The days that followed were all alike: days of toil that began before sunrise, continued through blazing middays, and ended after sundown. Always, before and behind, the gang picked and shovelled, always the eyes of the guards were turning toward him. Always against the horizon the mountains, flecked at midday with clouds and shadows, beckoned him like a mirage.
Sometimes from the top of a hill, under his broad hat, he studied the lay of the land. In his mind he mapped out the water courses and the stretches of woodland that led with least open country to the mountains. Sometimes at night he dreamed of a double cabin in a cool mountain-girded valley.
"You want to watch him," warned Simmons again and again.
Once Molly came to see him. Simmons himself, at the guard tent, questioned her roughly, then shrugged his shoulders and let her pass. Throughout the interview, though, he sat over there by the guard tent, his eyes always on the two of them; and at his side, but never looking up at him, lay Sheriff, the bloodhound, panting.
She told him how hard she had tried to get him off; how hard his friends had tried. They had been to see the solicitor, the sheriff, and finally the governor himself. "They were all nice to me, Tom," she declared; "but they say they can't do nothin'. The governor talked to me a long time in his office. He asked all about us—where we lived, how many children we had, how it all happened. But he says he was elected to see the laws carried out, an' can't interfere.
"We done everything we could," she went on, "even the folks that live 'round here an' have seen you workin', po' man, with the gang—even they tried to help. Squire Kirby an' Mr. Earle, him that lives in that big white house they call Freedom Hill, up the road whar you been workin', they headed the petition. They are the richest folks 'round here. They heered the trial, Tom. They know you was set upon in that low-down place. Mr. Earle, he went to the capitol with me to see the governor. Him and the governor are ol' friends. Mr. Earle, he bought my railroad ticket and paid my board in Greenville. He talked to the governor for over an hour.... But"—she shook her head—"it never done no good.
"Here's what folks say, though," she whispered quickly. "If you got away back into Tennessee the law wouldn't follow you. Mr. Earle, he told me that, just yistiddy, Tom. Squire Kirby he says the same thing. Tom, the sheriff hisself as good as told me. The governor wouldn't requisition you, they all's good as said. He wouldn't, either, Tom. I know he wouldn't."
Then her eyes widened with horror. "Oh, I wasn't goin' to tell you that!" she gasped. "Don't try to get away. That man over yonder, he'll kill you, Tom. Folks said he would—said he had killed two. I know he will, since I've seen him. He's awful, awful!"
She went on protesting, in terror that he would try to do the very thing she had suggested. She told him about the bloodhound. The newspaper men said he never lost a trail—that nobody who stayed on the ground had ever got away from him.