“Sure. It’s him is at the bottom of it. He made me do that holdup. You know I used to run with Bob’s gang a whole lot, when we was pore an’ lived up the river. I was up to most any sort of devilment them days—didn’t have no more sense. Them boys sure was a rough crew. They used to raid warehouses along the river. But I never was in any of that.
“I reckon,” he went on after a dubious pause, “you’ve mebbe heerd about Jeff Forder gettin’ killed. You ain’t? It was three years ago, an’ they ain’t never yet found out who killed him. Jeff was a lazy, no-’count piny-woods squatter from ’cross the river, an’ we was all playin’ poker on Bob’s boat. The boys had considerable money that night an’ I was a-winnin’ it. Jeff had brung over a gallon of corn liquor, an’ liquor always did make Jeff right mean. First thing I remember, Jeff an’ me got to cussin’ over a pot, an’ the next thing was that everybody’s guns was all a-goin’ off at once. An’ there was Jeff laid out stiff.
“I dunno who shot him. I know I pulled my gun an’ blazed like all the rest. They all said it was me. I reckon likely it was. Anyways, they told me to get outer the State an’ lay low. Bob said he’d keep it dark. I went an’ hid in the swamps for a week, an’ most starved, an’ then went home. Nobody never was indicted for that killin’. Bob told me they sunk the body in the river, and it was all safe. Mebbe I’d never had no trouble if we hadn’t come into that money.
“After that, Bob kept hangin’ round. He touched me up for a hundred dollars. I didn’t mind givin’ it to him. Shucks! Bob was an old friend, an’ he’d got me outer a scrape, an’ what’s a hundred dollars? But then he touched me up again, an’ he kept right on. At last I kicked, an’ then he told me right out that he knew I killed Jeff Forder, an’ I just nachrilly had to give him what he wanted.”
“So you’ve been buying him off ever since?”
“I sure have. He must have got two or three thousand outer me, all together.”
“Did Hanna know anything about this?”
“Yes, he did. I dunno how. But he always stood by me. He helped me get money outer the old man on some excuse or another, when I had to pay Bob. Hanna surely helped me a whole lot. Bob used to come and blow the horn for me to go down an’ meet him in the woods, and I had to blow back. Lots of times I used to get Hanna to go to meet Bob ’stead of me, ’cause I was afraid to be seen near that cursed boat. Yes, Hanna sure helped me a whole lot there.”
“Yes, I reckon he did!” said Lockwood with irony. “I’ll bet Hanna got his rake-off on that blackmail. But how did all this bring you to hold up Craig’s car?”
“Why, Bob blowed for me yesterday and said he’d got to have a thousand dollars. It was the last time, he said. They was all goin’ to Mobile, an’ then way up the Warrior River, an’ clear outer the Alabama for good. I was sure glad to hear it. But I didn’t have no thousand dollars. I couldn’t raise it that day noways. Then Bob put me up to stoppin’ the car. He said Williams was all alone, with twelve hundred dollars on him, and it’d be dead easy. I was that desperate I didn’t care much whether I got the money or Williams shot me. I ain’t seen Bob since. I dunno what’s goin’ to happen when he finds I ain’t got the thousand dollars, but I’m right in a corner now, an’ I’ll fight.”