The seated man had recovered his breath and was struggling to his feet, slapping the dust from his tight breeches. He extended a large hand toward Finch.
"Put her there!" he bellowed. "Anybody that can set Hyperion Weems back on his arse is worth knowing! What's your name?"
"Finch Arthur Poet," said Finch.
"Huh? That's a hell of a funny name. I once knowed a guy named Dishwasher, and they's a poet up in Memphis, but you're the first one named that I ever seen."
"Arthur Finch, if you prefer it that way," said Finch. "They turned my name around on me, the last place I stayed."
Hyperion Weems emitted a whistle and gave Finch a sidewise glance; "You mean to say a individual like you let someone monkey with his name?"
"Come on," said the man with the pistol. "Less chatter and more progress." He emphasized the point by jabbing Finch in the kidney with the muzzle.
Not much ingratiated, Finch marched up the hill, At the top a gentle voice issued from the lavender car. "Turn around, suh, so I can look you over. Little big in the belly for active membership, but I reckon we can find use for you."
"Am I supposed to be grateful?" asked Finch.
"Why," said the voice, "I wouldn't put it that way, suh. You wouldn't be wandering round the country in those clothes, suh, looking for a place to light^ unless you were a member of the unemployed. I'm offering you membership in a very exclusive Utr'y club, yes indeedy, very exelusive. We don't ask nobody to be honored twice, mostly because they couldn't hyar us if we were so to debase ourselves."
"Better hurry, Colonel," said the man with the gun. "The Arcadians ain't far behind."
"Get in, suh," said the voice. Finch had identified its owner as a powerfully built man of about his own age, in a white cotton suit, black string tie and wide black hat. A gray moustache and goatee went with the ensemble, though the man's face did not. It was an egregriously unpleasant face, with a nose that must have been broken in four different ways, and eyes of such an abnormally pale blue-gray that they made the pupils look like pin-points.
Another prod with the pistol reinforced the invitation. Finch, remembering the policeman's maxim that you can't wrassle a bull, climbed in, followed by Hyperion Weems and the man with the gun. The colored driver slid the vast contraption into motion without a perceptible jerk.
They picked up speed steadily; at Florence there was no slowing down, only a warning blat from a tremendous horn, and the car sped through with natives scrambling for safety. As they rolled out of town along Route 72 there was another blat far in the rear. The Colonel said: "Step on it, Janus!"
The bridge over the Tennessee flashed by. Finch's stomach began to contract in little twinges of apprehension, though none of the other passengers appeared disturbed. At each turn the car began to take little tentative skids. The road changed from asphalt to gravel, on whose washboard surface the wheels drummed. On a particularly acute curve the rear end skidded wide till the whole countryside revolved, and Finch expected to see them headed back the way they had come. Janus twirled the wheel this way and that; the car swung through a series of pendulumlike oscillations before settling down to a steady course. Finch felt cold sweat on his face, and his knuckles were white where they gripped the sides of his jump-seat.
The Colonel's voice was smooth as honey: "Can't you go maybe a little faster, Janus?" Finch gulped and took his eyes from the road. "Hyear they come, Colonel," said Hyperion Weems. "Do yo' stuff," said the Colonel.
Finch noticed that the man in the white suit had not even turned his head. He forced himself to look out the rear window. The cloud of dust obscured almost everything but" an occasional glimpse of the cream-colored car following, and it was a couple of moments before he could pick out the referent of Weems' remark—a third car, perhaps a quarter-mile behind, and following at a pace as furious as their own.
Weems spun a crank and a shelf opened out in the front of the passenger section of the limousine. Instead of the travelling bar it might have contained this held a pair of rifles in a velvet-lined case. A second crank opened a trap-door up and back in the roof. There was a movable shutter in this object; Weems carefully laid aside his hat, braced himself erect facing the rear, and poked the rifle through the opening. His head and shoulders were out of the car proper, but protected against fire from the rear by the trapdoor.
As fields, forest and tumbledown shacks fled past in a long blur, the rifle crashed. A glimpse through the dust showed Finch that someone in their companion car was shooting, too, and so, presumably, was the pursuer. There was a sharp clank, as though someone had struck the body of the limousine with a hammer.
"Hit low down," said Weems. The Colonel's face was impassive to provide evidence that the car was well armored. He turned toward Finch, and indicated the man who had poked him with the pistol.
"Suh, become acquainted with one of the brightest ornaments of our association. Mistuh Hector Sigurd Rex Atlas Imperator Plantagenet Smith, who is known to one and all as 'Impy', a name of his individual choice, suh."
Clank went another hit, and crack went Weems' rifle. Clinging with one hand to steady himself against the rocking car, Finch extended the other to meet that of Impy, who said: "Glad to make yo' 'quaintance, Mr. Finch-Poet."
A spider-web of cracks appeared on the pane of the rear window. Suddenly Weems yelled: "Whoopee! Look at 'em!" The pursuing automobile was rolling sidewise along the road, over and over; it would make a couple of revolutions, leap into the air, then come down and roll some more. Just as a curve took them out of sight, it slewed once and came to rest in the ditch.
Weems sat down and slapped his chest. "Yeow! That's Hyperion Weems's shootin'. They got armor over most of them front tires, but I got him, I got him."
"How do you know it was you and not Basil?" said the Colonel. "He was closer to the target."
"Wasn't neither of them," said Impy, drily. "It was a hog."
"Huh?" demanded Weems.
"Sure. I was watching out just the minute fore'n they turned over. Just a plain old big black hog ran out of the Cornfield and dived under their wheels."
"Why, you—"
"Okay, wanna go back and gather up the ham? Oughta be pretty well barbecued if they caught fire."
"Got ham to home," said Weems, grimacing. Finch noticed he looked slighdy pale as he returned the rifle to its rack, and Impy laughed.
"He cain't stand blood," said the gunman. "For an active club-member, what has nine good killings, it's a unick phenomenon."
"Who were those behind us?" asked Finch.
The Colonel said: "Janus, you can slow down now." As the car dropped off to a mere sixty miles an hour, he turned to Finch: "Those, suh, were members of that cabal of subversive scoundrels, the Bummingham Arcadians, gone to perdition as they richly deserve for not respecting the sacred rights of individuality that are the palladium of every citizen of this broad land."
"Whose individuality did they step on?" asked Finch. "Why, mine, of co'se. Suh, is it possible, are you from so remote and benighted a jurisdiction, that you have not already recognized Colonel Richard Fitzhugh Lee? Perish the thought! Suh, I have the honor to be president of that stalwart brotherhood of unstained patriots, the Pegasus Litr'y Society of Memphis. We, suh, have handled the book business of Memphis with incorruptible integrity that has brought us the plaudits of all the citizens whose lives and homes we have protected. In the natural order of business we decided to extend the blessings of our operations and the services of our organization. The Arcadians took the narrow-minded and selfish view that the reading of Bummingham was their private monopoly, and sought to enfo'ce their criminal desires by shooting a couple of our agents. Suh, the blood of Southern manhood boils at the thought. Could we overlook such a violation of the code and the Constitution? No, a thousand times.