Titus Gamble

PROLOGUE

Baying hounds coursed the woods. Ahead of them, a mulatto youth ran from the savage canine howls and the men who followed. Dogs to rip and tear, men to lay the whip upon his back. Or worse? Did they know? Had she told?

Run, damn yo’. Run ’til yo’ heart won’ stan’ no mo’. Run til it bus’.

Better that than the skinning knife and shameful, horrid, excruciating mutilation. But had she told?

Vines reached out to trip him. Branches lacerated his face and bare arms. Mud from the shallow bogs clung to his feet. The breath whistled in his chest, so tortured he thought his ribs would explode with every jarring step.

Run, nigger boy! Jes’ keep on runnin’. Keep on runnin’.…

Wait, whispered the water and the trees. Wait for the dogs … the baying hounds of Shannon.…

He was barefoot and his shirt hung in tattered banners across gaunt, dusty flesh. Strong, young muscles lay bunched and lean, wasted by hunger and fear. He’d been running for two weeks, sleeping by day in hidden places out of the sight of man, stealing such food as he could find in an attempt to satisfy the ravening devil in his gut. The further into Louisiana he went the less forage he could find, and the last four days had been a time of starvation, his only sustenance three raw duck eggs found by the side of a murky bayou. Hunger grew greater than the fear of capture and return to the plantation from which he had escaped, and when he heard the sounds of men and saw the tenuous cloud of dust seeping up from the trees ahead, he turned toward them. Yo’ gots ta eat, nigger boy, he said softly, the words underscored by the insistent rumbling in his stomach. Yo’ gots ta eat, o’ die. Staggering up and down the low rolling hills, he stumbled over the last crest and stopped, wide-eyed, at the sight below.

A partially cleared valley was alive with activity. Never had he seen such an array of precisely aligned tents, never so many men in one place as the thousands who milled about in apparent disorder. Like shocks of grain cut and gathered in the field, long, rifled muskets stood stacked at intervals of twenty feet, their bayonets gleaming and unbloodied, a condition General Benjamin F. Butler, staunch defender of the Union, yearned to see corrected. Over the whole conglomeration hung, not the Confederate flag, but the stars and stripes of the Union, just like the one which had fluttered over the Brennanburg meeting hall only two years earlier.

The youth forced one bare foot ahead of the other. Amid the incredible pungency of men and horses, food smell hung separately in the air, hung between the low-slung crest and the encampment like a clearly marked road that he could follow with his eyes closed, the rumbling in his stomach pushing him to his destination. No one paid attention to the single, ill-clad figure walking down the dusty avenues. He stopped by a large tent whose smeared and grimy flaps shrugged listlessly in the merciless humid August heat, stirred to a sad, untimely jig by the faintest of breezes. An iron stovepipe sprouted from the peaked cloth roof, and from it a gout of black smoke erupted and spewed a dirty trail of soot that descended on a nearby tent, driving the occupants out, choking, coughing, and cursing in the noonday glare, then retreating into the maze of the camp.

The youth paid little attention: he had found the cook’s tent, and his eyes were riveted on a massive stewpot braced over a bed of glowing coals. Looking about anxiously, the light-skinned young Negro took a hesitant step closer, then another, and when sure he hadn’t been noticed, dared to peer over the edge of the pot. A stomach-churning, mouth-watering aroma assailed him from the depths, and he reached trembling fingers for a ladle hanging nearby. Even as the skinny hand grasped the long iron stem, a beefy fist grabbed his wrist and spun him about. No, you don’t, boy. This here’s army stew made for them as fight. Ain’t for civilians, be they white or ragtag niggers like yerself.

The youth squirmed and tried to free himself from the soldier’s grip, but the ponderous cook reached out with surprising speed and dug the fingers of his other hand into the mulatto’s shoulder. Tryin’ to run away seems almighty suspicious, boy. Maybe you been up to somethin’ already. You done somethin’ you shouldn’t oughta done?

Jerking free, the boy fell back on his buttocks. His round eyes stared up at the cook with animal intensity. Ah ain’t done nuffin’.

The cook rubbed his hands on the filthy apron covering a blue shirt that had never seen the benefit of soap or water. His grin displayed an uneven row of crooked yellow teeth. Well, well. The boy has a tongue. What would you be doin’ tinkerin’ with my pot o’ stew? You a rebel spy come to poison our mess? At that the big man placed both hands on his wide hips and guffawed heartily at his idea of a joke.

Ain’t no reb. Ain’t neber.

