The glitter of Wade's gaze, the quiet fervor of his words, soothed and convinced Stanley. Even lifted his spirits a little, much as alcohol did.
"All right, Ben. I'll take the highest bureau post offered to me."
"Good — splendid!" Wade started to clap his shoulder a second time, but Stanley was already in motion toward the sideboard and the decanters. "Old friend —" Wade cleared his throat "— forgive me for saying this, but I can't help noticing you're drinking a lot lately. Frankly, there's been some talk."
Stanley pushed the stopper in, turned, and raised the brimming glass. He gazed at Wade across the shimmery disk of whiskey.
"So I've heard. But if a man has money and distributes enough of it in the right places, no one listens to that kind of talk. No one wants to risk disturbing the flow of generosity. Isn't that right, Ben?"
Challenged, Wade chose to lose. He laughed. "Indeed it is," he said, and toasted Stanley with his empty glass.
As Cuffey had grown, so had his guerrilla band. It now numbered fifty-two, nearly a third of them white deserters. They inhabited two acres of heavily wooded, relatively solid ground at the edge of a salt marsh near the Ashley. They carried firearms taken from murdered whites caught on the roads, and they lived well on food and drink stolen from homes, small farms, and the rice plantations of the district.
Three times Cuffey had personally led parties that pilfered hens from Mont Royal. The plantation itself he was saving for a special day. He watched the skies for telltale smoke and regularly sent one of his white boys to Charleston to report on the situation there.
During the past year, Cuffey had discovered within himself a certain instinctive ability to lead men, whatever their color. He was assertive, foxy, and implacable because of his years in slavery. He took special delight in stuffing himself with the food of the local white people. For that reason he was always hunting for new clothes. His stomach had grown huge, his face round as a cheese wheel.
In the short, cool days of early February, he scanned the skies with increasing impatience. He knew that Sherman, the general whose style and reputation he worshiped, had passed through Beaufort and Pocataligo and was now marching northward, his ultimate destination presumed to be Columbia. Soon, Cuffey reasoned the Confederate general in Charleston would have to rush most of his troops to the defense of the capital. When he did, the whole Ashley River district would lie open, unprotected — awaiting Cuffey's pleasure.
One night in the second week of the month, he lolled by his fire, roasting a dove on a stick and recollecting the pale thrashing legs of the woman from whom he had taken pleasure an hour ago. The band had recruited two white slatterns, both over forty, and a pair of younger mulatto girls to look after that aspect of the men's needs. Cuffey was fingering himself, wondering if the wench carried vermin, when shouts arose in the dark beneath some live oaks on the far side of the encampment.
He threw the impaled dove on the ground and jumped up. "Wha's all that racket over there?"
"Prisoner," called a yellow-bearded Georgia boy in a gray jacket. "Caught him on the road." The Georgia boy was one of Cuffey's best, a deserter with a fine love of killing. Hands on his paunch, Cuffey watched the boy and two blacks drag a small, bald, frightened man from the shadows.
"Bring him over here, Sunshine," he ordered, with the authority he had learned to invoke through voice and gesture. Something about the stumbling captive in grimy clothing struck him as peculiar. The boy nicknamed Sunshine gave the prisoner a prod with a bayonet he carried like a knife. At that moment, Cuffey's jaw went slack.
"Lord God — Mr. Jones."
"Is it —? Why, I think —" Salem Jones could hardly believe his good fortune. "Cuffey? Cuffey!" He almost slobbered with glee. At another fire, half a dozen men started singing the refrain Sherman's host had chanted all the way from Savannah:
"Yes, sir, it's me," Cuffey replied, with a grin intended to lull his prisoner. Suddenly his hand shot out. He twisted Jones's right ear savagely. "The nigger boy you used to cuss and beat and work half to death. I'm the boss now. Boss of this whole damn bunch. I like you t'show me some respeck."
One more twist and Jones dropped to his knees, howling. The singing stopped. Jones rubbed his reddened ear; blood oozed from the lobe. Cuffey snickered, retrieved the dove on the stick, and with some difficulty, resulting from his girth, squatted to resume the cooking.
"What you doin' away down here in South Carolina, Mist' Jones? I figured you ran off to jine up with the Yankees."
"He ran away from them, too," Sunshine said, with a giggle and a queer glitter in his blue eyes. With the tip of the bayonet, he touched the dark red D that disfigured Jones's right cheek. "I know what this yere brand means. D fer deserter."
"I heard there was a band like yours somewhere in these marshes," Jones said, gasping between almost every word. "I was hunting for it, but I never imagined I'd find you in charge."
Again Cuffey smiled. "No, sir. Bet you didn't." He rotated the bird in the fire. "Well, Mist' Jones, you cast your lot with a mighty fine group. We livin' off the fat of the land here — yes, sir, the fat of the land. Tell you somethin' else you might like to know. Soon as Gen'ral Hardee leave Charleston, we gonna have a real festivity down along the river." His smile dazzled. "Gonna visit a plantation name of Mont Royal. You 'member that place, don't you? You white son of a bitch." He whipped the stick around and touched Jones's neck with the smoking-hot dove. Jones screamed and fell over sideways.
Cuffey chuckled and put the bird back in the fire. He was jolly again. "I been savin' Mont Royal till we could pay a call an' not worry about reb sojers. Gonna be soon now. Gonna be a grand visit. Mr. Cooper's there — an' his wife an' little girl an' a stuck-up free nigger wench name Jane. I got a whole bunch of randy boys gonna like meetin' up with them. Meantime —"
Cuffey ran his tongue over his rotting upper teeth. "We got you to fool with, Mist' Jones. Ain' that right, Sunshine?" .
The Georgia boy giggled again. "Sure is, boss."
Suddenly, frantically, Jones flung himself at Cuffey's legs and clasped them. Only his pleading cry kept Sunshine from running the bayonet through his back.
"Please don't hurt me. Let me join up."
"What's that? Wha'd you say?" Cuffey lumbered to his feet with the white man dragging on him.
"I hate those people, Cuffey. Hate that whole family as much as you do. I hate Cooper Main like poison. His brother disgraced me — discharged me — Look, I know I mistreated you. God, how I know that. But times have changed. Things are all turned around anymore —"
"Damn if they ain't," Cuffey agreed. "Bottom rail's on top."
"Let me join up," Jones pleaded. "I'm good with a gun. I'll follow orders, I swear. Please — let me."