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The dog snarled behind him, and Morris whirled suddenly, sliding on the damp straw beneath him. Before he could regain his balance, the dog had leaped against his chest, propelling him backward and into the maw of the baling machine. In a moment, full of screams, Emmons was drawn by studded treads into the interior of the machine. The rifle fired once.

Two farmhands from above climbed swiftly down a ladder, and stared with real horror at the man's legs disappearing into the contraption. The machinery ground harshly, with muffled difficulty for a few moments, and then suddenly, with loud whistling and even louder grating, it began to spew out silver-dollar-size bits of bloody flesh, torn clothing, and mangled metal. The baling machine ground to a broken halt while one booted foot still protruded from the hopper.

One of the farmhands rushed out of the barn, calling for help. The dog rushed out after him, still barking. The other farmhand, a strapping black man in his mid-forties, stood still, glanced around to see that there was no one around him. Then he stooped and retrieved the piece of jewellery that had been flung out of the machine and at his feet. He glanced at it briefly, wiped the blood from it with the tail of his shirt, and then placed it in his pants pocket.

The female farmhands timidly entered the barn to determine what had happened to Morris Emmons. When they saw the single foot in the baling machine, they screamed, and ran back out into the sunlight, declaring how that foot was a great deal worse to look at than a whole churchful of open coffins.

Morris Emmons had paid Jack Weaver half the sum for the pigs in cash when the distraught farmer had come to him the day of Merle Weaver's death, and had promised that the remainder would be available at his store sometime Thursday afternoon. Jack was to go by and get it then and also confirm that, according to the bargain, ah the murderous animals had been slaughtered.

Jack Weaver, then, thinking of other things, pulled his pickup on to the red-dirt area in front of Morris Emmons' gas pumps. He got exit of his truck, scratching down on the back of an envelope a list of items he needed for the remainder of the week. The fanner was beneath the awning that protected the pumps and shaded the front of the store before he saw Jim Coltrane's corpse spread before the screen door. A pool of blood had flowed out beneath the body, and the tyre tracks of a vehicle had spread and splattered the liquid farther.

The farmer put his hands over his face and leaned against the ethyl pump for support. He had not one coherent thought. He could not think who might have done it, could not think what he ought to do next, could not even decide whether he himself might be in danger. He shook his head without understanding, and turned only with the approach of an automobile. It was a highway patrol car, with two officers in the front, and another man in the back. This last proved to be Mai Homans who jumped out and ran over to the corpse crying, 'See, he's dead! Morris Emmons went and killed him! No good reason! No reason at all! Pulled out a shotgun and blew him to hell!' Mai Homans shook his head dismally, and stared at Jack Weaver and the two officers. The two policemen stood over the corpse, carefully avoiding stepping in the blood, and appeared to be at as much of a loss as the two farmers.

A second car soon came up and two women, so similar in appearance, that they were distinguished only by their dresses, stepped out and approached the body. They were both determined and solemn, and so alike in demeanour that Jack Weaver could not tell which was the widow, and which only the sister-in-law.

'Y'al! watch out!' cried Mai Homans suddenly, 'he's probably still in there!'

The two women retreated to their car, got in and drove off without having spoken a word, either to each other or to anyone else. Jack Weaver and Mai Homans hurried to the pickup truck, and stood on the side away from the store. They peered through the window of the cab, and watched as the two officers carefully made their way around to the back of the store, surreptitiously peering in the windows.

'They gone get their heads blowed off, I know it!' cried Mai Homans, in great agitation.

'What happened?' stammered Jack Weaver.

Homans ignored him. 'You hear a shot, we gone get in this truck and ride straight out of here, and we not gone look back, 'cause that man is out of his mind.'

'What happened?' the farmer repeated, and then before the other could reply, Weaver suggested, 'Let's get out of here now. Let's leave this place.'

Homans shook his head. 'I want to see if them men get killed. They are crazy to stick their heads in front of the window like that. If I was Morris Emmons inside there, and I had already killed one man, I wouldn't stop for no highway patrol.'