The cook stopped laughing abruptly and leaned over the youth, his eyes cold and dangerously serious. Then what’re you doin’ near that there kettle?

The mulatto weakly struggled to his feet, kept a careful arm’s reach away from his questioner. Ah’m hongry. Ain’t et in fo’ days.

Well, looks like you just gonna stay hungry. This food’s for soldiers … General Butler’s fightin’ men. I can’t go handin’ out food to every nigger comes hightailin’ it through our camp. Hell, if I did that …

Dey’s eatin’, the youth blurted, pointing to a group of black men surrounding a campfire, drinking coffee and eating stew from metal plates.

The cook grunted. That’s ’cause they’re soldiers. You can tell that by them blue shirts. Yessir, honest-to-goodness soldiers. General Butler’s gettin’ together a whole army of Africans. He puts a blue shirt on a black nigger an’ gets him a instant soldier. He paused, eyes twinkling. God-damnedest bunch I ever seen, but I reckon it don’t matter if they can’t fight, just so long as they can stop bullets. The very idea was too much. The blustering cook nearly doubled over with mirth. His face reddened and sweat beaded on his forehead, ran through almost nonexistent eyebrows and seeped into his eyes, the salt stinging and blinding him. Dirty knuckles dug at his burning eyes, and by the time he could see again, the mulatto youth was gone. Concerned, the cook quickly checked the ladle and pile of tin plates. Satisfied nothing was missing, he snorted derisively and disappeared into the darkness of the tent.

Avoiding a battery of caissons thundering past, the youth darted along an adjacent row of tents toward a flagpole from which hung a brilliant ensign of red, white, and blue. His stomach was tight and empty. The encounter with the smell of food had made him queasy and uncertain as to whether or not he would be able to keep anything down even if his plans succeeded, yet was determined to try. At one large, clean tent an orderly polishing a pair of high-topped black boots looked up at the mulatto, the Negro’s question startling him from the boring task at hand. What?

Where does Ah jine? Ah wants ta so’jer … agin de rebs.

The orderly stared at the black as if the decision was his alone, finally scowled and gestured briefly toward a cluster of tents across the parade ground. "See that’un in the center with the wood table in front an’ that ol’ sign right up above? Well, that’s where, if they’ll take you. You look a mite gaunted for soldierin’."

The mulatto began walking across the cleared, dusty expanse. Away from the food smell, his stomach calmed down and he was able to concentrate on the next step. Squaring his shoulders, he tried his best not to look afraid. A man could tell, they said, when a person was afraid. Like dogs.

Two men sat behind the table, facing each other with a small but substantial pile of coins glittering between them. No one else was in sight. The soldier with the tented stripes on his arm glanced speculatively at his cards, at the coins, back to his hand, to the deck, then once again to his hand in a never-ending, calculated ritual. I’ll open with this shiny half-dollar. Will you match that, lieutenant?

The one called the lieutenant, a boyish-faced young man whose delicate hands and cultured voice bespoke the mark of affluence, sucked petulantly at his lower lip. His eyes fluttered with a thousand understatements as he placed a crisp greenback in the pot. Match it and then some, sergeant.

The sergeant, a gruff, scuffily bearded man of forty-five, chewed on his moustache and frowned in distaste for the paper money. He preferred solid coin, but there was nothing to be done, for the man he faced was not only a lieutenant, but the lieutenant, nephew to General Butler. The enlisted man sighed, removed one of the silver half-dollars and put in a greenback taken in an earlier pot. He was damned if he’d use good silver as long as he had the lieutenant’s worthless paper at hand. How many cards?

The lieutenant smiled and brushed back a wayward lock of hair. He shook his head, declining gracefully to part with a single card. I’ll just keep these, if you don’t mind, sergeant.

The old campaigner stared into the baby blue eyes. No cards. A pat hand or two pairs? The lieutenant’s eyes gave away nothing, only stared back noncommittally. The sergeant decided he was bluffing and held two pair. Dealer takes two, he announced gruffly, tossing two aside and lifting new cards from the deck, noticing at the same time the bony hand and dusky flesh on the table. He glanced up to see a dark face, thin from hunger, a pair of wide-set eyes staring feverishly at him. "What do you want?"

S’cuse me, suh.…

Go on. I’m listenin’.

Yassuh. This where Ah kin jine up? Ta fight agin the rebs?

