The three traveled south until they arrived at the inn. Warm yellow lamplight spilled through its windows onto their drawn and pinched faces. The eldest Indian stepped forward and knocked on the front door.
The innkeeper, a short, stout, purposeful sort of woman, opened the door a crack.
“Are you Yankees?” she asked.
“No ma’am,” the eldest Indian said. “I’m Lieutenant Timothy Stoga, of the Sixty-Ninth North Carolina Regiment. Thomas’s Legion. This is my nephew, Private Bill Bread.”
The innkeeper peered past them to the half-breed.
“Hidey, hidey!” the half-breed sang out.
“Don’t pay him no nevermind,” Stoga said. “He’s my slave. His name is Navan Sevenkiller.”
“Your slave?” the innkeeper said. “What’s he doing dressed like that?”
“Bill and I were taken prisoner during the Battle of Atlanta,” Stoga said. “He’s the one that got us free. Our regiment’s gone, ma’am. They’re all dead. We want to get back to North Carolina and see if we can’t get mustered up again. We were hoping we could stay here tonight.”
The innkeeper seemed encouraged by Stoga’s manners but a little put off by the slave’s attire.
“He can wait outside if you like,” Stoga said. “But he did spring us loose.”
“Well, all right,” the innkeeper said. “He’s better off where you can keep an eye on him anyway, I reckon.”
Stoga and Bread tromped into the cramped room and sat down at the table. Sevenkiller wandered around, giggling softly, taking it all in: the old, heavy furniture, the stuffed stag’s head, the stone fireplace, the cheap painting hanging on the wall.
“Salt pork and sweet potatoes,” the innkeeper said.
It was not a question, but Stoga said, “Yessum, please.” And then: “Sit down, Navan.”
Sevenkiller did. The innkeeper returned with a big bowl of mashed yams, and Sevenkiller and Stoga began to eat. Bill Bread did not touch his food. He stared at the floor between his feet and sweated and looked as if he might be sick.
“I’ll get y’all some cider,” the innkeeper said.
“No,” Stoga said immediately. “No intoxicating drinks at the table. Thank you, ma’am.”
The innkeeper looked surprised but did not comment.
“I’m thirsty,” Bill said, flicking his eyes over to the corner of the room, where the keg of cider rested on its side, and his pupils expanded with interest, absorption, love. But his mouth tightened. As if with hatred. At himself or the drink or both, no one could say.
Bill looked down again. “I’m thirsty,” he repeated.
“You can have water,” Stoga said.
“Well, you’re welcome to whatever you want,” the innkeeper said. “I’d rather give it to you than the Yankees. They’ll be here tomorrow, I expect.”
“Hrmm,” Stoga said. “I don’t think so. They’re marching from Atlanta to Macon. They won’t make it this far east.”
“Don’t you know?” the innkeeper said. “The word’s all over town. The skirmishers are already here.”
Stoga frowned and put down his fork. “I don’t see how they can be this far east. Perhaps they’re deserters.”
“No,” the innkeeper said. “One of them’s a German, going door-to-door. Writing things down in a little book. They’ll be in town tomorrow. The slaves have even started running off. Over a hundred at the Johnson plantation. Just run right off.”
“Hrmm,” Stoga said. He looked at Sevenkiller, who grinned and stood up.
“Where is the Johnson plantation?” Sevenkiller asked.
“Why Lieutenant Stoga,” the innkeeper said. “You can’t send your slave out there.”
“He’ll come back,” Stoga said. “Don’t take any risks, Navan. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, with or without you.”
Sevenkiller wiped his mouth.
“Can I borrow a horse?” he asked.
Soon he was riding on the road to the Johnson plantation, singing a wild and tuneless song: “Hey-a, hey-a, hey-a-ho, hey-a-ho, hey-a-ho-ho-ho!”
His pony’s mane was unpulled, and it walked with its mouth a few inches above the dusty road, as if searching for a mouthful of grass.
Cotton fields stretched out to either side. All of the plants had been harvested, stripped of the bolls of cotton and left standing withered and finished. Past the fields were the trees, yellow-gold and red in the autumn.
“Hidey, hidey, hidey, ho,” Sevenkiller sang, as he leaned back in his saddle.
The fields appeared to be totally deserted. The barn that contained the cotton gins was dark and silent.
After Sevenkiller passed the barn he could see the big old house at the end of the road, right in the middle of the plantation. Sundown had been some time ago, but Sevenkiller’s eyes were sharp, even at night, and he could tell that the shoddy longhouses where the slaves slept were empty.
“Hmm, hmm, hmm-hmm!”
The front door to the house burst open and a black woman came out screaming, a long wordless wail of despair and horror.
Sevenkiller kicked his pony. It lifted its head and broke into a brisk canter, its hooves beating a quick rhythm on the road.
He cut the woman off. She screamed when she saw him and threw her hands up in the air.
“Mercy, sir! Oh please have mercy on me!”
“What happened here?” Sevenkiller said. “Where are the other slaves?”
“They run off to join you, sir,” the woman said. “When they heard you was coming.”
Sevenkiller laughed. “I’m not with the Union,” he said. “I took this jacket off a dead Yankee.”
The woman was understandably taken aback by this. But she came to grips with it quickly enough, and said, “Oh sir! Then you got to go help Master Johnson! Freddy came back with an ax! He’s going to kill my master!”
The woman sobbed.
“You’ve got to help him, sir!”
Sevenkiller neatly steered his pony around the woman and gave it another kick. Once again it leapt forward and cantered the last few yards to the porch, where Sevenkiller pulled up and slid off. His feet hit the ground without a sound.
The house was lit with oil lamps in defiance of the darkness outside. Someone very big was moving around, knocking things over, sounding like a panicked bull.
Sevenkiller drew an enormous Colt Walker revolver from inside his jacket; it was over a foot long and weighed almost five pounds. Then he slipped through the front door, which had been kicked in and was hanging on its hinges.
Muddy footprints, of large bare feet, tracked through the foyer, past the staircase to the second floor, and into the living room. That door had also been opened and warm air was leaking out.
A tremendously fat black man sat in an armchair with a small hatchet planted in his forehead. Rolls of flesh hung loosely from his neck and arms, as if his body had surrendered to gravity when the animating force left him. Blood was everywhere. The other furniture in the room had been overturned and smashed.
A man’s leg poked through the door to the dining room.
Sevenkiller went over quietly, crouched low to the ground.
The leg belonged to a sturdy, ancient man with a shock of white hair, thick lips, big teeth, angry eyebrows. His head had been smashed and his eyes were starting out of his head. Dark red lines ringed his neck.
“Hmm, hmm, ho,” Sevenkiller whispered.
The dining room table had been shoved across the room. It was made of solid wood and weighed three hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce, but it looked to have been almost tossed aside. The chairs were scattered as if someone had lifted the room and shaken it.
The noise was coming from the next room, the kitchen. Sevenkiller crept in that direction, his leather moccasins silent on the floor, the revolver pointed in the air, a look of strange delight on his face.