Red Bear prepared a pipe while Gray Owl attended to the horses. Charles didn't want the forgiving mood to fade, didn't want to linger and possibly lose their advantage and their lives. Ceremony required that he sit at the fire with Red Bear, however.
Magee sat on his right. The village chief and several of the tribal elders passed the pipe.
Red Bear had forced Whistling Snake to join the group. When his turn came he passed the pipe without smoking. He snatched a handful of ashes from the edge of the fire and flung them at Charles's crossed legs. They covered his pants and the toes of his boots with gray powder. Red Bear exclaimed and berated the priest, who merely dusted his hands and folded his arms. Red Bear looked embarrassed, Gray Owl upset.
Since the ashes did no real damage, Charles forgot about it. Having finished hid cigar, he was grateful for a deep lungful of pipe smoke, though as always, the unknown mixture of grasses the Cheyennes smoked left him light-headed and euphoric, not a good thing at a time like this.
Red Bear was not only polite but respectful. After asking Charles to describe again the white man he sought, he said, "Yes, we have seen that man, with a boy. At the whiskey ranch of Glyn the trader, on Vermilion Creek. Glyn is gone and they are staying there. I will tell you the way."
He pointed south. Charles was so dizzy with relief, his eyes watered.
Silently, the People formed a long lane through which the three trotted out. Looking back, believing their luck would break any moment, Charles heard Gray Owl laugh deep in his chest. A single figure remained by the campfire, apart from the others. Charles saw Whistling Snake raise his golden feather fan and disdainfully walk away.
They put miles and all of the rest of the night behind them before Charles permitted a stop. Spent men and spent horses rested on the prairie in the cool dawn. Charles knelt beside his black friend.
"All right, I know you don't tell your secrets, but this is one time you will. How did you do it?"
Magee chuckled and produced the hand-carved wooden box. He removed one of the round gray balls and displayed it sportively, just out of Charles's reach. "An old traveling magician taught me the trick back in Chicago. Always wanted to do it for an audience, but till this winter I couldn't afford the right pistol. Saved my pay for it. First thing I did was to short the powder. You never saw it because everybody looked down for a few seconds when I pretended a bug bit me. A little misdirection. But that's only half of it. The trick won't work without this."
"That's a solid ball of lead."
Magee dug his thumbnail with its great cream-colored half-moon into the pistol ball. The nail easily cracked the surface of the ball. "No, it isn't solid, it's melted lead brushed all over something else."
He caught the ball between his palms and rubbed them hard back and forth. He showed the crushed remains, tawny dust. "The rest is just good old Kansas mud. Hard enough to build a house, but not hardly hard enough to kill a man."
He blew on his palm. The dust scattered against the sun and pattered on the ground. He laughed.
"What d'you say we ride and find your boy?"
An hour later, Charles remembered to ask about the ashes on his boots. Gray Owl immediately lost his air of good humor. With a grieved expression, he rode a few moments before he answered.
"It is a curse. As the ashes touch you, so will failure and death."
60
This time they rode in swiftly from the river road. They were less concerned with noise than with surprise. A dozen blacks who belonged to the district militia lived at Mont Royal, scattered over the acreage in wood shanties or little tabby houses. The less time given them to wake up and come running with their old muskets or rifles, the better. That was the agreed strategy when the Klansmen mustered at the crossroads, and they followed it.
Bits jingled and saddles creaked and hooves rap-rapped the sandy road as they neared the whitewashed house with the beams and rafters of a much larger, two-floor structure rising near it. The roof beams were slanting black lines across the stars and the quarter moon. Passing from under the heavy trees, the Klansmen trotted along the road to the old slave quarters. The silvery light of the sky gave a sheen to their robes and hoods. A short distance ahead, on the right, they saw the lighted windows of the school, and people moving inside. All the better.
Riding beside Gettys at the head of the column, Des La-Motte felt a blessed calm descend. This was like a homecoming; like the docking of a vessel after a long and uncertain sea voyage. This night would finish it.
The other Klansmen were equally confident. One spoke to another, jocular; the listener laughed.
Pistols slipped out from underneath robes. Hammers clicked back. A rifle muzzle shimmered as the metal caught the moon's light. Des kept his hands free. He was in command, and his was the privilege of putting a match to the fuse of the dynamite.
"You ladies about through?" Andy said, yawning rather than speaking it. "Must be close on to eleven." He was sitting on a small desk with iron legs which was pushed into a corner beside others like it. His back was braced against the new blackboard. One of the volumes of his set of Kent's Commentaries lay across his lap; he'd been underlining lightly with a pencil.
Fifteen minutes ago, he'd walked over from, the cottage to collect Jane. She and Prudence and Madeline and a thin golden-colored eleven-year-old named Esau had spent the evening finishing the cleaning of the school — washing the sparkling new windows Andy had puttied in night before last, scouring the floor. Madeline and Jane used soapy rags but Prudence, as if somehow purifying herself by making the task harder, scrubbed in the old primitive way of the Low Country, with a handful of moss dipped in water.
"It feels later than that." Madeline straightened, stiff and chilly. Her wine-colored skirt was soaked around the hem. She dropped her rag in a wood bucket. The windows gleamed with reflections of two lamps burning on stools. "We're done. We can put the furniture back tomorrow."
"Esau, you were kind to help," Jane said, patting him. "But it's too late for a boy your age to be awake. Andy and I will walk you home."
"I wanted to help," the boy said. "It's my school."
Madeline smiled, twisting a strand of gray hair away from her forehead and tucking it in so it wouldn't fall again. She was spent, but it was not an unpleasant feeling. All evening they'd worked in the relaxed, easy way of good friends, and now the school was freshly whitewashed and cleaned of the eternal mildew of the Low Country — ready for the visitors from Connecticut.
She bent to pick up the bucket. Her glance fell across the front window, bright with reflections of the lamps. Behind them, something red shimmered. Instantly, she knew who was out there.
She had time only to say, "They've come." A shotgun blew out the front window. One of the pellets nicked Madeline's sleeve as she flung herself against the wall by the front door. Flying glass opened a cut in the cheek of the bewildered Esau. Prudence heaved to her feet, the clump of moss dripping water on the floor so carefully scrubbed and dried.
Madeline heard horses, and men shouting the word nigger, and she knew her sense of peace had been false. She heard a man say, "Light the dynamite."
"Oh my God," Jane said.
Andy flung his book aside. "Somebody's got to go wake the militiamen. Miss Madeline, you take the others out the back, and I'll do it."