The Rock Hole by Reavis Z. Wortham

Author:Reavis Z. Wortham
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2011-10-26T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Ned was so frustrated he felt like throwing his badge out the window and going home. Cody was running with a married woman and there was sure to be a killing over it pretty soon. Someone was torturing and killing animals and leaving threats toward children. Ralston was causing problems in the field, and even with everyone in Lamar County looking, no one could find Lightfoot.

It didn’t make sense. How could they expect him to locate a wraith that appeared one night to slaughter eight people in a shack out in the middle of a pasture and then vanish into thin air?

It was almost too much for a man who just wanted to get his crop in.

Ralston was already gone from the bottoms when he arrived from the mess at the store. Most of the hands were bent over the cotton plants in the field. A few idled near the high-sided cotton wagon in the shade of a nearby red oak. Ned stopped in the dirt road and got out.

“What’s the matter?”

The group by the wagon looked undecided for a moment, until one of the younger men stepped forward. He spoke in a halting, nervous voice. “Mister Ned, we’re kindly afraid to be around here. We hear the Devil is working these fields and we don’t want to be messin’ ’round with him.”

“The only thing working around here are them.” Ned pointed to the hands in the field. They’d stopped picking to stand in the rows, shading their eyes to watch the meeting under the tree. “Or they was.”

“You know what I mean Mr. Ned. Somebody’s been sacrificing animals down here.”

“You’re Sheffield Roosevelt’s boy Gilbert, aren’t you?”

“Yessir.”

“He doing all right?”

Gilbert didn’t want to talk about his daddy. It made him uncomfortable because he and Ned had known each other all their lives. He wanted to settle the matter of the animal mutilations instead of talking like they were in the church yard.

“Well, since he’s quit working, he’s stove up. He sets on the porch and dips snuff these days, complaining about his back.”

Ned nodded at the answer and toed the dirt, thinking. “Naw, Gilbert, that sacrificing thing ain’t entirely true as far as I know. Somebody is torturing and killing animals, that’s a fact, but I don’t believe there’s any booger-bear or devil involved in it. I didn’t want to tell anybody because I didn’t know enough to talk about. Still don’t.”

The hands shuffled uneasily and gazed across the shimmering field. “You ain’t caught him yet?” Gilbert stated the obvious more for himself than for an answer.

“Not yet.”

They waited some more.

“Mr. Ned, we got that to worry about and now Ralston thinks you might need to do something for us since all these killin’s have started around here. You know, y’all ain’t got aholt of the man who killed all them poor Indian folks, either. Maybe if you, uh, paid us a little more for bein’ afraid and all…”

“Do for you? Where’s Ralston now?”

“Him and three others left to go back to town.

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