Devil's Dream - Madison Smartt Bell [56]
“We’re not far from the river,” Willie said quietly, and Henri guessed he could smell the water too.
It was Willie too who picked up the first flicker of movement by the boulder on the bank, or maybe he heard something, smelled something—of a sudden his whole body lined up behind the barrel of his pistol like a bird dog throws its whole self into its pointing nose. A man stood up slowly from the rock with his empty hands upraised and his head lowered. Against the dim quicksilver sheen of the Chattooga they could all see his body shaking.
“Massa!” The voice trembling too. “We ain’t go to do it. It was deh Yankees …”
There was the softer speech of the deepest Deep South, somewhat unaccustomed to Henri’s ear still. He strained his eyes against the shadow of the rock. There was something else there and Matthew had trained his pistol on it. Henri got down from his horse and struck a light. A woman sat in the shelter of the boulder, cradling a baby in a cloth sling against her breast. She was very young, and the child not three weeks old.
“Put up those pistols,” he told the boys, and cupped the flame to shine on his own face. “Stop acting like a slave,” he said. “I’m no man’s master but my own.”
“I is a slave,” the man said. But he straightened his back and stopped shaking.
Henri nodded to the woman by the rock, and snuffed his light. “Have you been with Colonel Streight?”
“Yassuh,” the man said. “Whole lotta folkses gone with him at fust. He say he gone care us to freedom.” The man looked out across the water. “He cain’t care nobody nowheh now. Half dem hoss sojahs done landed on dey feets. Wo’ out till they cain’t keep they eyes open no mo’.” He laughed softly. “Dem mules dey got too mean to tote’m no way. And don’t you know dey jess plum tuckered. I seen one yestiddy walk spang into a tree.”
“Where are you from?” Henri asked.
“Peck’s plantation. Over to Gadsden.” The man shrugged. “We’d go back theh now if we known the way.” He looked at Henri, eyes narrowing slightly. “Who y’all with?”
“Bedford Forrest.”
“Bedford Forrest? He the wust man in all deh state. What dem seh. In all deh South, dey do seh.”
Henri smiled in the dark. “I’d rather be with him than against him.”
“Dem Yankees do seh Forrest after’m.”
“They’re right about one thing anyway,” Willie said from the saddle.
“Which way’s the ferry from here,” Henri said, and the man pointed east along the river. Out of the darkness the panther screamed again but the voice was cut off midway by a shot. Henri shuddered.
“Rabbit run ovah yo’ grave,” the man said, looking at Henri with the same curiosity. If anyone else had heard the sound they gave no sign.
AT LAST HE FOUND the big cat knotted in a high crotch of a leafless oak, just below the crown of the ninth hill he’d climbed since leaving the cabin. He sat cross-legged below the tree, the long rifle sticking straight up from his folded knees, waiting for the light to come. Presently the dogs caught up with him; he calmed them and made them wait quietly as he. At dawn the panther gathered itself, focused its hot yellow eyes. Its smell grew muskier. Bedford stood and leveled the gun as the panther screamed and flung itself at him. The dead weight bowled him over, one claw tearing a gash on his forearm, though he’d hit it square between the eyes and it was just convulsion working now. As the dogs raced a yelping circle around them he cut the cat’s throat and, deliciously, washed in the blood.
· · ·
HENRI HELD the horses on the bank while Matthew and Willy, cooperating smoothly for once in their vexatious lives, poled the ferry midstream. They’d just begun to swim back to shore when Henri thought he heard hoofbeats away in the woods to the west. He scurried along the bank, not daring to call, beckoning furiously, and uselessly since the boys had their heads down and couldn’t see him. Sleek as otter they came out of the water and Henri hurried them and the horses into a clump of cedars, seconds before Streight’s scouts appeared