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RORY AND CHET looked at each other in shock. Neither man had expected that. Both men looked back at the Sheriff, trying to figure out if he was telling the truth. Rory finally decided Ponder was lying. He gave the Sheriff a hard look as he shook his head and lifted the gun, aiming directly at Ponder's head again.
Ponder held his hands near his head and cringed, "I'm telling you the truth mister. Those kids ain't dead."
Chet cocked his head as he looked at Ponder. "So...if they ain't dead, where are they?"
Ponder screwed up his face, "If I tell you, I'm a dead man–"
Rory took a step forward, bringing the handgun closer to the Sheriff's head, "You can't lie your way out of this–"
Ponder took a step back, waving his hands in front of him, "I ain't lying. I mean it. They're alive. Isn't that good enough–?"
"No! And if you don't tell me right now, I'll consider you a child killer," Rory replied firmly. "And like Chet says, I have no problems executing a child killer." He took a breath, "Chet, count down to three."
Chet cleared his throat and hitched his pants up, "1...2 –"
Luther Ponder swore, "Okay, okay." He shook his head, took a deep breath and blew it out in frustration, "Okay...look...the kids are working on a big, old cotton plantation down in Mississippi. All the kids are down there. They're all working, okay. They're fine–"
Chet raised his arms and yelled, "They're on a plantation picking cotton! How stupid do you think we are, Luther? Huh? How stupid – shoot him, Rory. Do it–"
"No, no, no," Ponder cried. "The cotton picking is still done by machinery today. It would be cheaper, but we can't have the kids working out in the open like that. Not yet anyway."
"Talk sense, Luther," Chet yelled. He stepped forward, his fists in a ball, "Talk some damn sense."
Ponder swayed in anguish, pushing his fingers through his brown hair. "Look, it was old Tuck's idea–"
Rory glanced at Chet and back to Ponder, "Who?"
Ponder just pushed on as he looked at Chet, "You know about the Knights of the Golden Circle. How the Golden Circle was–"
"A ring of slavery states," Chet stated harshly. "The Southern States, Mexico, Central America, South America Cuba, the Caribbean islands, blah blah blah. We don't need a history lesson. Where are the kids," he yelled.
"That's what I'm trying to tell you," Ponder said as he held his hands out towards Chet. "The original Golden Circle was to have black slaves. The Southern slave-holding class would build an economy so big the government couldn't do nothing about it–"
"You can't tell me you're kidnapping black children. Corry and Emma were white," Chet yelled in frustration. "How stupid do you think we are?"
Ponder shook his head, "No, no, no. It isn't about blacks. It would be too difficult to hold them down today anyway. But think about it. Where's all our clothes from the big stores coming from? Who's building all the running shoes and the tennis shoes for the big sporting goods companies?"
Rory and Chet looked at each other, wondering where this was going.
Ponder ticked them off on his fingers, "Ethiopia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, the Congo, Somalia, Bangladesh, Mali and a whole bunch of other countries who use children in their factories. It's cheap labor that we can't compete with. You know that. All the good American jobs are disappearing and going over to those countries. And we don't do nothing about it. But the Knights of the Golden Circle did. We're doing something about it. Think about all the kids running around today, nobody taking care of them. We dug up a number of the smaller treasure caches and Old Tuck built a factory in Guatemala. That was the first one. There were others in places like El Salvador, Puerto Rico and Columbia. The newest is in Mississippi. Your kids are there. But unlike those countries overseas, we're taking care of them. Hell, most of the families in Central and South America were happy to see them go–"
Chet Calhoun's voice was an incredulous whisper, "You have to be shitting me. You absolutely have to be–"
Crack!
Rory took two steps and dove behind the rear end of the heavy-duty pickup truck as soon as the rifle shot registered in his brain.
Chet was right behind him, landed heavily on the ground behind Rory.
Scrambling around to his knees, Rory used the wheel as cover. Chet scrambled around on his knees behind him, dust and straw from the floor leaving a trail in the air.
Crack!
A bullet pinged off a piece of metal somewhere behind Rory and Chet and both men ducked.
Silence.
Rory looked around behind him, whispering, "Chet?"
Chet was crouched over and he slowly lifted his head, "I'm...I'm okay."
Rory nodded and peeked around the side of the pickup, holding his handgun up and at the ready.
Chet moved forward on his hands and knees, looking over at the door and the window of the barn and then peering around the truck as well, "Where...where did those shots come from?"
"Looks like from the barn doors at the front," Rory said. He looked over at Sheriff Luther Ponder. "But just like up at Cherokee Ridge, the first shot wasn't for either of us."
Chet looked over, "Oh crap."
Ponder was lying on his stomach, head turned towards the red pickup. Half of his face was blown away.
"Shot in the back of the head," Rory said quietly.
A distant screeching sound was heard as a vehicle ripped away on the highway.
Rory was up quickly, heading for the barn doors.
Chet was right behind him.
The barn door was open about 6 inches. Rory pushed the big doors aside and ran for the roadway.
Running as hard as he could, Chet stayed close to him.
Reaching the highway, they both saw a vehicle disappearing in the distance off to the right.
Chet cursed.
"Yeah tell me about it," Rory said as he put his handgun back into the holster under his camouflage jacket.
"Now what?"
Rory looked down at Chet's hand, "You still have the oilskin?"
Chet looked down to see he still had it in his hand. He had squeezed the rolled-up oilskin in his hand so hard it was bent in a U-shape. "Yeah, I guess I do."
Rory looked back at the partially open barn door. Then he gestured to their pickup just ahead, "Get in the pickup and get ready to leave. I'll be right back."
Before Chet could say anything, Rory was running back to the barn. Chet headed straight for the pickup and got in the driver's side. He gently unbent the oilskin and placed it across the back window ledge of the cab. The keys were still in the vehicle and he started it. His heart jumped into his throat when the passenger door was ripped open–
Rory climbed in, "Let's go."
"I almost peed my pants," Chet complained as he put the pickup into gear and drove onto the roadway. A moment later, he asked, "What did you do back there?"
"I wiped your prints off the pickup truck," Rory explained.
Chet's eyebrows went up in surprise as he pressed down on the gas, "I never thought of that. I guess I wouldn't make a very good criminal."
Rory smiled and looked across at Chet, "Are you saying I would?"
"Well...just better than me," Chet replied. He shifted in his seat, "Now what?"
"Do you have any idea who this Old Tuck is?"
Chet shook his head slowly, "I have absolutely no idea. I've never heard that name before. Ever."
Rory nodded his head slowly as they drove. "Okay. Let's take this pickup and the all-terrain vehicle back to your friend. We'll have to get out of here. If Ponder is half right, we can't trust the police around here, that's for sure."
"So we go on the run?" Chet asked.
Rory looked at Chet, "Or take a trip."
Chet nodded, and gripped the steering wheel tighter and accelerated, "Mississippi, here we come."