“What’ll I tell him, Slip?”
“I cayn’t go back, Buck!” Slip whimpered. “Hit’s a hanging crime!”
“Something may have changed,” Buck suggested.
“No, suh, I’ve heard. Hit were my bullet—I’ve heard. Hit’s a trial, an’ hit’s—hit’s hanging!”
“Sh-h! Not so loud!” Buck warned. “If it’s lawyer money you need?”
“I got ’leven hundred, an’ a trial lawyer’ll cost only a thousand, Buck! Yo’s a friend—Lawse! I’d shore like to talk to him. He’s no detector, Parson Rasba yain’t. Why, he’s be’n right into a stillhouse, drunk the moonshine—an’ no revenue hearn of hit, the way some feared. My sister wrote me. I want to talk to him, Buck, but—but not let them outside know.”
“I’ll fix it,” Buck promised, carrying out steaming coffee, a plate of sandwiches, and two big oranges for the parson.
He returned, filled up the trays for the others, and took them out. Soon the crowd were sitting around, or leaning against the heavy crap table, talking and listening.
“Yo’ come way down from the mountangs to find a 125 mammy’s boy?” someone asked, his tone showing better than his words how well he understood the sacrifice of that journey.
“Hit’s seo,” Rasba nodded. “I’m partly to blame, myse’f, for his coming down. I was a mountain preacher, exhorter, and I ’lowed I knowed hit all. One candlelight I had a congregation an’ I hit ’er up loud that night, an’ I ’lowed I’d done right smart with those people’s souls. But—but hit were no such thing. This boy, Jock, he runned away that night, ’count of my foolishness, an’ we know he’s down thisaway; if I could git to find him, his mammy’d shore be comforted. She’s a heap more faith in me’n I have, but I come down yeah. Likely I couldn’t do much for that boy, but I kin show I’d like to.”