'Morris Emmons killed Jim?'

Homans nodded distractedly, then said, 'No reason. Didn't have no reason for doing it. I don't know why he did it. We was in there in the back, looking at them pigs that went and killed—' Homans broke off, realising who it was that he was talking to. Weaver looked down at the ground, troubled, but then raised his eyes bravely. Homans continued: 'We was in the back, and then we come out, and was about to go. Emmons told Jim to make the dog shut up, and then he shot him dead. Didn't even give him a chance to make the dog get quiet. Then he tried to kill the dog too! Dog got out and Morris began to chase that dog like there was no tomorrow! I don't know if he got him. I ran out the side door, and snuck 'round the edge out here' - he pointed at a fence around the property behind which was a thick hedge of crepe myrtle - 'and I saw Morris was gone. I run out here, and made sure that Jim was dead - and he was - so then I jumped in the truck and got the hell out. Got goddamn glass in my ass, and near 'bout run poor Jim over. Went straight home, and called the patrol. Them crazy men you wouldn't catch me doing anything like that

The two highway patrolmen had just entered the building when Sheriff Garrett and Deputy Barnes drove up from the direction of Pine Cone. They hopped out of the car, the deputy with his gun drawn and waving unsteadily in the general direction of the two farmers.

'They 're in there!' cried Mai Homans. 'Don't know if Morris is in there with 'em or not.'

The sheriff and the deputy advanced cautiously on the building, but the two patrolmen sauntered out, shaking their heads and shrugging. All the law officers then gathered round M^l Homans and listened to his story told again, and every few seconds they glanced uneasily towards the corpse.

At the end of the tale, Mai Homans pleaded, 'Hey, cain't we move him, y'all? He's starting to draw the flies. Is the ambulance coming out here?'

Sheriff Garrett nodded. 'On their way now. Ought to have been here already.'

'Where you suppose he could be? Morris, I mean. You didn't see nothing, did you, Mr Weaver?' asked the sheriff.

Jack Weaver shook his head. 'That's his truck I see 'round back. He didn't take it. He must be around.'

'He went after the dog', said Mai lamely.

All six men looked around themselves uneasily, and moved into the shade of the tin awning, where they weren't such targets. 'Maybe we ought just to go on inside and wait for the ambulance.' This suggestion was taken up, but just as the sheriff stepped through the door, he heard the radio in his patrol car. He sent Deputy Barnes to receive the information.

Barnes moved warily out to the car, and actually lay down across the front seat before he took the receiver. A few moments later he hurried back across the lot to the store, motioning the men out.

'Come on!' he shouted. 'Morris Emmons is dead too!' He pointed out across the field. 'Mr Crane called in. Morris

r.A. -
h

Emmons chased that dog through the peanuts, ran in the bam, and then jumped in the baler. Tore the damn thing up. Mr Crane's gone have to buy a new one. He's real mad about it too.'

The men winced. The two highway patrolmen got into their car, neglecting Mai Homans, and drove off in the direction of the neighbouring farm.

The sheriff turned to Homans and Weaver. 'You two want to come? You might not want to see.'

Mai Homans replied Immediately, 'Yeah, I wouldn't miss it for the world. He killed ol' Jim, and Jim was practically my brother and he deserves whatever he got. He deserved, and I want to see him in it.'

Jack Weaver touched Homans on the shoulder, and said, 'You go on. I don't want to see nothing. I'll wait here for the ambulance.'

Homans glanced guiltily at the corpse of his brother-in-law; he had forgotten. 'Yeah, I'd be mighty grateful, Jack, if you would. I just cain't bear looking at poor Jim.'

Jack said nothing, and stood stiff armed against his track while the sheriff, the deputy, and Mai Homans drove off.

A car drove up a few moments later, wanting gasoline, but Jack kept them back from the pumps and explained that there had been a terrible accident and that they would have to go on to the Shell station three miles up ahead. The two women inside demanded to know what sort of accident, but Weaver only shook his head.

