Dance on the Wind

by Johnston, Terry C.

  The slaver must have enjoyed that, for James laughed, throwing his head back lustily. Then he said, “Shit, now. I never knew a man who could hold a candle to a woman when it come to dangerous talk. No—a woman wags her tongue sooner, and a lot faster’n any man I ever knowed. The bitch’ll die with the rest of you.”

  “Let’s just get it over with,” another of the horsemen growled.

  “Not just yet,” James snapped, his horse sidling nervously, fighting the bit. “Not before I see if these three rivermen are carrying what I think they’re carrying.”

  The trio of boatmen backed closer together, Beulah between them.

  “What about her?”

  “Yes,” James answered one of his men. “She might just be carrying some of the money too.” He looked hard at the woman, saying, “You’ve got it under your clothes, don’t you?”

  “Haven’t got nothing of no value,” Kingsbury said bravely, his teeth chattering with cold.

  Bass’s heart whimpered with a twinge of sympathy for that brave man as he tapped on Hezekiah’s shoulder, nudging him toward the horsemen. Leaning over to speak into the slave’s ear, Titus whispered, “Grab you something big and long. Get you a branch off the ground.”

  While he kept his eyes on the horsemen, Hezekiah hunched over, creeping off in search of a limb among the dark, decaying leaves.

  “You first,” James said, wagging his pistol at Kingsbury. “Open your shirt.”

  He did as he was told. And the horseman James had ordered out of the saddle to search the river pilot found nothing.

  Wagging his pistol again, the slaver thundered, “Off with your britches!”

  “You heard him!” the man beside Kingsbury growled, pounding him on the back. “Take ’em off.”

  Kingsbury pulled free his wide leather belt from its buckle, allowing it to drop to the sodden ground. He yanked at the fly buttons, shinnying them down to hop out of his soggy pants.

  The slave hunter snatched them up from the ground, shook them, then tossed the britches up to the leader. “They feel heavy, James.”

  “Aye, they do at that,” the leader replied. “The rest of you, off with yours. Now!”

  “And you, woman.” The thief on the ground whirled on Beulah, reaching out and stuffing his hand inside the neck of her blanket coat, flinging open the flaps. “You I’ll search my own self.”

  The moment he grabbed hold of the top of her blouse and rent it in half, Kingsbury lunged for him. The thief brought up his pistol in a backswing, catching Hames across the temple. The river pilot stumbled backward. Root caught him as the thief hurled the woman down into the mud. Standing over her, his pistol in one hand, he fought his belt and britches with the other. Kingsbury came to and tried to fight off Root and Ovatt, struggling to reach Beulah, who refused to let out a cry.

  “Stay where you are, boatman!” James ordered, urging his horse forward a yard, wagging his pistol at the three rivermen. “This ought to be a pretty sight to watch.”

  “I swear—I’ll kill you,” Kingsbury growled. “I’ll hunt you down. I’ll see you hang—”

  James’s pistol barked in that hammer of rain, spinning Kingsbury around. He crumpled from the grasp of his two companions, spilling back into the leaves and dead grass beneath the bare branches of a hickory tree.

  Beulah scrambled to the side, attempting to crawl to her feet and reach him, crying out only when the thief struck her across the jaw with a flat hand. She sprawled back, and once more he stepped over to straddle her, exposing himself as the two other horsemen dismounted and slogged over.

  “I get some’a that next.”

  “Hell with you! I was on the ground afore you.”

  The first shoved the second. The second reached out to grab for the first, squabbling.

  “Stop it!” James bellowed in the dying growl of thunder. “Just take her and be done with it! And you,” he said to one of the two on the ground, “get back in the saddle and keep your gun on the rest of these here.”

  “I’ll damn well be next,” the man grumbled in disappointment as he stuffed a boot into the stirrup and rose to the saddle.

  Wincing, Kingsbury slowly rose to his elbow as Ovatt and Root knelt beside him.

  “You hit?” Reuben asked.

  Touching the top of his shoulder, the river pilot nodded. “I’ll live,” he huffed, clearly in pain, glaring up at James, who was pulling a second pistol from the sash at his waist. “Long enough to find you.”

  The man climbing back onto his horse guffawed nastily. “You ain’t gonna live nowhere near that long, you dumb son of—”

  In that next flare of lightning the man began swinging a foot over the rump of his horse—when he suddenly pitched sideways from his saddle, his horse bounding away from the falling body, colliding with another riderless horse.

  That’s when a piece of that black night tore out of the bowels of the forest and flung itself like a crazed, demonic shadow right into the midst of those two dismounted horsemen.

  17

  As Titus stuffed the fired pistol into his waistband, pulling the loaded one into his right hand and drawing back its hammer, Hezekiah burst past him, through the tangle of trees and shadow toward the ring of frightened horses and slave hunters thrown into instant confusion.

