Mister Walton?
Deputy Ambrose. From outside.
Walton cleaned himself and donned his pants and hurried out, becoming entangled in the mosquito netting in the process and holding his boots. I thought I gave orders, he said.
Ambrose nodded toward the south. When Walton didn’t seem to understand he pointed.
Stepping into his boots, left, then right, Walton followed his lieutenant’s ebony finger over a series of fields and beheld a vista of distant, blue trees.
Lovely, Walton said. Indeed. What poultice to my chapped soul is Thy handiwork, Lord.
Not the scenery. Ambrose handed the leader a telescope. Look thew this.
He saw two deputies in full uniform and with all their equipment, creeping through the sugarcane toward the trees, leading their horses.
Deserters, he said.
Ambrose straightened his posture. You want me to git em?
Please.
There ye go, boss. It’s about time. The Negro drew his rifle from its sheath and levered a cartridge into the chamber and half-cocked the hammer and took off his boots and left his hat spinning on his pommel and vanished into the cane. Walton located the deserters with the scope and tried to find Ambrose in among the “bamboo-like” plants. But his lieutenant’s stealth did the deputy proud and Walton thought he’d give the Negro a commendation upon his return. Yes. A spot of incentive to soothe good “ole” Ambrose, grumpy as he’d been of late.
A gunshot startled Walton from his revery. He searched the field and landed his glass upon Deputy Ambrose bursting from the cane leaves. Behind his rifle, Ambrose approached one of the deserters who raised his hands in surrender and began to backpedal and beg. Excellent, Walton thought. He would order that deserter horsewhipped, by gum. That would put the fear of God into any future deserter, wouldn’t it?
Now Deputy Ambrose had the barrel of his rifle in the second deserter’s mouth. Quite effective. Measured savagery indeed a crucial ingredient of God’s most contradictory design, Man.
Then Deputy Ambrose fired. The deserter’s head burst open at its crown, the stump of its neck smoking. Ambrose shot again.
My Lord! Walton cried, nearly dropping his telescope, but its shivering globe next revealed Ambrose pursuing the second deserter, already shot once and attempting to crawl off in a piteous manner. The dark deputy approached the fellow from the rear in sideways dancy steps and put two bullets in the back of his head.
You ought to kill that crazy nigger, Loon said, peering through his own telescope. Fore he shoots the rest of us.
Negro, said Walton.
On the Lord’s Day Evavangeline rode the speckle-legged pony from the orphanage north. Ranging east, for a few hours, then back due north. Her gut pulling her clear as gravity. She was aware that the boy from the orphanage had broken his promise about looking after the other younguns and was following her on foot. A couple of times she heard him and once glimpsed his face peering from around the trunk of a tree like a coon. She would urge the pony to a run so they could ditch the boy, but each time, within an hour after slowing down, she perceived the horny little dickens still back there, tailing her.
She thought it was cute.
Presently she began to hear a dog barking far in front of her. It relieved her in a way she didn’t know needed relieving—she’d been aware of something lately and that something was Where were the dogs? Normally they were everywhere, two or three following her, trying to rut on her leg. But it had been weeks since she’d seen a live dog. Back in Shreveport? Anxious now for this one, she wiggled her hips and the pony clopped to a run over the dry earth.
Closer she got she realized the dog was in an ill temper. She swung down off the pony for she’d sensed a man too somewhere about and so she left the pony feeding on crabgrass and stepped inside the trees off the path she’d been following and walked hidden that way toward what sounded like a dogfight.
Suddenly it was a fellow behind her, a gun barrel between her shoulders. A quick hand snatched her own firearms and pushed her along. She was impressed at the economy. Not many could get the drop on her.
Don’t look back back back, he said.
She didn’t and he prodded her along his barrel. She tried whistling, hoping the pony would hear and come help, but he kicked her in the seat of her pants. Hesh, he said. Next sound I’ll bop ye in yer brain brain brainpan.
He’d faded a few steps back, too far behind to be jumped, and the cagey bastard had maneuvered them back to the path so there were fewer trees she could try to scale. For the time being, she gave up and tried to sense out his leaning, boy or girl, to see would that give her an angle.
They came presently to a decrepit woodshed wrapped in chains, the door banging and rattling from inside as the dog clawed and scratched and headbutted the wood.
Tell me ye name name, said the stranger behind her.
She told him.
That’s a perty name perty name perty name perty name. You a whore?
Naw.
Are too. I can see the way ye walk. Wiggling wiggling wiggling like a little whore’s ass, whore’s ass.
The dog was growling and scratching the door. The gun barrel touched her spine, urging her forward. This here savage one is Lazarus the Redeemer the Redeemer the Redeemer, he said.
It’s a damn mad-dog ain’t it.
He’s my good boy. Behind her, her captor sighed out a breath of air. But I didn’t say ye could talk did I say did I say did I say did I say?
He hit her in the head with his rifle-stock and the woods exploded white before they faded to nothing.
Walton would have run all the way to the scene of violence had not Donny trotted up behind him and pushed his nose in the ticklish spot between the northerner’s shoulders. Thus aback his steed, the head deputy closed the distance quickly and came upon Deputy Ambrose where he was kneeling at the corpses relieving them of their possessions.
What, yelled Walton, in the name of God are you doing?
The Negro paused in rolling one of the dead men’s socks down over his calves and regarded Walton. This my stuff now, he said. I killed these ones and now I get they stuff.
Walton folded his arms to hide his trembling hands. Hardly, he said. Do you know what a “rig” like this costs, Deputy Ambrose? Do you know who pays that cost?
Ye momma.
Well. Yes, technically. But as her agent, I claim all these men’s effects for the Christian Deputies, myself commander. Into the company store, so to speak.
Don’t be so-to-speaking to me.
Poor grammar fails to augment your arguments, Walton said. Now, continue to gather the equipment and we’ll inventory it later, what do you say? I was thinking of giving you a commendation for your stealth.
You, Ambrose said, are the biggest fool I ever seen.
Pardon?
I said “fool.” F-U-L. Big one. Big fool. He stretched out his arms, a sock in each hand.
Why, that’s insubordination. Walton stabbed his pockets for a pencil, his cheeks stinging and his lungs light. I could have your badge!
My fucking badge? The Negro snatched it from his crimson shirt and threw it in the dust and stamped on it. Fuck my fucking badge, he said. He stamped it again. You know what I’m gone do? I’m gone teach a lesson now. He mimicked Walton in a prissy fashion, writing at his chalkboard. I call it “How to Rob Two Dead Deserting Fuckers of All They Fucking Possessions and Then Cut Off They Tallywhackers and Stick Um in They Mouth Cause That How the Indians Do It So If Anybody Come Along They Gone Think It Was the Savages Done It.”