Rafe (24 page)

Getting the money was no problem. Keeping it was another matter. If Ezra tried anything it would be after he'd passed the gold. Probably a waylaying, then the claim of robbery should anyone discover the deed. But Patrick had no intention of taking any road where he could be waylaid, neither to Natchitoches nor elsewhere. Nor did he plan on splitting the money. To hell with Long's filibuster into Mexico. Patrick had learned a lot in the past few years, knew his way around well enough to make his way north, melt into the swamps and disappear across the Sabine into Mexico. It would take time, but time he had. More than anyone would think, for he had prepared well-hidden caches along the way in little known places. A week here, two weeks there. They would abandon the chase after a month or two and forget him. He'd make his way through open country, then to the land he'd picked. There he'd settle like a king. Three thousand in gold would go far.

An owl flitted by overhead, soaring on silent wings, hunting for a kill. The bird glided down toward a cluster of trees, suddenly shifted direction and disappeared. Patrick tensed. Something was there to disturb the owl, for the bird had meant to land.

A figure in a white frock coat started out of the grove and toward the mound. No one else was that short, that stumpy. It had to be Ezra, carrying the gold in two sacks. Patrick listened intently. Had there been a sound behind him? There couldn't be anyone there. Only the line of sentinel trees. No. Ezra wouldn't take the chance. He wouldn't want shots fired so near the house. Micara and Crissa would waken and hear, demand explanations.

Men hunting possums or coons.… Suddenly Patrick didn't feel so safe. In his wide-eyed greed for gold he'd left too much to chance. He should have accepted Long's men. Better half than nothing. And now here he was lying hidden on top of an Indian mound and in the open. He forced himself to remember his plan. Get the gold and get into the swamp. Still, he felt fear, though without concrete cause or reason. He shivered in the sultry summer air.

Decater stopped as the form rose from the mound. The guard choked back a scream, telling himself this was only a man. He hadn't expected him to be waiting on top of the mound, though. Worse, he hadn't seen him lying there, dressed as he was and not moving. He held the sacks out separately. They were heavy and he was tired of carrying them. His arms sagged. He would be glad to hand them over. The next task worried him. The man would have a pistol—maybe two—and be prepared to use them. Decater had to keep them from firing. If Ezra's plan didn't work, Decater would be a dead man.

He stopped and placed one of the bags at his feet. His head low and the wide brim of his white felt hat hiding his face, he held the sack out as if to pour a few coins in the man's hand. Patrick recognized the gesture, cocked the pistol in his right hand and held his left out. “No tricks, Ezra,” he whispered softly. “Let's see the color of your gold. A few coins and then it's
adieu
.”

Decater turned the sack over, sending his hand to the left, emptying sand, not gold, onto Patrick's pistol. Pat-trick squeezed the trigger but too late, for the flint struck the choking sand and nothing happened. He tugged at his second pistol as Decater leaped. Both men stumbled to the earth. The pistol caught on Patrick's shirt, and cursing, he freed it. Decater clawed for the weapon even as Patrick managed to cock it, shove it into Decater's stomach and pull the trigger. Decater rammed his hand across the frizzen. The hammer struck against his knuckles and the flint gouged into his flesh. He yelped with pain and tore free, ripping the gun from Patrick's grasp.

Suddenly figures were moving around them. Patrick staggered to his feet, tripped over Decater and tumbled down the slope of the Indian mound. The figures were closing in. He dizzily regained his footing and leaped for the shelter of the trees, slamming face first into the trunk of a pecan. Momentarily blinded, he staggered back. Someone gripped his shoulder and a flashing sliver of metal gleamed in the moonlight.

They formed a silent circle around their hapless victim. Decater groaned every now and then, rubbing the back of his hand. Patrick lay on his side, his hands clutching, fingers futilely attempting to plug his throat, ripped from ear to ear. Eventually he died. “Got 'im with mah razor,” Milo proudly muttered. “It was worth the wait.” They carried him into the brush and began digging.

Unseen by all of them, Old Ephraim crept back to his shack. There he sat out the rest of the night, rocking and weeping, rocking and weeping.

11

Crissa stood on the upper south gallery, her fingers clutching the railing. She could do nothing. She was powerless, totally incapable of influencing what would soon begin.

Little had changed in the five weeks she had spent at Freedom and she had nothing to show for her efforts. She had left two letters with Joe Terson to be forwarded to friends in Natchitoches and New Orleans, but had received answers from neither. Later, under the guise of visiting Steve, she travelled to Fort Jessup where she spent a clandestine hour in conversation with Major Reynolds. Sympathetic but of no help to her, he promised to forward a third letter to New Orleans. She pointedly avoided Captain Bennett.

