Between the Living and the Dead by Bill Crider Page A

stampede.
    It didn’t take a genius to figure out what had happened. Earl had been unlucky and had stumbled across a passel of hogs. The hogs hadn’t been pleased, which wasn’t much of a surprise. A passel of hogs aroused from a nice daytime nap was rarely a happy passel.
    The noise got louder. The hogs, and probably Earl, were headed in Rhodes’s direction.
    Rhodes didn’t think Earl could outrun the hogs. He stuck his pistol in his belt. The Kel-Tec would be about as much use against stampeding hogs as a fly swatter. He looked around for a tree with low branches that would support his weight. He’d been a great climber of trees when he was a boy, but he was long past boyhood, and the last time he’d climbed a tree, somebody had taken a shot at him.
    Better to climb than to be trampled, however. Rhodes grabbed a sturdy limb on an elm tree and pulled himself up. He got a leg over the limb and with only a little straining managed to get himself uncomfortably seated on it. His legs dangled down only a couple of feet off the ground, but they were high enough to avoid trouble if he raised them.
    He’d barely gotten situated when he saw Earl coming with at least a dozen hogs squealing along in a thundering pursuit. Earl was sprinting for all he was worth, dodging trees and limbs as best he could. When he couldn’t dodge or duck a limb, he just let it slap him in the face and body.
    The hogs churned up dirt and leaves and sticks, and some piglets came squealing along behind the adults as fast as their little trotters could carry them.
    Earl dodged the trunk of the tree where Rhodes was sitting, probably not even noticing that Rhodes was there. He had other things on his mind. The hogs passed right under Rhodes’s raised feet, snorting and snuffling.
    Earl had a good head start, but Rhodes didn’t think he could make it back to his pickup. Hogs could run ten miles an hour or so, and Earl didn’t look to be able to run ten miles at all. It turned out not to matter how fast he could run because about ten yards past the tree Earl’s feet got tangled up with a broken limb that lay in his path, and he fell sprawling. He slid a little way on his face and stomach and then lay still.
    The hogs didn’t slow down. They charged right over Earl as if they didn’t even know he was lying there. Not all of them trampled him, of course. Some of them passed on either side of him, but a good number of them rumbled right over him. One of the piglets stopped for just a second to look at what was left of him and then ran on after the others. Rhodes had no idea how far they’d go before they stopped, and it didn’t matter. What mattered was Earl.
    Rhodes climbed down from the tree and went to where Earl lay flat on his face in the leaves. His clothes were ripped, and there was a good deal of blood. The back of Earl’s head looked a bit mashed. Rhodes didn’t think any of the hogs had gotten their tusks into Earl, but their hooves had done plenty of damage. Earl’s shirt was ripped, and so were his pants. There were cuts on his back and legs. Hog hooves could be sharp.
    Rhodes knelt down, turned Earl’s head to the side, and felt the carotid artery. He found a pulse. It wasn’t strong, but it was there.
    Rhodes reached in his back pocket for his cell phone and was glad to find it hadn’t fallen out while he was climbing the tree. He called 911 and gave the best directions he could to the place where Earl was lying. He hoped that the low-slung ambulance could get across the pasture and that the paramedics could get into the woods and find him and Earl.
    When he’d completed the call, he pulled the Kel-Tec from his belt and fired four shots into the ground near a tree. That ought to bring Buddy, who might be on the way already if he’d heard Earl’s yells.
    Rhodes didn’t think it would be a good idea for him and Buddy to try to move Earl, but they