The Prescott Arrangements

The staging area for the much ballyhooed manhunt was the fairgrounds north of Holman. Entrance to the wire-fenced area was via a formerly pretentious archway, the twin limestone bases of which supported a weathered wooden segment made of sawed-up bed slats. The curved upper portion leaned markedly from the vertical, the victim of too many errantly-driven carnival trucks. One limestone pillar was hollow and served as a claustrophobic ticket booth. The architect rightly figured that anyone who could stand the damp sarcophagus interior would be staunch enough psychologically not to mind sharing accommodation with spiders and centipedes. At the moment all but the hardiest of these had frozen to death anyway, leaving only their multilegged corpses for the drafts to blow about.

The manhunt was the masculine event of the year, the anticipation running as high among the good old brethren as a civic tea for Mrs. Eisenhower or a visit from the new queen would have generated among the women. In fact one of the primary attractions was the very lack of feminine influence. Cheeks long forbidden cuds of chewing tobacco distended in studied unconcern over gobs of Brown Mule and Red Man bought specifically for the day. All that a woman could do during this rare rutting ritual was to bid her man 'Be careful' as she held the screen door open for him in the cold pre-dawn, hoping all the while that he could somehow avoid the three imminent dangers of the day: 1) shooting himself, 2) being shot by a fellow searcher, and 3) (much less a worry), shooting a fellow searcher.

Sheriff McKesson had sprung the Nelson boys, who were awaiting their day in court for transporting. They were, after all, the best in the county with matters automotive, and in fact owned off-road vehicles that were faster across a pasture than most cars along a highway, even on those occasions when the former were impeded by a full 200 gallons in the auxiliary tank. The winter-drab fairgrounds suddenly turned as resplendent as they had been when the September carnival had come to Holman for its annual three-day run. But in place of broken-down clowns in harlequin suits and floppy shoes were husky-bellied service station attendants and wiry clerks from auto parts houses, all clad in red and black checked coats and rawhide-laced hunting boots. Forty-five caliber automatics stolen from the Army nine years before decorated many a right hip, and high-wheeled pick-up trucks, the most awesome of which boasted winches on the front bumper, were the de rigueur transport of the day. The pre-dawn December wind blustered its northerly blasts lethally across the open fairgrounds, but nowhere did anyone sit sipping coffee in the cab of his pick-up. Instead members of the plaid assemblage milled aimlessly, hands in hip pockets of blue jeans, the only visible purpose of the milling apparent being to spit tobacco juice as near as possible to the toe of another's boot, whose owner unconcernedly feigned nonchalance, pretending that he had not spent an hour and a half last night polishing them to a high sheen. One truck held the homemade wooden boxes with chicken wire doors, boxes that betrayed the presence of trailing dogs. But a peep into the dark dog boxes revealed no canine presence except possibly a passing glint of a shiny dog retina.

Lud Cain strode prominently among the various subgroups, undoubtedly suffering from the cold in his starched and creased khaki uniform shirt, but apparently loath to put on a coat and thereby cover the shiny deputy's badge that proclaimed him the only Brevet General under Field Marshall McKesson. Lud put his hammy hand on the shoulders of a few, probably those he recognized from the cross-burning civic organization for which he was program chairman.

Among these many mavens of machismo an unbiased eye might be forgiven for fixing upon a shiny black 1940 Packard, its large exhaust pipe burbling forth clouds of white smoke to be swept away by the cutting gusts of wind. Mason sat as the car's only occupant, and all but the loudest sounds from the outside were drowned out by the whistle of the wind and the louder mechanical roar of the heater turned up full blast.