The enlisted man held his small deck of five cards carefully, slowly fanned them out to display each card one by one, then just as carefully placed them facedown on the table, stuck the stub of a cigar in his mouth, lit a match and held it to the blunt end of the tobacco. The lieutenant coughed, slightly but emphatically, and the sergeant, angered by the officer’s dislike of cigars, blew out the match. Thoughts of revenge foremost in mind, he continued to chew the unlit stub as he studied the youth. So you want to soldier, eh?

Yassuh!

Disapproval crossed the lieutenant’s face and his pink cheeks flushed darkly. The sergeant did not fail to notice, but hid his glee at a chance to irk his superior. "Well, seein’ as General Butler reckons to raise himself an army of Africans, I reckon I can sign you on, though you look like mighty poor soldierin’ material. The sergeant took pencil in hand and slid a roster in front of the youth. I don’t s’pose you can write."

Yassuh. Decipherin’ too, the youth answered proudly.

Huh! The sergeant looked at him carefully. A writing African was a rare one: he had come across no more than three in the last two weeks. Mebbe you’ll do after all. Sign your name there on that line. The sergeant studied the light-skinned Negro as he wrote. You don’t look all that African to me.

He is a … mulatto, sergeant, the lieutenant interjected, as if the very word made him nauseous.

What’s that?

The officer grimaced, irked by the northerner’s ignorance, more so by the necessity to explain further. He has … white blood in him. A father, most likely.

The yankee enlisted man shook his head in disbelief and pulled the roster to him. Mebbe they’ll make him a corporal, then. Hey! What’s this? You only put a first name down here.

Dat’s all Ah gots. One name. Ain’t got no las’ name.

Well, you’ll have to have one. Rule is, the army can’t use anybody but freedmen, and Gen’l Butler says we can’t sign runaways. The Union don’t want ’em.

No las’ name.

Well, then, you can’t join. The sergeant picked up his cards and once again faced the officer as the youth turned away, his shoulders slumping dejectedly. Boy! the sergeant called. "If you do have a last name, well, then you wouldn’t be a runaway. He stared intently at the mulatto. Maybe you have one but just forgot with all the excitement of enlistin’. You get my meanin’?"

The youth returned to the table, stared down at the roster, started to say something, but the sergeant appeared to have forgotten him.

Lieutenant, I have a quarter-eagle says what I drew can whup anything you’re standin’ pat on.

The lieutenant, having recovered his composure, smiled gratuitously and watched the bet. You must have drawn well, sergeant. I feel compelled to see your quarter-eagle and … he paused, enjoying himself and counting the sergeant’s meager stack of coins … raise—I believe that’s two dollars and six bits in front of you—precisely that much. A half-eagle and a two-bit piece clanked onto the growing pile.

The sergeant paused. Two pair wouldn’t be enough to beat him, and the ace kicker in his hand pretty well assured him three of any kind the officer could come up with would be too small. The lieutenant was bluffing about the pat hand, as sure as syrup came from maple trees. With a grin, he pushed his coins into the pile and impetuously displayed his hand. Read ’em an’ weep, lieutenant. Three pretty kings.

My, my, you were lucky, the lieutenant countered as he placed his cards down one at a time, face up on the table. But not lucky enough.

Damn an’ tarnation! Five little hearts flaunted their baleful color at the once again poverty-stricken sergeant. Damn! I should’ve known better. My ma always used to tell me. ‘Son,’ she said, ‘there’s two mistakes a man owes it to hisse’f not to make in this world. Never gamble an’ never join the army.’ Two mistakes, an’ I made ’em both. ‘Never join the army … never gamble.’ Ma was sure enough—

Ain’t no runaway! The shouted statement interrupted the sergeant, drew his attention to the other side of the table. The youth slapped down the pencil and slid the roster toward the soldier.

Huh? the sergeant exclaimed, startled by the mulatto’s outburst.

Ain’t no runaway ’cause Ah gots me a las’ name lahk yo’ said. Yo’ gots ta spell it fo’ me, an’ den Ah writes it down.

What?

Gamble, the youth proudly replied. Two mistakes an’ Ah’m goana make ’em both an’ get it ober an’ done wid. Ah’m jinin’ de army, an’ mah name’s Gamble. Titus … Gamble!

CHAPTER ONE

This morning, he thought to himself. Is it this morning?

