He couldn’t tell how much time had passed when he woke up, but the sun hung low in the blue Georgia sky. He was alone. Mosquitos had bitten him all over his arms and face and they buzzed around his head in a maddening swarm. He couldn’t bat them away because his wrists were firmly held by a pair of bright chrome handcuffs. Jerry jerked them apart, but the cold steel only cut into the flesh of his wrists. There was no way to break them or get them off. But maybe he could make it back to the road. He didn’t know why the sheriff had left him alone like this, but he wasn’t about to wait around for him to come back.

He got up on one knee and almost passed out again from the pain throbbing through his head. It felt as if somebody had his head between two ball peen hammers, batting it back and forth. He had to let several minutes pass by before he could get to his feet. The pounding in his temples sent jolts of agony racing through him with every step he took, but he didn’t take very many. He stopped when he saw Sheriff Taylor blocking the trail. The fat man had been watching him all the time. And in his hands he was holding a very large diamond-back rattler. It was on the end of a stick with a wire loop drawing tightly around its neck. The bulk of its thick body moved and swayed in the air below the head. The forked tongue flickered and tested the air. Jerry froze where he stood. He was about to be murdered; there was no doubt in his mind.

“Interestin’ thing about these snakes,” the sheriff said. “Catch ’em any time you want to. All you got to have’s a little piece a garden hose and a teaspoon of gas. Just stick the hose down his hole and pour in the gas. It runs ’em out every time. They’ll probably find your body sometime this winter, after deer season opens. Won’t be nobody around till then. I ’preciate you leavin’ me the dope, though.” Then he came after Jerry.

Jerry tried to run, but the pain was bad. The fat man was laughing and wheezing as he closed in on him. Jerry turned and tried to get closer to the road, but he knew he’d never make it, not while he was still hurt like this. If the situation hadn’t been so deadly it would have been ridiculous. Jerry was running and stumbling and trying to jump the clumps of palmetto and sawbriar, and the sheriff was whooping and chasing him like a fun-loving schoolboy after a little girl with pigtails, only there was no teacher for Jerry to run to. Taylor was about to catch him.