There were shots again as I came down to the cave. Still far away, but now around to the southwest. Lois had heard them too. When I reached our home-in-exile, she silently offered the rifle. I shook my head. She bit her lip viciously and turned away, saying nothing. The silence hurt more than bitter accusation. We were drifting apart, she and I.
We had a good supper. After a stew made of the rabbit Duncan had given me, I opened a can of peaches and gave the kids a treat. It was usually a holiday when we opened canned goods. Little Al wanted to know which one. Before I could reply, Lois said, "It's the day Judas sold a good man for his own peace."
That hurt, but I didn't pick up the argument. Instead, I took out my old notebook and went outside. As the sun set, I wrote down the day's events, just as I had done since we had come to the cave. After a while, Lois came out to apologize. I said I understood, but I didn't, really, no more than she.
I wrote for an hour, until it was almost too dark to see the paper. The kids came and went, to the spring and back, to the wood pile and back, getting ready for bed and the night. I did not really notice them. I was thinking about Lois, about her growing militancy and her words of accusation. I did not want the kids to sink into the same morass of hatred which had already claimed so many. Neither did I want them to think me a "Tom." I did not think myself a "Tom," but Duncan X, and those who believed as he did, said those who went into slavery also denied it. I began to feel a great sadness. Was there no reasonable alternative to hatred and fighting? There was
slavery, of course, but that was not an alternative. It must all be a cosmic jest, or a chess game. Would the Ivory and Ebony play to the last piece? Would God, or the gods, then declare a draw? Sad.
In my preoccupation, I did not see the running man coming up the hill. He was almost on me before I noticed him. A fall of loose rock warned me when he was about twenty feet away. I jumped up and started to go after the rifle. Then I recognized him. Duncan X. Panting, staggering, his clothing torn, blood oozing from a dozen gashes. His pack was gone, and his canteen belt, but he still carried the rifle. I waited till he came close.
"Mon, you gotta hep me," he said. The fear in his voice was the same I had heard before the kids and I left the mess in St. Louis. "Mon, they gon' kill me!" "What happened?"
"Dogs ... dogs caught me. Killed 'em, all but one. Mon, they chewed me bad."
"Come inside. We've got a first-aid kit. Lois!" She came out, looked at Duncan's wounds, and threw her hands to her cheeks.
"Clean up those gashes," I said. "Bandage him if we've got anything."
"Mon, they gon' kill me!" The loud, confident rebel of the morning was gone. He was a hundred and twenty years of scared nigger, running from a lynch mob. When the ropes came out, and the hounds and the guns, he was every black man who had ever run from redneck "justice." He was afraid, and running, probably a dead man, and didn't know why.
"Go ahead. Fix him up," I told Lois. "Heat up some of that stew."
She looked at me strangely, questioningly, making no move. I took the rifle from Duncan's hands, though he tried to stop me. He clung to that weapon like a drowning man to a log. It was the only salvation he knew. It was the only salvation anyone seemed to know these days. Lois watched me take the gun, then took Duncan's hand and led him into the cave. I watched her go, wondering what it was like to be an adult at fifteen.
As the moon came up, I walked back the way Duncan had come. I heard the hound baying, not more than a mile away. Hard. I didn't like things this way, but my decision had been made for me.
I chose my position carefully, behind a large log at the edge of a clearing. They were not long in coming.
The hunters had chosen to leash their remaining hound, keeping him where he could be protected. And there were only nine men. If Duncan had gotten the other three, they wanted him worse than ever. They might not quit till they were all dead, or had their "buck" swinging from a tree. I knew sadness again.
I put the first shot between the hound's eyes. He yelped once, leaping toward the moon. I emptied the clip among running men, but hit no one. They reacted quickly. Rifles and shotguns boomed, peppering the woods around me. I ran, trying to keep low. Without that hound they would have a hard time following.
The shooting stopped a moment later. They realized they were wasting ammunition, trying to murder an empty forest.
I returned to the cave. Lois had fed Duncan, and patched him, and had put him in my bed. He was sleeping, though fitfully, like a man with bad dreams.
"What'd you do?" she asked, at once frightened of and for me.
"Shot their dog. They won't be tracking Duncan or me without him."
"Oh."
"Stoke up the fire a little, will you? I want to do some writing while I'm watching. Then get to bed. It's been a bad day."
"But Duncan ..."
"I'll look after him. You just go on to bed."
She went. I wrote for a while, then leaned back to think. Eventually, I dozed off. A couple hours must have passed.
I started awake. There were sounds outside the cave. The fire had died to coals. Carefully, I reached for the water pitcher and used it to drown the remains. A figure moved across the cave mouth, outlined by the moonlight. White man! His skin shone in the light. I took the rifle from the table and fell into a prone position. I waited while they talked it over out there. They seemed certain their quarry was inside. I didn't know how they had found the cave—blind luck, probably—but once here, they knew they had their man. I remembered having seen Duncan's fatigue jacket outside, a dead giveaway. I cursed myself for being fool enough to expect them to stop after losing their hound.