Read The Butterfly for Free Online Page A

get."
    "I'm going up the creek."
    "There's nothing up the creek."
    "There's a heel named Moke Blue."
    "You know Moke?"
    "I've seen him and I guess I've spoken to him, but I've never shaken his hand and until I got Kady's wire I never even thought about him. I'm thinking about him now, though. And I'm putting him in jail for kidnapping my boy."
    "You're taking him in, yourself?"
    "That's it, Jess."
    "I'll go with you."
    "You mean we'll do it together?"
    "Soon as I get my rifle."
    "I won't need it."
    "How you know?"
    "He's got no gun, I'm sure of it."
    "He could get one, and anyway, all he'd have to do is holler and about eighteen brothers and in-laws and cousins would be there, and at least half of them have guns."
    "If we bring a gun, Jess, I'll kill him."
    "Maybe we better not."
    We got in his car and rode up as far as the church, then got out and walked up the hollow to the end of the path, then followed the gully up to Moke's shack. Nobody was in it, and except for some beans in one corner that didn't prove much, there was no way to tell if anybody had been there for the last two or three days, or had just stepped out and would be right back, or was up the hollow or down the creek. But while we were whispering about it he held up his hand and I looked. Through a cornfield, just below us, a boy was moving on tiptoe, toward the woods on the other side of the gully.
    "You know him, Jess?"
    "Birdie Blue. He's Moke's cousin."
    "He's gone to tip him."
    "Then he'll be back, to keep watch."
    "If we time him, we'll know how far he went."
    He took out his watch, and we waited and I kept an eye on him, and the more I saw of him the better I liked him. He didn't talk, but kept staring at the place the boy had to cross on his way back, and he had that mountain look in his eye that said if it took a week he'd still be staring, but he'd do what he came for. In a half hour the boy showed, and then all of a sudden Wash got up.
    "We're a pair of boneheads, Jess."
    "What we done now?"
    "The banjo's gone!"
    "Well?"
    "If he was in hell waiting to be fried he'd still have to pick the damned thing. Come on."
    There was no window in the back of the shack, but there was a loose log, and we pushed it out and crawled through. Then we crept up the gully, keeping the shack between us and the boy, where he was squatting in the bushes, keeping watch on my hat, that we left in the doorway to keep him interested. It was around sun-down, and the mosquitoes were beginning to get lively, but we kept from batting them somehow, and pretty soon we came to a place where Wash stopped and looked around, and whispered if there was any sounds in the neighborhood, we'd catch most of them here, because sound travels upward. And sure enough, there were all sorts of things you could hear, from the creek going over the stones near the church to people talking in cabins and birds warbling before going to sleep. And then he grabbed my arm, and we listened, and there was the sound of the banjo. He stood up, and turned first one way, then the other way, then covered one ear, then the other ear, and in a minute he knew where it was coming from, and we crept over there. And when we got there it was a little stone well, with a frame over it and an iron wheel, and Moke was sitting on the rim, his head lopped over on one side, the banjo across his belly, plunking out sad chords that weren't like the comical tunes he used to play, and looking so little he was more like some kind of a shriveled-up, gray-haired boy than what he was, a man. Wash crept around the well from behind him, grabbed him by the shirt collar, and jerked him over on the side, so he let out a little whimper. "What you doing to me? Wash, what are you doing here?"
    "Didn't the boy tell you I was here?"
    "How would he know? He said Jess and a man."
    "I'm taking you to Carbon City."
    "What for?"
    "Put you in jail. For what you did."
    I stepped out then and told him to shut up with his bawling and told Wash to cut it