Drium Brennan sat up, a bead of sweat trickling down his temple. Morning, and still dark. His left hand moved to the bedside table and groped until his fingers touched the cool metal, then quickly followed the familiar shape to the polished walnut grip. Slowly he lifted the heavy flintlock pistol from the ornate velvet-lined hardwood case and brought the eight-and-a-half-inch barrel through the enfolding darkness until the chill orifice of the muzzle pressed soberly against the side of his head. The sun was up. There could be no question, for sounds gave darkness the lie. Wistfully, he listened. Only a moment more. One moment …

Rury was always the first up. Big Rury. Broad shouldered, raven haired, deep of chest and long of leg. Big Rury who rode with Bedford Forrest during the war and came back safe and sound and eager for more battle. Confident and competent, the lad was a natural leader, yet tended to brashness and impatience. But age would cure impetuosity, and even now Big Rury could be counted on. Drium listened with warm pleasure to his son’s loud swaggering stride through the hall, the heavy brisk tread of his feet as he descended the stairs to the lower reaches of the house, to the great hall where he would seek to appease an appetite worthy of two normal men. Rury, his eldest son …

The flintlock pistol weighed three pounds and four ounces and Drium’s hand and arm began to tremble with the burden. The darkness remained …

A woman’s voice, soft and lilting, humming an Irish folk ballad, wafted down the hall and through the darkness to the ear of the old man who loved the old songs. Fianna was attending her bath. Fianna the beauty, named for one of the tribes of old. Even lovelier than her poor departed mother she was, and herself the prettiest lass in all Kilkenny. Roiling tides of deep scarlet hair billowed over Fianna’s shoulders, white as delicate porcelain. Her daring eyes and lithe provocativeness had driven to fever pitch the blood of many a poor lad among the Southern aristocracy, and not a one of the lot worthy of her hand. At times, Drium feared for her: mysterious and conspiratorial blood—the dark blood of the old ones—ran in her veins. He loved her deeply, for she was Fianna the youngest, his only daughter.…

The arm, once capable of holding a full stone extended, he recalled bitterly, weakened, and unable to sustain the deadly weight, dropped to rest on his leg. Age was a bloody bastard, come to rob a man of strength. Aye, and sight too, which had started going bad the day Dub had ridden in minus his left arm. Slowly, he leaned forward until his forehead pressed against the gaping hole. The pistol and its mate were keepsakes given him by a friend long dead. I had not thought to put them to such use, old friend, he muttered into the darkness. With a .69 caliber blast, death would be quick and painless: one moment, life; the next, complete obliteration. He had decided his course long ago when the first ominous hints began to intrude and darken his life, fill his days with apprehension. Drium Brennan would not exist in a world he could not see.

Light tap-tapping in the hall. Steps precisely placed, pausing, then crisply descending the main stairs. After coffee the steps would return and the lad would go to the cupola, there to spend the morning. Dub, the middle-born, who returned from the war scarred in flesh and spirit. Silent Dub. Troubled Dub. He carried the traits of both sides of the family. Fair and feminine of build, he was audaciously reckless, decorated by Jefferson Davis himself for spellbinding feats amid the clouded theater of war. Drium had watched him secretly. Sensitive and poetic in repose, the very sight of him evoked strong memories of his mother. It was a woman the lad needed, to take him out of himself and set him at rights with the world.

Darkness roused, awash with a proliferation of purple circles seeping outward like a splotch of ink on paper, the purple joined by and blending with pink. Clear, damn it all, he growled through clenched teeth. Clear, he repeated, raising his head and shaking it from side to side. Weary muscles grateful for release gave way and the pistol sagged to the covers. Fingers dug into the sheets and the elder Brennan swiveled in bed to face the east window of his room and the morning sunlight he knew to be streaming through the thin curtains. The pink expanded, contending against the retreating darkness that slowly gave way to a background of vibrant yellow, against which familiar features took on definition and swam into hazy focus. For another blessed day, the saints be praised, sight returned to Drium Brennan. Morning had come to Shannon.

Fianna sank into the warm luxuriant depths of the tub, reclining against the petal-shaped pewter back and closing her eyes, shutting out the pattern of light on the wallpaper and drifting into an imaginary realm of knights and ladies. The soap bubbled to an ample froth across the surface of the water, reaching up to all but obscure her rapture. She dreamed of castles tall and strewn with articles of war, of young, gallant lads dashing at each other in combat and staining the greeny sward with crimson, dying as she leaned over the parapets on the high walls and languorously gestured to the one who gained her fancy. A rap on the door burst the illusion.

Honey?

Yes, Ella Mae.

