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The ground dipped down a moment, a puddle splashed through, back up to level ground.

Then came the hard thrashing of something on us from behind, the heavy pounding of a horse through woods. It was a sound I’d heard a million times before: Patrick and Reynold coming up after the dogs’d run through.

We came to a fallen oak, the trunk of it four feet high, and I started over it, felt Unc let go and Mom both, all of us up and scrambling.

I slipped down the other side, felt Unc take hold. But Mom’s hand wasn’t there, and I’d already taken a couple steps away when I turned, saw her behind us, bent over.

I turned back to her, Unc going with me, and moved to grab her, to pull her with us, and still the thrashing came through the woods, a crash and tumble of broken sounds coming right for us, and I glanced over the top of the trunk, saw way back in the woods a shape, big and hulking, black and lumbering inside all the shadows and black, headed for us.

I crouched, hoped he hadn’t seen me, and reached for Mom, reached for her, ready to spin, to keep running.

But then she quick lay down, rolled away and beneath the log, and she was gone.

I squatted, looked for her, Unc coming down with me. He pulled hard on my belt, his signal to get us out of here, get us going and away.

Mom’s hand came out from beneath the log, that jacket sleeve like some thick and jittery snake, waving frantic at us, and I took it, lay flat on the ground, rolled like she’d done, and suddenly I was inside total black save for a couple-foot-wide swath of gray, that slip of space we’d rolled down through, my back pressed into Mom.

Now the pounding was even thicker, heavier, right here in my ears, us down beneath the ground, the horse hard on us, nearly here, and now Unc was squatted down, and I reached out, pulled hard on his hand, and he rolled toward me and Mom, his body pressed into mine, the three of us smashed together in this washed-out space, cold and damp.

And just as Unc fell into place in front of me, the whole trunk shook, a huge shock of sound and movement, and in the next instant the whole world was fixed in a perfect silence, no sound at all, and now here came the horse, I could see over Unc’s shoulder, the whole of Jeb Stuart flying off in front of us from above, then the shock of it landing, the heavy strike of the hooves on the ground out there enough to send down on us wet rotten wood, and there sat Thigpen, riding away, in his silhouette a shotgun out to one side, him ducked low in the saddle, riding hard.

Riding away from us, into the woods.

I pushed at Unc, wanted up and out of here to head back the other way. But Unc didn’t move, reached back his hand and touched at my face with it, found my lips, and put his hand to them a moment: Stay put.

Thigpen kept heading away from us, the hoofbeats thinner, farther away. I could see him, still low, the trees about to swallow him.

But then he stopped, pulled the horse up, nosed him this way, and they were standing sideways to us, maybe thirty yards off. That silhouette again, shrouded and choked by the silhouettes of limbs and trees.

Mom moved behind me, put her arm over my shoulder, clutched at my jacket. She was breathing hard.

Thigpen wheeled the horse around, started back at us, walking it slow.

I whispered, “He’s coming back.”

Unc and Mom froze.

“Don’t make this any harder than it already is,” Thigpen called out. “Larry, Moe, and Yandle back there went easy. No need to make it tough on yourselves, considering you got to know by now there ain’t no way out of this thing.” He paused, stopped the horse. Mom still breathed hard behind me, though I could feel she was trying hard to hold it in, keep it slow. Unc didn’t seem even to breathe.

“Shame about Doc Ravenel,” Thigpen said. “Something of a surprise, that one. What you might call a nigger in the woodpile.”

He started toward us again, and I could feel the cold ground working on me, digging in, and I shivered.

Mom pulled me closer to her.

“Sort of