Chapter One
In mid-1947, Jefferson Barnes, the prosecuting attorney of Polk County,
Arkansas, finally died. Upon that tragedy — the old man fell out of one of
those new golf cart things on vacation in Hot Springs, rolled down a gully
screaming damnation and hellfire all the way, and broke his neck on a culvert —
Sam Vincent, his loyal Number 2, moved up to the big job. Then in '48, Sam was
anointed by the Democratic party (there was no other in western Arkansas), which
ran him on the same ticket with Harry S. Truman and Fred C. Becker. As did those
worthies, he won handily. For Sam, it was the goal toward which he had been
aiming for many years. He had always wanted to be a servant of the law, and now,
much better, he was the law.
Sam was six foot one, forty-four, with a bushy head of hair and a brusque
demeanor that would not be called "lovable" for many years. He stared
immoderately and did not suffer fools, idiots, Yankees, carpetbaggers, the small
of spirit or the breakers of the law gladly. He wore baggy suits flecked with
pipe ash, heavy glasses, and walked in a bounding swoop. He hunted in the fall,
followed the St. Louis Browns during the summer, when he had time, which he
hardly ever did ... read full excerpt from: Pale Horse Coming ebook
