The convict said: “Come on, kid, before I cuff yuh a good one.”
He was holding Lemmie half way up, like a sack of potatoes. Then suddenly he dropped him. “Shut up that cryin’!” he screamed at him. So electrifying was the tone of his voice that Lemmie stopped dead still. Something was the matter. The convict was standing by the tree, listening attentively into the forest.
Then Jep heard it, too. Something was coming through the undergrowth. He heard twigs snapping and bushes being scraped past. From where he was sitting he could see what it was. There were ten men closing in a circle around the clearing. But the convict could only hear the noise. He wasn’t sure what it was; he became panicky.
Lemmie yelled, “Here we are! Here—Over he—!” But the convict had grabbed him; he was furtively pressing Lemmie’s face into the ground. The little body was squirming and kicking, and then, all of a sudden, it went limp and lay very still. Jep saw the convict take his hand off the back of the boy’s head. Something was the matter with Lemmie. Then Jep saw it in a flash; it was like something he just knew—Lemmie was dead! The convict had smothered him to death!
The men were no longer creeping in; they broke through the underbrush furiously. The convict saw he was trapped; he backed up against the trunk of Jep’s tree and began to whine.
And then it was all over. Jep yelled and the men held their arms to catch him. He jumped and landed, unharmed, in the arms of one of the men.
The convict was handcuffed and crying. “That damned kid! It was all his fault!”
Jep looked over at Lemmie. One of the men was bending over him. Jep heard him turn to a man by his side and say, “Yep, he’s dead all right.”
It was then that Jep began to laugh; he laughed hysterically, and hot salty tears ran down his cheeks.
The End
