Trail of the Twisted Cros by Buck Sanders

go.”
    “Jumpin’ Jesus, sounds like you boys are fixed to fricassee me!” Rogers quipped. “And I ain’t even circumcised.”
    Again, the guards appreciated the levity. There were far too few jokes around the penitentiary, Rogers had told them.
    The guards escorted Rogers down the long, dimly lit corridor leading from general cell blocks to the seclusion section. He
     was deposited in a room that looked amazingly like a Holiday Inn single, including the picture of a ship at sea bolted to
     the wall.
    The guards apologized for having to put Rogers into “deep freeze,” as they called it.
    “That’s all right,” Rogers assured them. “You’re just following orders.”
    Ten minutes later, his evening meal was delivered. When he had finished, he put his finger to the bottom of the metal plate
     and slid off a piece of paper stuck to the underside.
    A guard standing by took the plate as Rogers palmed the small bit of paper. When the guard’s back was turned, Rogers quickly
     stole a glance at the paper. The note was brief:
    “J: It’s on.”
    He folded up the paper and deposited it in his mouth, between his cheek and gum. Later, when the guard no longer watched through
     the night, he would chew it up.
    FAIRMONT, West Virginia
    Outside the city about eight miles, the man had said.
    “That’ll be Colin’s place, the one that looks the dirtiest and low-downest and scrubbiest, ‘cause Colin don’t want to do no
     more work than absolutely necessary to feed that tribe of his, and maybe attract some coons to shoot and a crop of willow
     trees to hide his still behind.”
    Slayton followed the directions of the filling station operator, right down to the final turn at the big rock, and came across
     a spot that met the dismal condition advertised.
    A palpable hostility hung over the place, beginning with the heavily bolted gate entrance to the farmhouse, the snarling dogs
     penned up in the heat, barking insanely at his approach, and ending with the drawn curtains and a red sign on the door proclaiming
     “No Soliciters.” Slayton wondered if anyone in his right mind would try to sell something here besides material for Ku Klux
     Klan robes.
    The hostility suddenly became downright tangible, in the form of crackling rifle fire aimed at Ben Slayton.
    Slayton dropped to the ground, instinctively, at the first sound of gunfire. He rolled quickly into a ball, flailing himself
     toward a wide gum tree for cover.
    On the way, Slayton saw the gunman. An old man around the corner of the house, firing what appeared to be a 30-odd-six rifle
     toward Slayton with fairly frightening accuracy. A slug ripped through the sleeve of his jacket. Another slug hit the ground
     just below his belly before he won his cover.
    Slayton pulled his side arm from his belt, a .45-caliber long-nose eight-shot revolver he had selected for calling on the
     home of Colin Hays. He poked his head around one end of the gum tree, then recoiled when his appearance was met by a retaliatory
     blast.
    But the gunman was too confident. Slayton saw him leave the house just before he pulled his head back out of the range of
     fire, saw the man begin running toward him.
    Slayton now readied the revolver, poked his head around the other end of the tree, and opened fire at the charging man.
    He got off four rounds, two of which found their mark in one of the gunman’s legs. The man’s rifle flew out of his hands,
     almost within Slayton’s reach. He fell to the ground, writhing in pain, and coloring the gray West Virginia silt with bright
     red.
    Slayton peered tentatively around the tree. All was quiet. But too quiet. And yet he couldn’t very well stay behind that gum
     tree all day.
    He stood up and walked toward the man he had felled. When he got to him, he leaned over, pretending that all his attention
     was on the fallen man. But from the corner of his eye, he saw the rifle barrel rising above the sill of a front window.
    He couldn’t swear to it,