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the lights in the saloon and the tinny music in Carrie LaRose's
brothel, his pulse beating in his wrists, his palms damp, a tightness
in his throat he could not quite explain.
    There were six riders spread
across the road in front of him, led by a seventh man in a rain slicker
and flop hat, like cavalry advancing on an enemy position, their
saddles hung with pistols and coils of rope and braided whips, their
faces bladed with purpose.
    "Hold your hands out by your
sides, friend," the leader said.
    "I think not. Unless you have
governance over a white man talking a walk," Willie said.
    The leader rode his horse
forward. Lightning rippled through the clouds overhead and the wind
flattened the tops of the young cane in the fields. The leader of the
horsemen leaned down on his pommel, the saddle creaking with the shift
in his weight.
    "We've got five niggers
unaccounted for tonight. It isn't a time for cleverness, Mr. Willie,"
he said.
    "Oh, it's Captain Atkins, is
it? This is a coincidence. I'm on a mission of recovery myself. I took
my laundry to the Black girl, whats her name, Flower, the one owned by
Mr. Jamison? I think I dropped one or two of my books out of my saddle
bags.You didn't find them did you?"
    "Maybe you and I will have a
talk about that later," Atkins said.
    "Mr. Jamison often visits at
the Shadows. I'll mention it to him. Is there anything I should report
about amorous relationships on your part with his niggers?" Willie said.
    Atkins' ringed finger clicked
up and down on the stitched top of his pommel.
    "A word of caution to you, Mr.
Willie. You were at the home of the abolitionist woman this evening.
Now I see you in a neighborhood where five slaves didn't report for
bell count. Be aware there are others besides I who feel you bear
watching," Atkins said.
    "Say again?"
    "Robert Perry saved his little
tit-sucking momma's boy of a friend from being gagged and bucked today.
Don't expect that kind of good fortune again," Atkins said.
    "Thank you, sir. It's a great
honor to be excoriated by a miserable fuck and white trash such as
yourself," Willie said.
    He brushed past Atkins' horse
and walked through the other riders, the cane in the fields whipping in
the wind, dust and rain now blowing across the lighted front of the
saloon.
    He heard Atkins' boot heels
thud against his horse's sides and barely had time enough to turn
before Atkins rode him down, whipping the lead ball on the butt of his
quirt handle across Willie's head.
    He felt the earth rush up at
him and explode against his face. Then the booted legs of the paddy
rollers surrounded him and through a misting rain he thought he heard
the song "Dixie's Land" again.
    "Since he likes the
abolitionist woman so much, dump him in the nigger jail," Atkins said.
    Then Willie was being lifted
over a saddle, his wrists and feet roped together under the horse's
belly. As the horse moved forward blood dripped out of Willie's hair
onto his shirtsleeves and the dust from the horse's hooves rose into
his nostrils.
    But a huge man stepped into
the middle of the road and grasped the horse's bridle.
    "You're a constable and I
cain't stop you from taking him in, Mr. Atkins. But if there's
another mark on him in the morning, I'm gonna strip the clothes off
your body on Main Street and lay a whip to your back, me," Jean-Jacques
LaRose said.
    Atkins was dismounted, his
stature diminutive in contrast to Jean-Jacques LaRose. He pressed his
quirt against Jean-Jacques' chest, bowing the braided leather back on
itself.
    "Would you care to see your
sister's business establishment shut down? . . . You don't? ... I knew
you were a man of reason after all, Jack," he said. He tapped his quirt
softly on Jean-Jacques' chest.

    A half hour later Willie lay
on a wood bunk inside a log jail, an iron manacle around his ankle. Two
Negroes sat on the dirt floor against the far wall, barefoot, their
knees drawn up before them. Their clothes were torn, their hair bloody.
They smelled of funk and