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Show page 111 kind of folks." He placed his hat over his heart. "I'll feel like a part of me is leaving when you folks leave." "We understand, Chief," Campbell said, following Lattimore to his car. "We will find a x^ay." "That's the spirit, Reverend. Just get off your duff and get settled good, now. I'll help you if I can. I steered Homer Radcliffe to a nexv location, you know, the old Wilhoyt place." Lattimore and the deputies entered the car and circled away, the deputy driver raising a cloud of dust. Campbell quieted the murmurings of his flock by stepping to his packing case and spreading his hands placatingly. "Angels come in many forms," he said. "Let's pray now, for ourselves, for Chief Lattimore and for Homer Radcliffe." Homer Radcliffe was primarily a maker and seller of bootleg whiskey. He was swarthy, with a shag mustache, xrore a widebrim hat and an all-weather trench coat. He was anything but a religious man, but professed to know all the judges and politicians for miles around. With profits from a former location in his pockets, he had driven to Macon and negotiated with Robert Wilhoyt for lease of the old Wilhoyt homestead near our town. He moved in material and began construction of a new roadhouse under the great oak that grew near the original home-site. The building was beginning to shape when a thunderstorm came up and drove the workmen under the tree. The thunderstorm subsided but the men picked up their tools and left. The tree, the ground under it, was haunted, they said. |