Dead water

honeysuckle that overgrew the faint trace of cow-path, twice startling sinewy rustlings in the undergrowth that spoke of copperheads or water-moccasins lying just out of sight. Once he saw an alligator in the bayou, masquerading as a floating log. Its gold eyes reminded him of Jubal Cain's, glittering just above the line of the silent water.

He was far from New Orleans, and far from the Silver Moon, but Queen Regine's curse seemed to be working just fine.

He moved as quietly as he could, stopping repeatedly to listen. The woods were so still that the drumming of the cicadas seemed to roar in the trees, and the squeaky mew of a catbird cut the stillness like a violin note. He wasn't sure what made him first realize he was being pursued.

It wasn't a sound—he didn't hear the strike of hooves until afterwards, nor the rustle of a man flanking the road through the underbrush. Whatever it was that lifted the hair on his nape, January didn't hesitate. He waded silently into the bayou (Virgin Mary, please don't let there be gators) and made for the nearest half-sunk tree, sliding almost completely under the water on its far side and keeping the slime-draped trunk between his head and the waterside path.

Still silence. Did I really just hop in the bathtub with every gator and cottonmouth in Warren County out of sheer bad nerves?

He stayed where he was.

And stayed.

“Where the fuck'd he go?”

Shit, was the ground dry or muddy on the edge where I went in? He couldn't recall.

Hooves, and the faint jangle of a bit-chain. The creak of saddle-leather.

“Got to gone in the woods.”

“The fuck he did, Reverend, I was comin' round through the woods. He can't have gone up a tree.”

The Reverend Christmas laughed, a hoarse braying. “I'd like to see a nigger that big hangin' in a tree like an old coon. We'll get him, Turk. If he's headin' for the river, we'll catch him.”

“What if he ain't?”

“Where else he gonna go? They all head for the river when they run. I hear there's a regular leg of the Underground Railway runnin' up the river these days. That's where he's headed, sure.”

“You think he got that boy Bobby with him?”

“I didn't see him. He coulda been waitin' for him outside town. One way or the other, if that big bastard is indeed our loyal friend, I got a score to settle with him on that boy Bobby's account. . . .”

The voices faded, swallowed up in the soughing of the trees.

So Bobby decided to run after all. Christmas and his bravos had probably counted on the Silver Moon laying by for a few more hours, and had been caught on the hop by her sudden departure. They had almost certainly seen him on the waterfront. At least the Reverend wasn't on board with Rose.

“. . . figure we can catch 'em at Horsehead Bar.”

January had just begun to reach down for footing on the murky bottom, when other voices sounded on the path. He ducked down again, praying the movement hadn't caught anyone's attention.

“That's twenty miles!”

“You ever know a boat to get off Horsehead Bar in less'n two days at low water?”

Something brushed January's leg underwater, and he fought not to flinch. By force of will he remained where he was for another ten minutes, listening. When the frogs began to croak again, eerie in the stillness, he cautiously raised his head. The path and the woods were empty. Trembling, he waded, not back to the path, but across the rest of the bayou, and plunged into the tangled undergrowth of the woods.

His benefactor at the landing had instructed him to follow Chickasaw Bayou but hadn't mentioned what other bayous might intersect it in the marshy lands within the big river's loop. Trying to keep the bayou on his left, January encountered a wider body of water. . . . Another bayou? The Yazoo River? It seemed to have a current, but bayous frequently did. In the leafy summer woods it was difficult to determine the direction of the sun, which stood nearly straight overhead now. The windless air was suffocating. January crossed the river—or bayou—and followed it to his left, but it bent back on itself, and rapidly dried to a shallow pan of reeds and dead trees fringed with ants' nests the size of flour-sacks.

When he turned back to seek the original bayou, he found himself amid trees that looked totally unfamiliar, cypress and bright-green thickets of harshly-whispering palmetto, the ground a jungle of elephant-ear underfoot. He pushed through this until, ahead of him, he smelled the whiff of smoke, the ashy pungence of a fire newly damped. He stood to listen but heard nothing. No voices, no curses, no friendly bicker of men breaking camp.

Silently, January moved back into the palmetto thickets . . .

. . . and heard a rustling away to his right.

He moved away from it as silently as he could, but something—the birds too silent, perhaps? The cicadas hushed?—turned him back farther into the woods, and after a few moments he heard the unmistakable crack of a trodden stick to his left. Among the palmettos he was at least sheltered from sight, and he moved from clump to clump, listening to the rustle of the men hunting him. And they were hunting him, two of them at least, working through the thickets on either side. Somewhere close by he heard a dog bark, and made for the sound, his steps quickening as the slashing rustle neared.

They had to have heard him, he knew, and broke into a jog, then a run. The thresh of his legs through the tangles of honeysuckle and elephant-ear drowned all sound of pursuit, but he didn't dare look back. Only strode, struggled, ran upslope, then down to a marshy little trickle of puddles that might have once been a bayou. Someone behind him yelled, “You, boy, stop!” as he broke cover at the bottom, but he plunged into the woods on the far side and cut toward his right as soon as he thought he was out of sight. The heat dazed him, beat on him, suffocated