  There the big slave lunged through the frightened animals, landing among the two thieves standing over Beulah. Hezekiah swung a huge limb at the end of his powerful arms. Every time it cracked against one of the slavers’ bones, it rang with the smack of a maul splitting hard oak.

  At the same time, James’s mount reared wildly, but he struggled it back down, wagging a second horse pistol this way, then that, trying to hold it on the black terror pummeling two of his men senseless as the woman crawled off on her belly through the leaves.

  Suddenly Kingsbury leaped, snagging the famous slave hunter’s wrist, yanking, snapping his head forward to lock his teeth in that pliant web of flesh between thumb and forefinger of the hand holding the pistol, gritting his teeth together as James flung his arm up and down, fighting to free himself from the wild beast pulling him from the saddle … when the pistol went off, the muzzle flash a bright, painful flare in the darkness of that thunderstruck forest.

  As Kingsbury hurtled back, arms akimbo, the leader cruelly drove his spurs into the horse’s flanks. With something close to the sound of human pain, the animal cried out as James savagely wrenched his mount’s head to the side with the reins, hammering the beast into furious motion.

  Clearing the last fringe of trees surrounding that deadly clearing, Bass brought his pistol up, marking a spot on the slaver’s broad back. With the instincts of a hunter he quickly considered, then decided. Stuffing the pistol back into his waistband, he brought the longrifle up to his shoulder as he snapped the goosenecked hammer back, flicking off the greased leather sock that kept the powder dry in its pan.

  He blinked. Then once more, trying desperately to clear his eyes of the swirling rain that drove down on them in dancing sheets. Unsure in that darkness, he touched off the trigger.

  Thirty yards away, the slave hunter twisted to the side, arms flung up, screwing partway out of the saddle as his hands flapped down, fighting to secure a purchase on the horn, seeking to regain the reins that flopped out of reach. Boots freed from the stirrups, James hurtled from the back of that terrified animal in a low arc. He collided against the great trunk of a chestnut tree, spilling to the damp ground with a great rush of air from his lungs.

  Just beyond the slaver, the horse came to a stop, gazed suspiciously from side to side, then calmly dipped its head to forage among the moidering leaves for something worth nuzzling in the way of graze.

  Root was the first to reach the slave hunter, standing over him as Titus came up—trembling. Bass tried to stand just so, mindful that if he didn’t, the others would surely tell his knees were rattling like all get-out. He’d never shot a man in anger. Standing there at that moment, he finally realized his veins burned wit
h a fire never before this hot, adrenaline pumping through them still. His mouth gone dry, he could only stare, slack-jawed, at the 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 boy just killed you, you worthless hide hunter,” Root growled. “You realize that?”

  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 him” Ovatt said, his red hair sopping into the collar of his fustian coat. “Jesus God, Titus! I been one to cut my share of white men in my time—but I never out an’ out killed a white man. Jesus God!”

  “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 n
ear 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 bitch is busy killing the rest of us.”

  “But soon enough them two gone back ’cross’t the river gonna find Titus and the Negra ain’t there no more. They’ll be on their way back here,” Kingsbury said.

  “That’s why I say we ought’n be leaving here fast,” Beulah suggested more forcefully, pulling Kingsbury’s collar aside to inspect his bullet wound.

  “What ’bout them?” Ovatt asked, holding a thumb over his shoulder. “This’un too.”

  “You boys’re rivermen,” Beulah chided them. “Drag the lot of ’em off into the brush yonder. Away from the trail.”

  “And them horses?” Root asked.

  “I say we ride back to Kentucky, folks,” Ovatt suggested.

  “Damn fine idea,” Kingsbury agreed. “Titus, you think you and Hezekiah catch up them horses afore they get too far away?”

  He glanced at the slave, then nodded. “Don’t see why we can’t. I never had much to do with horses—”

  “None the rest of us never did neither,” Kingsbury explained. “Figure you two can catch ’em up so we can get out of here.”

  Self-consciously he licked his lips, still stinging with the sour taste of bile as the rain began to slacken. Nodding to the slave, Titus led out, heading first for that horse ridden by the dead leader of the slave hunters.

  “You … you really kill them two other’ns?” Bass whispered after he had the reins in hand and they had started back toward the scene of the ambush.

  Hezekiah nodded.

  “Just like that?”

  The slave shrugged. “I kill men afore. Annie Christmas tell me—I kill. Allays kill for her. Never before I kill for friends. These peoples here—makes no matter now. You, for first time to kill, it feel bad in here.” He tapped a long black finger against his chest. “Maybe it get better sometime for you, like it done for me. No hurt no more in here.”