Yo’ bes’ hurry dat bath. Yo’ cain’t take all day. Miz Emerson goan be ’spectin’ yo’. Ah’se layin’ out dat purty blue dress a’ vores. Hurry up, now.

Oh, all right. Fianna made a wry face in the mirror. Muttering Mrs. Emerson under her breath, she stood in the tub, stepped from the water, and whipped a towel from a nearby chair, furiously rubbed the already glowing skin until her whole body tingled with life. Humming to herself, she heard Dub in the hallway, followed by his lightly placed steps up the stairway to the cupola. Quickly, she stepped into the hall, holding the towel loosely about her, leaving one small rounded breast temptingly exposed. She heard his steps pause on the stairway in response to the sound of her bare feet on the polished floor and glanced up to meet his gaze, smiling innocently and making no effort to conceal the red-tipped beauty she knew would rouse Dub. Good morning, brother, she called sweetly.

Dub’s spare, frail form stiffened, and what he meant as a bow turned out as little more than a curt nod of the head. His high cheekbones matched her noble caste, but in the spare light from above, his face was more saturnine than provocative. His burning eyes traveled down the pale, desirable, and forbidden aspects of her form, lingered on the lovely rounded mound whose pink crown tightened beneath his hungry gaze. Good … morning, Fianna, he managed, forcing himself to look away, turn and hurry up the narrow stairs to the cupola.

Fianna tossed her head and hurried to her room, grinning over an easy early-morning victory. Crazy Dub … she chuckled softly in a singsong little girl’s voice. Poor silly crazy brother Dub …

Land o’ Goshen! What yo’ doin’ traipsin’ ’roun’ de halls wid nuffin’ on but de clothes yo’ was bo’n in, chile? Ain’t yo’ got no shame? Ella Mae, moving rapidly for one with such great weight, hurried to wisk the girl into the room and shut the door. Lawdy! A house full o’ mens an’ yo’ behaves lahk dat. No sense. No sense a’tall. You growed full, now. Showin’ yo’se’f off lahk a—

Oh, don’t carry on so, Ella Mae, Fianna pouted, flinging the towel onto the bed. I have sense enough to know I don’t want to breakfast with Mrs. Emerson and those other old hens she runs around with.

Hesh up, now. Doan yo’ say ’nother word. Yo’ mama put up wid dem ladies an’ seen to de buildin’ of a fine church. Now yo’ gets to do de same so dat Brennanburg gets itse’f a fine school.

Who cares?

Hesh up, Ah said. Hesh up an’ git dressed afore yo’ papa hear dat sassy talk an’ give yo’ a lickin’. Be thankful, Ah says. What wid de war an’ all, t’ain’t many places as lucky as here, dat kin think about such things as schools an’ de lahk. Yankees done taken away mos’ folks homes, taken de lan’ from under ’em an’ de roofs from ober dere haids. Yo’ lucky an’ doan know it.

Fianna closed her eyes as the black woman scolded, pulled the dress over her head, and fitted the fabric to the girl’s figure. Color came to Fianna’s face and her eyes flared with dark ambition. For a moment she stood motionless, staring from her window into the bright sunshine lighting the fields below. Yankees won’t take Shannon from us, she said softly. Shannon is ours and will stay ours. Shannon, and Brennanburg.

The cupola was a square, fifteen feet to a side. Framed sheets of glass formed the walls, which faced in the four directions of the compass. Each side of glass was tinted to represent a season: yellow to the east, for summer; red to the west, for fall; blue to the north, for winter; green to the south, for spring. During the passing of a day, the interior of the cupola was suffused with a palette of varying hues and combinations of colors. Morning was Dub’s favorite time. Every day at dawn he rose, dressed, and came to watch through the early hours from his vantage point atop the plantation house. The years had seen many changes. He could remember, as a boy, the circle of towering pine trees, closer by far than they were in the spring of 1866. Each year since he could remember, the circle had receded, had drawn away from the plantation house. Now rolling fields surrounded him and the trees were but a shaggy line almost a mile from the house in each direction, the line broken by the few monolithic pines and the pair of magnolias left to shade the main house from the ravages of the East Texas sun.

Dub leaned across the balustrade surrounding the well and looked down through the matching concentric circles—the one over which he leaned and the one cut in the floor of the second-level hall—to the hardwood, patterned floor of the dining room–reception hall. Lit by the slanting eastern light, the tiny ridges of the floor cast abnormal shadows and gave the impression of a miraculously rectangular landscape as seen from a great height. A heavy door slammed. The front door. Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Rury, fresh from his morning breath of air on the front porch, crossed the space on his way to breakfast. Big Rury. Brave Rury. Dub scowled and fingered the medals on his gray cloth cavalryman’s coat, the left sleeve of which hung empty and straight before being caught and held with a single tuck at his belt. He straightened and the blood rushed to his head, forcing him to grip the balustrade for support.

