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washing himself in the kitchen, using a large pot of water. Vegetables and a chicken were laid out on the counter, ready to be cooked, but the man had ignored them in favor of his bath.
    Sevenkiller briefly admired the escaped slave, for he was a tremendous specimen: young and beardless and handsome with short, messily cropped hair. Something about the way that he moved and washed himself indicated a natural intelligence.
    He was dignified, Sevenkiller decided. That was it. It might be strange to call an illiterate slave dignified, when he was shoeless and dressed in rags and covered in his master’s blood and washing himself out of a soup pot. But so he was.
    The slave’s back was covered with scars; as a slave himself, Sevenkiller knew well that such marks were the price of dignity.
    Sevenkiller raised his revolver and took a step forward with one moccasined foot, and it was only the sound of a stray piece of china splintering beneath his heel that saved Fred Johnson’s life.
    Johnson did not turn; he merely heaved the iron pot behind him with all his strength. Sevenkiller pulled the trigger, but the bullet hit the pot and ricocheted through a window. The pot slammed into Sevenkiller, knocking him over, soaking him with water and sending the gun flying.
    Fred Johnson was on him instantly, pinning him to the ground.In one hand he held a heavy meat cleaver and with the other he pressed Sevenkiller’s face into the floor.
    “Hee hee hee!” Sevenkiller cried.
    One of his little crazy eyes, the gray one, was carefully fixed on the cleaver. When it descended with monstrous speed toward his neck, Sevenkiller twisted his hips and brought one of his legs up so that it wrapped around the arm holding his face. The blade missed and sank deeply into the wood. It cut off six inches of Sevenkiller’s hair, and the wind of its passing was cool on the side of his head.
    No more laughing. Sevenkiller worked on isolating the arm, which was big and strong as a healthy tree, so that his legs were wrapped around it near the shoulder and his pelvis was positioned next to Johnson’s elbow.
    Johnson was uselessly trying to pull the cleaver out of the floor, so he only realized what Sevenkiller was doing when Sevenkiller pried Johnson’s other arm straight and thrust his pelvis against the elbow, hyperextending it.
    “No!” Johnson cried, flexing his biceps. So strong was his arm that Sevenkiller could not quite manage to break it even when he used the leverage of his entire body. Johnson rolled desperately, like a gator with its prey in its mouth, and it was all Sevenkiller could do to hang on. Eventually, as the floor and the ceiling changed places again and again, Sevenkiller saw the revolver and let go of the arm to snatch it.
    Fred Johnson did not waste any time. As soon as he got his arm loose he sprang to his feet and spared only one wild and frightened look for Sevenkiller, his bright eyes as wide as saucers, before leaping out through the open window.
    “Ah ha ha ha hee hee!” Sevenkiller laughed, staggering to his feet. The whole room seemed to be spinning. He looked out the window at Johnson’s retreating back and raised the revolver, thumbed the hammer, and let the percussion cap tumble out. Then he smoothly lowered the weapon, aimed, and shot.
    There was a flat clicking noise as the weapon misfired.
    Johnson disappeared into the trees.
    Sevenkiller laughed again, so hard that he had to sit down. He looked at his weapon and saw that it was wet, and that only made him laugh harder.
    “Ha ha ha ha ha! Ah, hee hee hee!”
    He had a powerful feeling that he would soon die.
    Sevenkiller left the house and mounted his horse. He visited a few more plantations on his way back to the inn. When he knocked, Stoga opened the front door. The innkeeper was asleep, but Bill Bread was awake, sitting and shivering at the table, his hands still tied together.
    “Hidey,” Sevenkiller said.
    He tossed his saber and revolver onto an empty