He held an English flintlock pistol and a brass powder flask and three molded bullets in both hands.
“The flint is pretty wore down, but I’ll still take it over a wet cap when you got to count on it,” he said.
“The high sheriff is going to be all over these woods, Hugh.”
“No, he ain’t. I put them locks back on the doors just like they was when I went in. When they notice something’s gone, they won’t have no idea of when it was stole. But right now you got to do some drinking. In fact, you’re going to get drunker than a bluejay in a mulberry tree.” Hugh uncorked the bottle of whiskey and took a drink from the neck. He swished it in his mouth and spit it on the dirt floor of the cabin.
“I feel sorry for you,” he said. “I’d rather have that ball in my side than drink this. They must have put lye in the mash.”
He handed the bottle to Son and began honing the knife on the whetstone. The knife was made from a wagon spring, and had been heated in a smithy’s forge and shaped and hammered on an anvil until it was as smooth and thin as a metal dollar and had the fragile edge of a razor.
Son’s empty stomach tightened with each swallow from the bottle and the corn taste of the whiskey welled up into his throat and nose and made tears run from his eyes. He thought he was going to vomit, and he set the bottle upright beside him, but Hugh picked it up and pushed it against his mouth again.
“Let it boil down inside you,” he said. “A couple more swallows and it won’t fight back no more. In the meantime, I’m going to tell you how Micajah Harpe had his head cut off.”
The whiskey ran over Son’s mouth, and the back of his throat felt as though he had swallowed a tack.
“You’re a crazy bastard, Hugh. You busted your head open too many times in the dog box.”
Hugh untied the jumper from Son’s waist and peeled the bloody cloth back from the wound. Then he wiped the metal filings off the knife’s edge on his breeches and poured whiskey on both sides of the blade.
“Put this tobacco back in your teeth and don’t swallow it,” he said. “The ball’s worked up on your rib, and I’m going to cut an X on it and pop it right out of there. It’s going to hurt like somebody put an iron on you, but as soon as it’s out you’ll feel all that fire drain out of you.”
“Get to it.”
“Now, let me tell you about Micajah,” Hugh said, and pressed the knife’s edge along the swollen lump in Son’s rib cage. “Him and Wiley was about the meanest sonsofbitches I ever knowed. They didn’t care no more about killing a man than stepping on a frog. Sometimes I tell people about how I was with the gang when somebody’s giving me a bad time, mainly because it scares the hell out of them, but to tell you the truth I’m ashamed of some of the things I know about. That wasn’t no made-up story about filling up people’s insides with rocks and throwing them in the river.”
He slipped the knife deeper, and the inflamed skin peeled back from the flattened lead ball. Son’s eyes were red, and tobacco juice slid from the side of his mouth.
“But Micajah finally got his,” Hugh said. “After he killed some people the high sheriff and some others run him to ground and put a ball in his spine. He was flopping around in the dirt like a fish that was throwed up on the bank. Then this one fellow put a knife in his throat and run it around his neck just like you core an apple.
Son clenched his hand over his eyes and tried to spit the tobacco from his mouth. His heart was thundering in his chest.
“Micajah looked up at this fellow and said, ‘You’re a damn rough butcher but cut and be done.’ When they got his head off they stuck it on a pole in the road, and I reckon his grinning skull is still staring out at people today.
“I done got it, Son. Landry must have melted down a half-bar to make that ball. It’s a wonder he didn’t tear the ribs plumb out of your side.”
Son choked on the threads of tobacco in his throat and tried to wave at Hugh, then he heard the rain ticking in the leaves again and felt the smoky green morning light fill the inside of the cabin.
Five days later they stood on a red clay bluff above the Sabine River with low rolling hills of pine trees on the far side. Hawks floated high on the windstream in the clear sky, and the sunlight was so brilliant on the countryside that it hurt Son’s eyes. Below the bluff was a shack where a ferry-keeper lived, and the ferry itself was pulled up into the shallows and swinging slowly in the current from the pulley rope.
“How bad you leaking?” Hugh said.
“It’s holding.”
“You want to eat what we got left of the bacon before we cross?”
“Save it. I got a notion we ain’t going to find nothing more to eat for a while,” Son said.
“We’ll get something off this fellow down here.”
“Hugh, I don’t want us to steal no more.”
“I ain’t going to steal nothing. You think I want to leave a trail of robberies all the way across Louisiana and Texas for Emile Landry to follow? I’m just going to swap this fellow something for a little food. I shouldn’t have let you talk me into burying them saddles. We could probably get a whole sack of supplies for them.”
“That’s smart, ain’t it? Trading off stolen army saddles. Why don’t we leave our names while we’re at it?”
“All right. Let’s go find out if Texas has changed any since I was there last.”
Son held his hand tight to his side while they rode down the bluff. Hugh kicked at the shack door with his boot without dismounting from his horse.
“Hey, in there, we need a ride across,” he said.
A filthy, unshaven man in buckskin clothes stepped out into the sunlight. His skin was sallow and his eyes a stagnant green. Son couldn’t tell if the fetid odor he smelled came from the man or inside the cabin.
“Damn, what you got in that shack, mister?” Hugh said.
“I got a Choctaw woman cooking tripe. It’s twenty-five cents a bowl if you want some.”
“You keep it,” Hugh said. “We just need a ride and some bacon or jerky if you got it.”
“I don’t run no grocery store, and the trip across is a dollar a man. I don’t take scrip, either.”
“A dollar. Eating them pig guts has hurt your brain,” Hugh said.
“You can swim it, then,” the man said. “But them horses won’t find no ford. Even the Indians don’t cross it when it’s this high.”
“We ain’t got two dollars, mister,” Son said.
“I tell you what. I’ll take that rusty pistol and the powder flask.”
“I might give you something else out of this pistol,” Hugh said.
“No, you ain’t. Both of them horses has U.S. brands on them, and you’re running for your ass right now.”
“Give him the pistol and the flask,” Son said.
“He’s a squaw-man robber.”
“Give them to him.”
Hugh’s black, deformed eye stared hotly at the ferry-keeper, then he took the flintlock from his trousers and slipped the leather cord of the powder flask off his shoulder.
“You got something else to eat in there besides tripe?” Son said. “We don’t need much. Maybe some fatback.”
“You bought yourself the float across and that’s all. Ride your horses down the plank and tie them on the back end. I can’t get off the mudbank with the weight up front.”
They walked their horses onto the ferry, the hooves clopping on the planed cypress boards, and tethered them to the back rail. Son slid off his horse and had to support himself momentarily against the horse’s neck. The ferry moved out into the current, straining against the pulley rope that stretched from one bank to the other. Sweat boiled off the ferry-keeper’s face as he pulled on the rope with his wasted arms; then he walked the length of the boat with a long pole stuck into the river bottom. On the Texas side of the river the swollen carcass of a drowned fawn lay in the shadows, and Son could see the sharp backs of enormous garfish that were tearing at its flanks.