lowered Tup into the pit. None too gently, he said. But they left him with a canteen of water and a full jar of moonshine. He admits that he yelled and screamed and cried for his mama. They ignored him and went about breaking camp. He managed to uncap the jar with one hand, drank all the whiskey, and eventually passed out.
“This morning when he came to, he knew they were gone. Dead silence, he said, except for the gurgling of the spring.”
“Moonshiners capable of assembling a still are just as capable of rapidly taking it apart and relocating.”
Thatcher smiled. “Not to a spot as good as this one. According to Tup, this is an ideal place.”
“He would know.”
Together, they watched deputies pick through a clump of dead brush to see what it might yield, but nobody cried Eureka.
Bill said, “Tup didn’t see them, but what about their voices?”
“Never spoke a word. Neither of them.”
“All night?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Huh. Moonshiners clever enough to keep their mouths shut.”
“I guess.”
“Anything else he remembers?”
Thatcher rubbed the back of his neck. “They were light-footed.” He got another questioning look from the sheriff. “I don’t know what to make of that, either, but Tup said they both had a light tread.”
“So our suspects are clever, mute, light-foots.” Bill sighed. “At least we know Elray was telling the truth.”
“About this.”
“You still think he’s lying?”
“About something.”
“How sure are you?”
“Royal flush sure.”
Bill gave a grunt.
Thatcher watched the flickering flashlight beams sweeping across the ground. “The clearing has been pretty much covered. Has anybody checked for tracks leading away from it?”
“A couple of the men tried, but got nowhere. Are you any good at tracking?”
“Stray cows. Wolves, coyotes, bobcats.”
Bill handed him a flashlight. “You’re not looking for scat or paw prints. Don’t venture too far in the dark. I don’t want to have to search for you, too. I need to get home.”
“How’s Mrs. Amos?”
Bill turned away. “Meet me back at the car in ten.”
Thatcher rejoined him in under ten minutes and returned his flashlight. “Too dark to see much.”
“I’ll send a team out after daylight, but I have a feeling our bear trappers are too savvy to leave an easily followed trail.”
Elray had been so fearful of Tup’s wrath, he’d pleaded with them to let him stay in the car to avoid being seen. He’d been hunched down in the backseat under a deputy’s guard. Bill dismissed the deputy, then got into the driver’s seat.
“Y’all find anything?” Elray asked. “I mean, except for Tup.”
Bill didn’t answer. Neither did Thatcher as he climbed into the back with Elray.
“I’m not ignorant enough to jump out of a moving car, Mr. Hutton. You don’t have to ride back here with me.”
At some point over the course of the night, the kid had begun addressing Thatcher respectfully, which amused Thatcher. He didn’t think Elray was a genuinely bad sort, or ignorant, but more hapless than anything, like he’d had the rotten luck to be born into a family where he didn’t truly fit. Which was probably why he was coming to like the kid.
But now, he followed Sheriff Amos’s lead and gave Elray the silent treatment as he settled in beside him. He didn’t feel like talking just now, anyway.
Their silence must’ve been unnerving, because Elray began to chatter. “Only law I broke was to steal another moonshiner’s whiskey, and how can that be a crime? I won’t see a nickel from that. Plus, I was actin’ under orders to cause pain, but I didn’t raise a hand to nobody.”
When neither Thatcher nor the sheriff responded, he continued.
“Them stills was hid so good, weren’t for me, y’all never would’ve found ’em. Y’all should be thankin’ me, not…” He swallowed. “Not whatever y’all’re plannin’.
“What I think is, what y’all ought to do, is keep me locked up in jail, maybe a jail in a faraway town. Just till the dust settles around here. Better yet, put me on that freight train tomorrow morning, and you’ll never have any trouble out of Elray Johnson again. I have a hankering to see Arkansas.”
Bill drove in stony silence.
Thatcher gazed out the window.
Elray gave up on engaging them and lapsed into a brooding silence.
Although by now they were on the main highway, there was little to see. When they passed the Plummers’ place, Thatcher looked up toward the shack, but it was barely discernible against the black sky.
The day he’d come upon Laurel wrestling with the wet sheet, the sky had been purely blue behind her. She’d