“Or summer,” Heman agreed.
“For the devil!” Root exclaimed. “With the money I’m carrying, sure as hell I’d sink like a rock.”
“The man’s due what he’s got, Beulah,” Kingsbury tried soothing her. “He come out here to the wilderness many a year ago to trade with the Chickasaws in these parts—an’ he’s worked hard for everything he’s got him today.”
“Looks like the man married smart, though,” the woman said sourly.
“Who put the goddamned bee under your bonnet?” Hames said, wagging his head. “The tribes got ’em a treaty says if full-bloods don’t run the stands, then only half-breeds and squaw men like Colbert can make their living on Injun land.” Kingsbury turned away to regard the last of the six riders urging his skittish horse onto the ferry. Hames quickly patted the waistband of his canvas britches, saying, “Can’t ever blame a man for wanting to get enough money ahead to make life easier for hisself, now—can you, Beulah?”
“See there,” Root said. “He’s just made himself six dollars, bringing over them riders and their horses.”
Beulah squinted at the landing in the fading light. “Who you s’pose pushing south on the Trace this time of year?”
They all turned their attention to the ferry heaving away from the north bank beneath the thick rope strung from shore to shore, each end attached to a great tree on either bank, while the ferry itself was hooked to that rope with another that slid along it, which prevented the flat, unwieldy craft from being swept downriver by the force of the Tennessee’s current.
“Maybe just some folks looking to find some warmer weather,” Kingsbury commented with a shudder as a biting wind came up. “C’mon, fellas. Let’s get us some of that wood took inside afore they call us all to supper.”
While most stands along the Natchez Trace offered both bed and board for the night, which included a supper of such questionable taste that it was guaranteed to deaden even the hungriest man’s appetite, Colbert’s Stand was a different matter altogether. Over time the old man’s squaw had learned something about the proper feeding of a white man from her Scottish husband, combining that knowledge with her native Chickasaw recipes. Although the family patriarch had gone so far as to nail down a rough-hewn puncheon floor in the family’s sleeping cabin, the floor in the combination kitchen-dining room was in no way fancier than the floors of those sleeping huts provided their guests: bare earth pounded as smooth and solid as any clay tile beneath thousands of feet across the years.
“I’ll pay you good money for that Negra of yours,” one of the horsemen offered over a dinner of white beans and corn cakes, some slabs of salted pork simmered in the beans for a hearty flavor.
“Not selling,” Kingsbury replied around a mouthful of the savory beans.
“Ain’t you ’fraid that Negra’s gonna run off on you?” asked another of the horsemen as he swabbed his corn cake across the bottom of the wooden trencher to soak up the last of his bean juice.
“He ain’t the kind tends to run off,” Titus answered testily this time, then dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. He pushed his trencher back, finished with supper, although he did hunger for another cup of that coffee, especially if it would be poured by any one of those smiling, doe-eyed half-breed Colbert girls. He wasn’t the only one giving his eager attention to the old Scotsman’s daughters—what with those six horsemen hungrily sizing them up. He raised his cup, signaling the pair nearest the huge kitchen fireplace.
“All Negras gonna run off,” the first man said with a slit-eyed smile on his lips. There was an angry fire in those eyes.
“James here oughtta know,” a third horseman spoke up for the first time, indicating that first speaker with a thumb. “He’s ’bout the best man-hunter there is in this country.”
“Man-hunter?” Ovatt asked.
The second horseman nodded, saying, “We all of us hunt down runaways. Make a pretty fair living by it, we do.”
Now James spoke again. “Always plenty of work for us, you see. Lots of folks pay a good reward for bringing back a runaway Negra.”
Kingsbury finished a swallow of coffee and asked, “Why’ll folks pay you such good money just to get one Negra back?”
James held up his cup, signaling the daughter filling Titus’s. “It ain’t just the one Negra that may happen to run away from a man’s plantation that causes worry for that owner. It’s all the others still back at his place, you must understand.” He set his full cup down and adjusted the pair of huge horse pistols he carried in the wide woven sash tied around his waist.
“All the others,” the second man repeated for emphasis.
“We’re talking about a lot of money,” James continued. “Because if that plantation owner doesn’t get back that one runaway Negra—chances are damned bloody good some of the rest are going to try running off too.”
“And no rich plantation owner wants that to happen,” added the third talkative horseman.
“That’s why rich land barons will pay such good money to get back just one poor Negra what dreams his foolish dreams of freedom,” James said with a wry grin. “So my men here and me afford to drink the finest whiskey, we smoke the best cigars, and lay with the best whores … pardon me, ladies, for my thoughtless tongue. We work hard for our money, and the money is very, very good.”
“Bet you’re tracking some Negra now, ain’cha?” Ovatt asked.
“You’re a smart fellow, boatman,” James said after he drank some of his coffee. “I’m being paid well right now as we speak. A man by the name of Lewis Robards—biggest slave trader in Mercer County, Kentucky.” Then he smiled immensely, saying, “Tell me, was your journey south a successful one?”
Kingsbury’s eyes touched his crew, then he answered, “Same as any year. But prices for near everything are down. Hard to make much of a fair living anymore. Not nowhere near the money you fellas make in your line of work.”
“I’m sure you’re not going north empty-handed,” James commented with a disarming smile. “Enough perhaps to build you another Kentucky boat, to load it with goods for another trip south. That’s always the way of things for rivermen, isn’t it, now?”
“The way it’s s’pose to work ain’t allays the way it does work,” Kingsbury replied.
“We run onto some trouble in Natchez.” Beulah suddenly entered the conversation. “This crew can be foolish a’times—not ones to walk away from a real hoot of a celebration. They tore up a gunboat and dramshop.”
James leaned his elbows on the table, slit eyes narrowing even more. “What’s that got to do with—”
“To get these boys out of that miserable jail,” the woman explained, “they had to pay a judge practically all we made for the trip—just for the damages their spree cost ’em.”
“And vow we wouldn’t show our faces back in Natchez for a year,” Kingsbury added, taking up Beulah’s fanciful story.
“A full goddamned year,” Root echoed dolefully.
“Not much a man can do, is there?” James asked. “When he gets thrown out of a town—a real shame. You fellas must be hellions.”
“Regular ring-tailed swamp panthers,” Kingsbury boasted. “Every last one of this crew is half horse, half alligator.”
“Even the young’un here?” asked the second horseman, pointing at Titus with the knife onto which he was scooping the last of his beans.
“Him? Oh, he just got his first trip down under the belt,” Kingsbury answered. “He might have the makings for a riverman.”
“As for the Negra?” James inquired. “What you plan on doing with him?”
“Told you,” Titus snapped, banging his coffee cup down on the plank table. “He ain’t for selling.”
His face hardening, James turned to Kingsbury. “I’m sure as leader of this group, you are the sort who recognizes a good offer when you see one.”
“What you talking about?” the pilot asked.
“I’m certain I can sell that Negra for a good dollar,” James instructed. “In fact, I know plantation owners who would snatch him right up for top dollar tomorrow—and all I’d have to do is show up with that big buck in tow.”
“Tell him he’s wasting his breath,” Titus growled at Kingsbury.
Grim-lipped, the river pilot replied, “The Negra belongs to the young’un here. So if’n he says he ain’t for sale,
