CHAPTER 9POPE WAITED ON THE RISE above the spring where Cora Lee Barnard came each day at five for water. Five years before, he had spotted her at the task as he scouted the ridge, waiting for her father. She had been twelve or thirteen, then, and in her lithe gawkiness he had seen the potential for beauty. Her chastity was guaranteed by other factors: The cove was two miles off the main road, it was secluded, and her mother, a former schoolteacher, had been given permission to take her out of school after her father was convicted.
Pope lay north of the spring about thirty yards, with a clear line of vision up the trail that came down from the east. Under a pokeberry bush, in his checkered green and brown sports coat and his green trousers, he would have been difficult for a hawk to see,