Staggering away from the hole in the floor, Dub stared past his reflection and watched the plantation come to life. A widow’s walk surrounded the cupola and he could have stood outside to let the early-morning spring breeze lave him, but he did not like to be seen, to be exposed to scrutiny he could not return. Who knew what prying eyes might take that moment to look up to the roof and see the mutilated figure? The Negroes, though slaves no more, continued their daily trek to the fields, coerced not by the threatening whip of an overseer but by the necessity of obtaining food and clothing and a small but needed pittance for their labor. Barnet, the former overseer, still carried his whip of authority, though he had not dared use it since the end of hostilities. Now he rode among his charges and shouted out Rury’s orders for the day’s work. And a full day’s work it would be. Sluggard’s could be docked varying portions of their pay and, on rare occasions, might receive a cuffing from one of Rury’s hamsized fists. Those for whom blows or loss of salary weren’t enough were punished with dismissal. A recalcitrant field hand was booted from the plantation and loosed in a world of uncertain fortune for which he or she was totally unprepared. The specter of uncertainty, especially for the older ones, was enough to keep most in line.

The slaves—Dub couldn’t help but think of them as slaves, even though they had been freed—were dark dots on the expanse of green when Dub moved from the window to sit on the seat circling the balustrade. The cupola was bathed in warm yellow light. The glass, distorted by a myriad of haphazard swirls and bubbles trapped when the liquid sand hardened, sent fluid shadows drifting across the floor with the sun’s progress. Dub’s face felt warm—uncomfortably so—and he stepped across to rest his cheek against the cool winter glass. The blue glass did not cool him, though, for the warmth he felt came not from the sun but from within him. Anger stirred his darkened passion. Fianna … his sister. She knew, and flaunted herself at him. Did she not think he was a man with a man’s hunger, no matter what? I am a man, he moaned through set jaw and grinding teeth. Fingers clawed at his armless sleeve as he pressed himself against the glass and sought to cool the torment in his blood. I am a man! A man, do you hear?

Drium, the pistols hidden for the day, rounded the bottoms of the stairs and, following the gentle breeze which circulated through the house, made his way to the spacious dining room and took his place in a broad, high-backed wicker chair. It was, he reflected, good to be alive on a fine spring day. A mockingbird outside the open windows agreed. Drium rang the bell to summon Ella Mae and sat back, enjoying the morning. There were few such left. Any day, summer would be on them and the weather would change rapidly to the stifling, humid, mosquito-plagued climate of an East Texas summer.

Ella Mae waddled out of the swinging doors to the kitchen and brought him a steaming mug of coffee. Yo’ comin’ down late today, Marsa Brennan.

And if I wasn’t feelin’ well, what would you be bringin’ an old man for a remedy?

Ah reckins a mug a’ mah coffee, marsa, the black woman answered proudly. ’Course, if yo’ needs a physic, Ah kin fix yo’ up some a’ mah special herb tea.

Drium Brennan made a wry face and raised his hands in mock protest and horror. The coffee will be just exactly to my liking, Ella Mae, he answered, laughing softly and accepting the mug.

The door to the sitting room and library slammed shut, and Rury’s footsteps sounded in the hall before he entered the dining room. You got that grub packed, Ella Mae?

Soon, now, Marsa Rury, she said, turning toward the kitchen. Ah’se jis’ bringin’ yo’ Daddy his mo’nin’ cup a’ coffee. Yo’ co’n bread be done cookin’ in two shakes. Janus is sittin’ in de kitchen, waitin’ ta finish loadin’ de ho’se. He say, do Ah see yo’ fuhst, tell yo’ dem new shoes on jes’ fine an’ dat ho’se ready an’ rarin’ ta go.

Well, hurry up then, dammit, he retorted gruffly. A moment later and he had seated himself across the table from his father. Barnet knows what needs to be done. If he can get those niggers movin’, you might remind him about those four loads of timber. He paused. You be all right?

I always have been, Drium snapped in response, suddenly angry at the solicitation implied, then angry at himself for taking offense. He might never see Rury again. The loaded .69 weighed on his mind. "You travel careful, son. I’d not like