Then he made a move toward the colored man and the one with the gun reached out to push him back. He feinted a swipe at the man’s hand, still looking at the Negro, making it appear that his only thought was an obsession to get back at the man named Creighton. This happened very fast. The three coming in from behind were still moving slowly and were about twenty feet away when Corey started to lunge toward the colored man. The one with the gun said, “What are you doing? You a lunatic or something?” and Corey swerved in that instant, his fist hitting the gunman in the throat, his other hand closing on the gunman’s wrist, twisting it hard. The gunman gurgled and the gun fell from his hand. The colored man made a grab for Corey and missed, then yelled at the three who were coming in running, “Don’t—don’t—don’t shoot.”

There was no shooting. There was no way to get a shot at Corey without the possibility of the bullet hitting the other two. Both of them were grabbing for Corey, but he wriggled away and ran down the alley.

He ran very fast, cut around the corner of the house, then across the backyard. He was thinking, you gotta make it to Ingersoll, gotta find another alley and get through it and make Ingersoll before they—

At that moment he heard them shouting and cursing in a conference, the loudest voice declaring, “—do it my way. We split and you two get on Ingersoll. You see him comin’ out of an alley, you’ll be ready and you’ll get him.”

That’s intelligent, Corey approved. Then he switched his own thinking away from Ingersoll and looked in the other direction where all the backyards gave way to the swamplands.

You can’t go in there, he thought. You get in them swamplands it’s a hundred-to-one you won’t get out. You know them swamplands.