And then we heerd a shouting up the dirt road and young uns whistling and women and girls screaming and chickens scattering.

“Yonder comes Uncle Benny!”

And yonder he came.

The Model-T was swooping down like a bull-bat after a mosquito. The water was boiling up out of the radiator in a foot-high stream. The seven pieded bird-dogs were hanging out of the back seat and trembling as if they craved to tell the things they’d seen. And behind Uncle Benny was a string of deputy sheriffs in Fords and Chevrolets and motorcycles that had gathered together from every town between Oak Bluff and Ocala. And Uncle Benny was hunched over the steering wheel with them two tufts of goat-horn hair sticking up in the breeze—and the minute I laid eyes on him I knowed he wasn’t one mite crazier than he ever had been. I knowed right then Doc had laid out to get even with him and had lied on him all the way down the road.

It was too late then. I knowed, whatever happened, there’d be people to the end of his life would always believe it. I knowed there’d be young uns running from him and niggers hiding. And I knowed there wasn’t a thing in the world now could keep him out of Chattahoochie for the time being. I knowed he’d fight when he was taken, and all them mad and hot and dusty deputies would get him to the lunatic asylum quicker than a black snake can cross hot ashes. And once a man that has cut the fool all his life, like Uncle Benny, is in the crazy-house, there’ll be plenty of folks to say to keep him there.

It was too late. Uncle Benny was bearing down toward the garage and right in front of him was the barricade.

Doc hollered, “Be ready to jump on him when he stops!”

Stop? Uncle Benny stop? He kept right on coming. The sight of that chicken-wire barricade was no more to him than an aggravation. Uncle Benny and the Model-T dived into the barricade like a water-turkey into a pool. The barricade held. And the next thing we knowed, the Ford had somersaulted over the fencing and crumpled up like a paper shoe-box and scattered bird-dogs over ten acres and laid Uncle Benny in a heap over against the wall of the smoke-house. I was raised to use the language of a lady, but I couldn’t hold in.

“Doc,” I said, “you low-down son of a ——”

He said, “Mis’ Dover, the name’s too good. I’ve killed my friend.”

Killed him? Killed Uncle Benny? It can’t be done until the Almighty Hisself hollers “Sooey!” Uncle Benny was messed up considerable, but him nor none of the bird-dogs was dead.