Murder in Little Egypt Read Online Free Page B

corner of the supposedly free state of Illinois. At the rear of the house a double-door carriage entrance permitted a cargo of runaways to be delivered discreetly, unloaded out of sight, and hurried up a winding stair to the prison above. The owner, John Crenshaw, an Englishman, entertained grandly on the ground floor with profits from his upstairs trade and from the nearby salt works, manned by slaves brought in under a special loophole enacted by the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1819. It was said that after dark at the Old Slave House you could hear strange cries emanating from the upper rooms and the mournful strains of spirituals.
    Until 1938 Potts’ Inn still stood on a hill between Cave-in-Rock and Shawneetown. More bloodstains there, more nightmares. Everyone knew its grisly story, and it remained a popular spot to visit after the original building was torn down. There in the 1830s Billy Potts and his wife had kept a tavern. They were in league with James Ford, called Satan’s Ferryman, who either robbed and murdered travelers crossing the Ohio or sent them along Ford’s Ferry Road to Potts’ Inn. Mr. and Mrs. Potts would feed their guests and fill them with drink and then slice them up in their beds or stab them in the back as they stooped to drink from a clear spring on the hill. At first light they chopped their victims into pieces and buried them in the yard.
    One day their son, Billy junior, returned home after a long absence. His parents did not know him with his long black beard, and he delighted in fooling them. They fed him and got him drunk. At midnight as the young man bent over the spring to drink, Billy Potts stabbed his son in the back, the spring ran red with his blood, and Mrs. Potts cut him into pieces and buried him.
    In the morning Billy junior’s friends came looking for him. Mr. and Mrs. Potts said no man of that description had visited the inn. They had not seen their son for ten years, they said. But when the friends left, Billy Potts and his wife dug up the remains. Under a shoulder blade, beside the fatal wound, they saw their son’s black birthmark, shaped like a four-leaf clover.
    On Potts’ Hill, near the spring that runs clear again, a sign stands to remind the visitor of the boy who was marked for death and of the father who killed his son.

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    IF VINCE LOMBARDI HAD NOT SAID THAT WINNING ISN’T everything, it’s the only thing, Dale Cavaness might have said it; he certainly believed it. By the time he entered Eldorado Township High School in 1939, Dale was what sportswriters used to call a real scrapper. Winning by intimidation was another phrase he might have coined, making up for what he lacked in height and weight with a fierce aggressiveness. He would challenge anybody to arm wrestle or Indian wrestle, the veins standing out on his temples and neck, breaking the other fellow down by force of will. Strong arms and shoulders made him more powerful than he appeared. He worked on building up his strength. At home he did push-ups and chinned himself from a doorsill every morning and evening.
    He also made a lot of noise. In a different environment Dale would have been called a loudmouth, but the rugged atmosphere of southern Illinois, where most men earned their living through their sweat, suited his style. “Hey, Rudie!” Dale would shout to a buddy, or, “Let’s get all the Rudies together and have a game!” It was a term he had picked up from a carney at a county fair. Nobody knew exactly what a Rudie was, but the name conveyed what Dale liked best, rough-and-tumble, rowdy times with plenty of shouting and shoving and competition.
    Dale was a great one for practical jokes, the thumbtack left on the chair seat or pennies rolled down the classroom aisle to drive the teacher to distraction. Once in a while somebody would think that Dale had gone too far, as when he asked to see a girl’s new watch and then dropped it and stepped on it accidentally on purpose. He