body sprawled on the ground.
James gurgled, something bright and dark oozing from the side of his mouth as he gazed up at the moment Ovatt came to a stop beside Bass. The slaver’s eyes rolled back to their whites for a moment, fluttering, his face contorting as if he were struggling to hold on. Then those cruel eyes appeared to brush across Root before coming to rest on Titus. They seemed to smile, laugh even—perhaps laugh at himself as he choked out something unintelligible.
Then he hacked up a great dark gob of gelling blood puffing from his mouth in a shiny bubble before he locked his eyes on Bass once more. “I didn’t think you sonsabitches’d leave the boy behind. Maybe the Negra, leave that black bastard behind for me—just to keep me off your trail … but … I should’ve known … you’d n-never … leave the boy.”
“The one you call a
Bass watched James take his eyes from him, to gaze down at his chest and the shiny stain oozing around that exit hole. “I do believe,” he started, gasping for air, staring cruelly back at Bass before the eyes began to roll slowly back. “Do … do believe he … he did …”
For the longest time Titus stared down at the slave hunter—numbed, unable to move, watching for any sign. Perhaps the face to twitch, his eyes to roll back and fix him with their steely gaze, maybe even see the slaver move a bit this way or that—he lay so like a disjointed rag-sock doll, the sort his mother had made for his sister years before. But nothing moved. Not a sound but the crunch of the horse nearby as it tore at the old grass, snorting and blowing aside the dying leaves with their stench of decay.
“Yep, you sure kill’t that bastard. Kill’t him dead,” Root finally said.
At first Titus wasn’t sure he’d heard Reuben speaking. The blood thundered at his ears so.
After he had worked his throat, worked his tongue around a few times before uttering a sound, Bass finally said, “I … couldn’t stand by and let ’im kill Kingsbury like he done.”
“That bastard didn’t kill me,” came the pilot’s voice.
Whirling on his heel with surprise, Titus found Kingsbury approaching, leaning on Beulah’s shoulder.
Sputtering, Bass shook his head, saying, “I saw … h-he shot you close—”
“His pistol went off right aside my face, sure enough,” Kingsbury replied, pulling a hand away from his shoulder to expose a black oval of drying blood that spidered toward the armpit. “But he didn’t hit nothing that second time—just blinded me.”
“Lookee here what the young’un here done to
“Killing that there son of a sow pig ain’t really like killing a white man,” Root declared, coming forward to kneel over the body. “This’un’s no more’n a animal the boy here just put out of its misery.”
Bass watched the boatman lay a hand on the slave hunter’s chest, wait long moments, then lean forward to place an ear directly on that dark blossom of blood.
“Jesus God, Titus,” Ovatt repeated with a wag of his head. “You gone and kill’t a white man!”
“Shuddup, Heman! What the boy done ain’t murder,” Kingsbury snarled. “They was all fixing to kill us, then stuff our belly-holes full with rocks so we wouldn’t float to the top of this here bayou.”
“Hames is right,” Beulah agreed, gripping the river pilot’s arm. “Titus here done what needed doing when this son of a bitch took to running.”
They all turned upon hearing Hezekiah’s sodden steps. He had his waistband filled with pistols and carried a rifle in each hand. Shocked at the sight of an armed Negro, the three white men and one white woman stared speechless as Hezekiah came to a halt. He gazed back at each of those frightened faces, then handed the first rifle to Reuben Root.
“You need this’r more’n me,” the slave said quietly. Then Hezekiah turned to Ovatt, handing the Ohioan the other full-stocked rifle.
Titus sensed a sudden relief wash over all four of the white people standing with him.
“You take all them guns from them others?” Root inquired, gesturing toward the bodies.
Hezekiah nodded with a simple shrug. “They ain’t gonna need ’em. We might’n, somewhere down this’r road.”
“What you aim to do with them belt pistols?” Ovatt asked.
Turning to Bass, the slave answered, “He tell me what to do with them.”
“I don’t own you, goddammit!” Titus snapped, his mind burning, turning away to look down at the dead slave hunter. He’d just killed a man—how was he expected to know the answer to every goddamned question in the world right now?
“For the devil, Titus! You just can’t let a goddamned Negra have a gun,” Root squealed. “Just look at him, will you! The son of a bitch took six of them pistols off them slave hunters!”
“Give him the guns you got,” Ovatt ordered the Negro. “Titus, you take ’em from him now.”
“Why?” Titus demanded.
“I don’t want him at my back with a gun,” Root said, his eyes narrowing.
“Don’t matter to me if’n he’s got a gun at my back or not,” Bass remarked quietly, his throat burning with the first taste of gall as he looked back down and stared at that slaver’s face going ashen in the rain. Pale as limestone chalk.
Right then Bass was afraid of what he knew was about to overwhelm him. It had happened with the first animal he had ever killed, out hunting with his pap and an uncle. They had run across a rabbit—caught far from the safety of its burrow. The flop-eared critter had stopped dead in its tracks as the hunters had closed in on the clearing.
“Shoot ’im,” his uncle had ordered harshly, slamming his rifle into Titus’s hands.
Instead, the frightened and confused young boy had stared down at the cocked hammer, then gazed at the rabbit before locking his eyes on the gun once more.
“Like your uncle said, shoot ’im, Titus!” Thaddeus Bass had whispered harshly.
Still the rabbit had sat there, staring at the three humans.
Shaking like a cedar sapling beneath the onslaught of an autumn wind, Titus had dragged the big rifle to his bony shoulder, aimed as he had been taught, and gazed down that long barrel at those dark beads of eyes just beyond the front sight—then squeezed his own eyes shut and pulled the trigger.
The body was still so very warm when his dad and uncle had come back with it, slinging the rabbit against Titus’s chest. “Now skin it,” the uncle had demanded.
Feeling the animal’s heat, looking down at those eyes that had stared back at him, Bass had choked on the first flood of gall. Much as he tasted the rise of gall now, staring down at those white eyes rolled back in the slave hunter’s head.
Stumbling in his hurry to flee, he pitched over the dead man’s legs, caught himself with the rifle as crutch, and made it behind the tree as his stomach began to empty in great, volcanic waves. He was finishing the last heaves as he sensed a hand on his back.
“You feel better now?” Beulah asked.
Straightening, Titus nodded as he wiped his lower face, stinging with shame as he peered over at the others. His mouth boiled with the burn of acid as he said, “I … don’t know what come over me—”
“Don’t matter to us, none,” Kingsbury replied. “Likely it’s what happens as a natural thing, Titus. Nary a man here ever went and kill’t a white man afore. Surely we’d do the same.”
With his eyes smarting Titus tried to explain. “Thought you was … thought he’d gone and killed you.”
“You done what any man do for his friend,” the pilot replied. “You’re a good man, Titus Bass.”
“I’m glad you was here,” Ovatt declared supportively. “None of us shoot near good as that, drop that son of a bitch off a running horse.”
Beulah glanced down the backtrail, saying, “Maybe we ought’n figure on them other two coming back from Colbert’s soon.”
“She’s right,” Kingsbury said, suddenly stiffening as he peered down the road in the direction of the ford. “Likely they heard the shots.”
“Shit. I ain’t worried about the noise of them guns,” Root argued. “Likely they’ll just figure this here son of a
