51

“NOW LOOKA HERE, dammit, I got something important t’ say and . . .” That was as far as he got.

One of the Elevens, one of the sons of bitches who’d beat him up the first time, coldcocked him.

Jug barely sensed the punch coming, catching only a glimpse of movement from his left. The next thing he knew there was a sound like a rotten melon being thumped, except real loud, and he was out quick as a candle flame in a windstorm.

The next thing he knew after that he was shivering cold and lying on a hard, gritty surface. The whole left side of his face felt numb and sort of lumpy. That would be from the sucker punch the Eleven gave him. Miserable SOB. Let somebody else hold him so the Eleven could hit him. Guy probably felt like a big strong man for winning that fight. Yessir.

Jug tried to open his eyes. Nothing happened. After a few seconds he realized there was nothing wrong with his eyes. For a moment there he’d thought they were swollen shut, but he hadn’t been thoroughly beaten up this time. Just punched that once. He was pretty sure about that from the feeling in his face. The reason he couldn’t see, he understood now, was that it was dark.

Wherever the hell he was, it was dark as a lawyer’s soul. And he was alone.

That seemed sort of strange. All the menfolk in Bonner had been gathered around to capture him. Now he was alone in the dark someplace.

He moved his hands and was pleased to discover they weren’t tied. Neither were his feet.

His clothes were still damp. But only damp, not soaking wet like they’d been after those hours—hour, half hour, whatever—he’d spent in the creek. He must have been lying here for a good while. Certainly long enough for it to come night. It’d been late afternoon when they got him.

Four thirty-something was the official time, for which some unsympathetic SOB won a jackpot. Thirty-eight, that’s what it had been, he remembered now. Four thirty-eight. Jeez. No telling what time it was now, of course.

He lay there trying to gather both wits and strength and realized he was still so damned cold he was all atremble. Shivering and shaking like he had the ague. He’d gotten it once before. That’d been down in Mexico. This was kind of like that had been.

What he needed was a blanket or at least something dry to put over him and keep some of the cold out. He got his bearings enough to sit up and discovered he couldn’t swing his feet down to the floor for the simple reason that it was the floor he was lying on. No idea whose floor, but he was on a floor. That’s why the surface felt gritty. It was a floor and not a particularly clean one.

He felt around but didn’t encounter anything except dirt. He wasn’t sure but he thought the floor was packed dirt. Glazed with wet cow manure probably, which made for a fairly good surface, if not exactly what a man might want to fall asleep on.

He blinked and sat there for a few minutes and after a bit he thought he could make out a dark gray rectangular outline laid over the pure black of everything else. That would be starlight showing past the edges of a door, he decided.

Pretty big door, too. He must be in a shed. They’d thrown him into somebody’s shed.

Oh, God, he thought.

The Elevens had yammered at him about hanging.

Please, God, they hadn’t thrown him in here until daybreak so they could take him out and hang him.

He’d been shivering before from the cold. Now he had an even better reason to be trembling.