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At 8 p.m. Garrison went back to prison to get two bloodhounds. At 11 p.m. he and some others captured Hill, Ray's baby-faced cellmate, by a burned-out cabin. The dogs then led the guards to the New River, where Ray had hoped to lose his pursuers. For a time, he succeeded, running upstream for about 600 yds. Looking for the trail, Sammy Joe Chapman and Johnny Newburg headed upriver with two fresh dogs: Sandy and Little Red, a pair of 14-month-old females. The hounds quickly picked up Ray's trail. In a fury, they took off up the river toward the Cumberland strip mine.
Tugged by his dogs, Chapman tried to dodge the blackberry bushes and oak and hickory trees revealed in the pale light of the lamp on his miner's helmet. The desperate Ray headed uphill, past a gravel road used for hauling coal. Chapman could hear him crashing through the bush. For a man who had been on the run for more than two days, Ray showed remarkable endurance. All the hours he had spent in the prison yard playing volleyball to develop his legs and lungs were paying off—for a while.
Suddenly, high up on Usher Top Mountain, hundreds of feet above the river, everything in the darkened forest turned silent. Chapman pulled his Smith & Wesson .38-cal. Chiefs Special from his shoulder holster. At 2:10 a.m. Sandy led him to a pile of wet leaves and began wagging her tail. Beneath the foliage, Ray was lying on his back with his arms straight out, as though he had been crucified.