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chair and shrugged out of his blue jacket.
    “I need a drink,” Sevenkiller said.
    “We aren’t drinking,” Stoga said. “What did you see? Is it true? Have the slaves run off?”
    Sevenkiller ignored him and took a cup off the counter and filled it with cider from the keg. He drank it down, then let out an exaggerated sigh and belched. He looked challengingly, not at Stoga but at Bill Bread. Bill never lifted his head, but the muscles around his jaw clenched. Sevenkiller tittered.
    “What did you see, Navan?” Stoga asked.
    “The slaves are all gone,” Sevenkiller said. “Word got out that the Yankee foragers were just a few miles to the west, with the whole army behind them. So all the slaves ran off. At the big plantation, Mister Johnson is dead, and the overseer. They were killed by a slave named Fred.”
    “You only heard rumors?” Stoga said.
    “Yes,” Sevenkiller said. “But I spoke to others who had seen them.”
    “Hrmm,” Stoga said, the noise deep in his throat. “The innkeeper said there are no soldiers in this town. They all went to Macon. The only soldier here is a man named Captain Jackson. She said he was in the cavalry, but he was wounded near Atlanta. He just came back to town last week. His family has a farm and a distillery on the other side of the river.”
    “Well?” Sevenkiller asked.
    “Hrmm,” Stoga repeated, drumming his fingers on the table, his face concerned. “Well, let’s go see the captain tomorrow morning. It is on our way, in any case.”
    They went upstairs and slept in a real bed for the first time in weeks. But first, Stoga tied Bill to the headboard. Bill slept, eventually, but his dreams were grasping, muddled, and dark.

12
    For his part, the escaped Fred Johnson spent his first night as a free man sleeping under a tree. He’d blundered blindly through the dark woods, nettles and thorns tearing his clothes and poking his flesh, branches slapping into his face, the muddy earth sucking at his feet. It had not taken him long to realize that the little dark Indian had not followed him, but he had kept running anyway. To put more space between himself and the scene of the crime. The farther he went, the less real it seemed to him. Like a dream. He saw the overseer’s head absorb the ax that had been meant for Massa Johnson. He heard Bertha screaming. Saw the old white man’s eyes rolling with fury (no fear, not even at the end). But he couldn’t remember how he’d felt. Had he been angry? Satisfied? Happy? Now he only felt shaken.
    Eventually he found a tall willow tree and slept between its massive roots, until he was awoken by the soft touch of fingers on his shoulder.
    Johnson jerked and thrashed, and stumbled quickly to his feet. His skin was slick with cold dew and his muscles were stiff and unresponsive. It was very early dawn, very dark.
    “Whoa, easy.”
    The young man, a boy really, who had touched him had taken a step back. He was tall and thin and the whitest man Johnson had ever seen, with skin like snow and hair like straw, and eyes of pure gold. In the dawn light the boy looked as if he were made of silver, or mist.
    “I ain’t going to hurt you,” the boy said. A Spencer repeating rifle was slung across the boy’s shoulders. His hands were empty. He was wearing ragged overalls and worn boots. Johnson could tell by the boy’s accent that he was not from around here.
    “Are you from the North?” Johnson asked.
    “That’s right,” the boy said. “What you sleeping out here for? You run off?”
    “Yessir,” Johnson said.
    “Well, you can come back with me,” the boy said. “Our unit splitup, but most of us are staying at a big farmhouse not far from here. The Williams place. You know it?”
    “Yessir,” Johnson said.
    “There’s loads of run-off colored folk there, just waiting outside. Most of them are from the Johnson place.”
    To this, Fred Johnson said nothing.
    Eventually, the boy spoke again. “You’re the most busted-up