?” he whined.
Cobb looked up at him. “Lon’s memory ain’t good,” Cobb replied. “It might take a day if he don’t forget. It might take a week—”
“A week!” Regger wailed from the floor.
“Lon’s a good boy, and he’ll get there,” Cobb said. “Anyhow, I can’t go. He’s all I got to send. You men might dig out, with me gone.”
In his face was invitation for either of them to try to dig out while he sat there, waiting with his shotgun.
Regger slumped against the floor and wept. Finally, he lefted his head. His voice was a horrified whisper.
“Water?” he muttered. “Who’ll give us water?”
“I’ll get you water.”
Slavirey’s face was a melting moon of fat. His gluttonous mouth worked. He dragged a thick, wet tongue across his mouth.
“And food,” he wheedled. “I take a lot of food.”
Cobb’s hand tightened on the door. “I dunno about food,” he replied. His eyes moved to the tattered vulture in the sand. A sudden change worked across his face, turning it to ice. He picked up the vulture, and with revulsion strong in his features, he backhanded it into the smokehouse.
His gaze lifted, and his shoulders went back. “I’ll see if I can fetch you a little salt,” he said.
And Cobb slammed the solid smokehouse door.