"Because it's her mother. A whore in New Orleans. A quadroon." Bent took a coarse, heavy rope from a box beneath his shelf of bottles. "You don't act surprised that she's a nigger."
"I know Madeline has black blood. But I never expected to see a picture like that."
"Nor find me, I venture to say." Bent was all false politeness. "Hands together, raised in front of you."
Charles didn't respond. Bent struck him with his fist. Blood leaked from Charles's right nostril. He raised his hands and Bent looped the rope around his wrists.
Charles's mind was still sluggish, awash with rage against this stubbled, crippled man who moved with obvious discomfort. He raged at himself, too. He'd failed outside. His mistake would cost his life. He saw it in the feverish shine of Elkanah Bent's eyes as Bent looped the rope a third and fourth time.
All right, his life was forfeit. But there was Gus.
Bent's color was high. Constance's teardrop earring swayed like a pendulum gone wild. Bent had pierced his earlobe to hold the post. Green Grass Woman, so soiled and sad, watched Charles with unconcealed pity. It prickled the hair on his neck, that look. She knew what was coming. She clutched Gus to her side, protecting him while she could.
The boy gazed at him with eyes so dull Charles wanted to weep. He had seen the same lack of life in the eyes of wounded young men the night after Sharpsburg. He had seen the same whipped-animal stare in aging black men who feared jubilo, freedom, as much as they feared a master.
But Gus was not yet five years old.
Bent snugged the rope and knotted it. Charles had been exerting pressure against the ropes, but Magee's trick didn't seem to have gained him much slack. Another defeat.
"Do you know how I think of myself?" Bent asked pleasantly.
Charles let the hate pour. "Yes, Orry told me. The new Napoleon." He spat in the dirt.
Bent smashed his fist in Charles's face. Gus hid behind Green Grass Woman's hip.
Breathing noisily, no longer smiling, Bent said, "Did he also explain that he and Hazard ruined me at the Academy, and in Mexico? Destroyed my reputation with lies? Turned my superiors against me? I was born to lead great armies. Like Alexander. Hannibal. Bonaparte. Your tribe and Hazard's kept me from it."
Bent wiped a ribbon of saliva from his lip. Charles heard birds chirping outside the closed door. The cold ashes on the hearth had a familiar woody smell. The world was lunatic.
Bent picked up the razor and lightly passed the blade over the ball of his thumb. His smile returned. Reasonably and persuasively, he said, "I do think of myself as America's Bonaparte, and it's justified. But I'm forced to be watchful because every great general is besieged by little men. Inferior men, jealous of him, who want to pull him down. Tarnish his greatness. The Mains are like that. The Hazards are like that. So I am not only the commander, I'm also the executioner. Rooting out plotters. Betrayers. The enemy. Hazards. Mains. Till they're all gone."
"Let my boy go, Bent. He's too small to harm you."
"Oh, no, my dear Charles. He's a Main. I've always intended that he die." Green Grass Woman uttered a low sound and averted her head. "I planned to wait several months, until you'd given him up for lost. Then, when I killed him —"
"Don't say that in front of him, goddamn you."
Bent snatched Charles's beard, yanked it up, forcing his head back. He laid the razor against Charles's throat. "I say whatever I please. I am in command." He edged the razor deeper. Charles felt pain. Blood oozed. He closed his eyes.
Bent giggled and withdrew the razor. He cleaned the blade in the armpit of his coat.
Charming again, he said, "After I disposed of him, I planned to send you certain — parts, so you would know. Several fingers. Toes. Perhaps something more intimate."
"You fucking madman," Charles said between his teeth, out of control, starting to rise from the chair. Bent grabbed Gus's hair. The boy yelped and pounded small fists against Bent's leg. Bent slapped him, knocked him down, kicked his ribs. Gus rolled on his side and clutched his stomach, whimpering.
"Stand up, boy." Bent boomed like a revival preacher. How many men lived in that perverted body? How many different voices spoke from that one crazed brain? "Stand up. That's a direct order."
"Don't," the Cheyenne girl said. "Oh, don't. He's so little —"
He slammed her in the stomach with his fist. She fell against the wall, clawing at the rough logs, knees scraping the dirt. "You'll be the next for execution if you say another word." He flourished the razor over his head, silver steel death. "Up, boy!"
Whimpering again, not quite crying, Gus tottered up. Bent seized him and pulled him against his legs, turning him at the same time. He put his free hand under Gus's chin and straightened his head with a wrench, so Charles and his son were face-to-face.
"After him, and after you," Bent said, "the next will be the family of Hazard's brother, in California. I'll exterminate the lot of you before I'm done. Think of that, dear Charles."
Gently, caressingly, he drew the razor over Gus's right cheek. Gus screamed. A thread of blood unwound itself on the pale flesh.
"Think of that while the executioner carries out the general's order."
Magic Magee said, "Shit," which stupefied Gray Owl, because the soldier had an inordinately clean vocabulary for someone in his profession. Magee jumped up from beneath the pecan tree with the big branch over Vermilion Creek. "I don't care about his orders, something's wrong."
Gray Owl started to call him back again. Magee was striding fast. Gray Owl hesitated only a moment before hurrying after him.,
Tears rolled from Gus's eyes and diluted the blood on his cheek. Charles was consumed with a rage like sickness. He pulled his hands apart between his knees. The rope burned the backs of his wrists. Suddenly the left hand slid a little, slippery. He was bleeding. He pulled his left hand toward him but the largest part, just below the knuckles, held fast against the rope and wouldn't slip through. No use. No use.
Magee laid one hand on the corral rail. The chestnut and the mules smelted him and tossed their heads. "Now, now," he said, "don't take on. I'm friendly."
He slid between two of the rails. The chestnut neighed. "Don't do that," Magee said, wanting to shoot the blasted horse. He nodded sharply to Gray Owl, who clutched his rifle and padded out of sight, going to the front door. Magee had told him to wait until he called him in. Charles had to be inside. He wasn't in the combination stable and henhouse, or in the abandoned trader's wagon.
Magee didn't know what he'd find just inside the corral door but he hoped the door didn't open directly to the main room. He was sweating as if it were August. Just as he reached for the latch string, a fat raccoon shot around the back corner and ran right up and poised by the door.
"Scat," Magee whispered. He kicked the air. The tame raccoon wouldn't budge. He wanted in, probably for food. He'd give Magee away.
Baffled, Magee held still about fifteen seconds. Then, clearly, he heard a small boy cry out. With a glum face he drew his knife.
"I'm sorry, mister." He swooped down and killed the raccoon with one stroke.
Gus bled from the cut on his cheek. Charles wished the boy would faint, but he hadn't.
Bent's head was blessedly free of pain and those queer hurtful lights. The general's orders were just and right, and the executioner's duties were a joy. He couldn't prolong it much longer, though. The cutting, right in front of the boy's straining, terrified, mad-eyed father, had given him a huge painful erection.
He laid the razor on Gus's throat.
Charles saw the blued muzzle push out between the door frame and the red blanket. He'd heard nothing from that part of the house, not a sound. Loudly, Magee said, "Mr. Bent! You better turn around and see this gun."