“Now the next time you think to take me on, you best kill me. And I mean that. Because if you don't kill me, I will surely kill you. A son of mine tries something like you done back there, he going to be my dead son. And you,” the Old Man pointed at John, “you don't help him. When you get up,” he said to Tom, “you know where the guns and ammunition's at. If we're both still alive come suppertime, we'll know who the boss is around here. No need for asking or telling. We'll just know.” And to John again. “Don't you touch him. He's a big man now. Let him get up on his own.”

Tom lay there a long time, struggling to get his breathing right, to adjust it to the pain he was in. Finally, his right arm folded against his stomach, he rolled up onto his shoulder and knees, then pushed himself up with his left arm. John reached out to lift him, but Tom flailed his arm, keeping him back. “You don't think he's watching you? I got to do this on my own.” Tom struggled to his feet, still holding his left arm out to keep John away. He stumbled and shuffled over to the open paddock for the horses and lowered himself down into a pile of straw.

He stayed there three days, with Granny Jane and Ola May bringing him food and drink. John didn't think they really tended to him. That would risk the Old Man's fury. But they fed him, and John did all his own work and Tom's, and the Old Man never even mentioned Tom's name until the fourth day, when Tom staggered back out from the paddock, still limping, still favoring his right arm, which hung stiffly at his side, and resumed his chores.

“Tom,” the Old Man said when he saw Tom emerge. “See to the tack over there in the shed.” And Tom had simply done it, no questions.

So John fought to be a horned toad instead of the rabbit his instincts demanded. He lay motionless, concealed, or hoping he was concealed, and did not look up, but he did fight the urge to jump up and run. It was tough not to run. It wasn't natural. It wasn't right, but he understood it was the way to survive.

He felt the truck coming before he heard it, the soft shudder of the earth as the truck rolled across it. His muscles began to twitch out of his control. He needed to get up and run. And then he heard the truck, and he heard it get louder and more distinct the closer to them it got. He was stiff as a board now. He couldn't relax his muscles, which were tensed for the run, so he went the other way and tensed them further until they were so tight he couldn't move.