Hie farmer then went inside the store and came out with a large piece of canvas with which he covered the body of the slain man. He stood for a moment in the doorway, waiting for the ambulance, but when it failed to come he moved briefly to the back of the store, opened the door of the cooling room in the back, and stared at the wall laden with the heads of his own slaughtered swine. lie recognised Louise, and made note that her jaw had been ripped open. That seemed fitting.

He came out front when he heard the ambulance siren, and while the undertaker and the coroner made themselves busy with the corpse of Jim Coltrane, Jack Weaver toid them what he knew of the motiveless murder. 'And you better put him over to one side, 'cause you got another stop to make over at Mr Crane's.'

The coroner and the undertaker looked up curiously. 'And you better take a couple of croker sacks, too, 'cause a stretcher is not gone do you no good at all...' The fanner was not trying to be humorous.

On the short ride from Morris Emmons' store to Mr Crane's farm, Sheriff Garrett questioned Mai Homans again on the possible motive for the unexpected murder. Homans again went over what had happened, and in the third telling, he mentioned the necklace that had fallen out of the sow's mouth. He also recalled that it was Dean Howell's wife who had been looking for it.

'That's just real peculiar', said the sheriff thoughtfully.

'Sure is', chimed in the deputy. 'I never heard of nothing worth having come out of pig's mouth before. They say sometimes you cut open a fish and find a ring that somebody throwed off a ship or something, but hardly nobody - and for sure nobody around here - throws jewellery in the pigpen.'

'So, anyway', said Mai. 'Jim and 1 put it 'round his neck, just making fun you know, calling him a goddamn hippie and like that, and he laughed, and then five minutes later he went and blew Jim to kingdom come, and I don't know why. I don't know why he took out after that dog like he did either - but better the dog than me.'

Sheriff Garrett was puzzled by the motiveless crime and the subsequent death of Morris Emmons in the baling machine. He simply dismissed the pait about the amulet as having nothing really of importance to do with the actual fact of the murder. Morris Emmons, the sheriff considered, knew what a baling machine was; he knew how the damn thing worked, and he knew that you weren't, above all, supposed to jump inside it. The sheriff was as uncomfortable now as he had been last week, with the deaths of the Shirleys and the Simses.

Why had Emmons killed Jim Coltrane? Why had he killed himself? Why had he
not
killed Mai Homans? And Mai Homans, thought the sheriff, glancing in the rear-view mirror, had
not
been the more likeable of the two.

Sheriff Garrett and Deputy Barnes did not enter Mr Crane's

barn happily. They had lost count of the number of maimed and disfigured corpses they had come across in the past week. It wasn't something that they had yet grown used to, and they hoped that they never would.

Garrett prodded the protruding foot with the handle of a shovel, and thought that investigation enough. He came back out into the sunlight, sweating not entirely from the heat, and prepared to wait for the coroner and the undertaker. 'I think I'm just gone let them take care of this one', the sheriff said in an undertone to the two highway patrolmen. 'I mean, I don't mind when they just get shot up, 'cause they're in one piece, and you can pick 'em up and throw 'em in the back seat if you have to, but I don't want to have to go around and start picking 'em up over all creation. You know what I mean?'

The two patrolmen nodded, and indicated that since there was nothing else really to be done, they might just go on off and share a couple of beers. It was early in the day for it, but staring at coipses made a man thirsty. And they might need it, just to get through the remainder of the afternoon.

The sheriff nodded and waved them off. While the deputy questioned Ma! Homans again on everything that he had already said three times over, and attempted to give the farmer the impression that he was under suspicion for both deaths, the sheriff went over and talked to a number of the farmhands who had been witness to the dreadful accident.

The sheriff was best acquainted with Johnny Washington. This man had spent a couple of weeks in the diminutive Pine Cone jail, under indictment for second-degree murder, and the sheriff knew him for a trustworthy man. Johnny had seen the accident from above, and was able to tell the sheriff that Morris Emmons' death was entirely an accident, that the bird dog had pushed him off balance, and that, quite by accident, Morris had tipped over backward into the baling machine.