With nothing left but to wait, she watched her twenty-first birthday come and go, a symbol of failure. She felt her chances of regaining her heritage slipping away irrevocably. Worse, all hope for assistance from Micara dimmed as her mother buried herself deeper and deeper in an alcoholic haze, driven there by constant pressure from Ezra. Crissa was positive Ezra was trying to drive her in the same direction, felt herself becoming weaker and weaker, more and more unstable as the taunts and insolent, obscene innuendoes eroded her self-esteem.

And the slaves.… Whatever Crissa had done to alleviate their hardships had been undone rapidly and with a vengeance. Despite her good intentions, her efforts had made life harder for the unfortunate blacks, for they worked longer hours and under a harsher regime than before the brief holiday she had given them. Only once, weeks earlier, had Ezra yielded to her demands. A little girl had been found dead in the woods and Crissa insisted she be buried and the slaves given time to mourn. Ezra strangely acquiesced and a weekday passed without the drifting chant of weary work songs. Instead, the wailing of a mother and the deep-throated spirituals hung heavily in the air.

The child's death, attributed to the vicious mayhem of a passing trapper, or perhaps an Indian, wrought a marked effect on the disposition of the field hands, and the next two weeks were marked by two attempted escapes. One black died in the swamp, preferring the deadly bite of a cottonmouth to recapture and retribution. The second, and Crissa felt once more her heart's pain and sorrow, was Tyree, John Fitzman's trusted manservant. His spirit broken, shattered by Ezra's cruel treatment, he fled, pursued down the long rows of cotton. But he was an old man, too old for such exertions, and his heart failed him in the end. The guards came upon his body on the fringe of the woods and left him to rot as an example to the others.

Ezra received no small measure of enjoyment at Crissa's expense, recounting to her Tyree's saddening demise over the dinner table. Crissa was beyond any outright display of grief. She denied Ezra that particular satisfaction. But late at night she wept in the privacy of her room. The next day, her birthday, she brooded on Tyree's death and wrapped herself in grim resolve. Ezra would one day be held accountable.

Pa-Paw Ephraim's absence was another disquieting factor. Several times over the past few weeks Crissa visited the pecan grove. Each time the old man was nowhere to be found, though a full pot of steaming tea was on the stove in his shack and she called his name until hoarse. Was he hiding from her? Why?

Rafe she had not seen since the night of the whipping, yet the raw, powerful nakedness, the searing savagery on his face as he turned to look at her, had indelibly marked her and left a permanent impression. As a young girl she wished he would speak to her more, but now as a woman some deeper and more mysterious emotion had been provoked. She found him impossible to forget, impossible to dismiss.

If she'd only been able to stop the fight! Ruefully she realized how truly powerful Ezra was. He would have his way. Soon it would begin and there was nothing she could do but mutter a silent prayer of appeal to a power higher than Ezra Clayton.

Had he known, Ezra would have cared less. He glanced about, studying each of the faces that ringed the pit. Bernard was there. And eleven others. Men of power—wealthy, arrogant, the proud aristocracy of a society already corrupt and increasingly degenerate. The true characters of these men were hidden under the veneer of elaborate trappings born of haughty self-esteem. All were masters of plantations far larger than Freedom, but none had the pit. Ezra's fighters had gained fame which accrued to their master, and the presence of the eleven gave proof of his reputation.

Bernard flushed jealously. Not a one of the owners would have made the three- and four-day journey to visit him. He took slight comfort from the fact they had not travelled so far merely to exchange niceties or do business with Ezra, but had come solely for the fight—to see the supposedly invincible nigger Rafe receive a much deserved comeuppance at the hands of the giant ex-soldier and white man.

Ezra, for the first time before a fight, felt uneasy despite the presence of his lofty guests. If Duggins won this night there would be only one recourse. To that end he had sent a detachment of armed guards along the Burr Ferry Road with instructions to make sure Duggins died and his corpse disappeared. With Duggins out of the way, Ezra would be able to claim the transfer of property had never taken place, that Duggins had accepted cash value in lieu of the land, and that he, Ezra, could not be held accountable if the man had been waylaid. There would be talk among the small farmers and possibly an investigation by the army, but little concrete would happen. Of course, word would inevitably spread and Ezra's reputation would be tarnished. A cheap enough price. Time would heal such wounds, and though Freedom might languish for a year or two, the curious, the bloodthirsty, and the gamblers would soon be coming back.

He looked about him one last time. Everything was ready. The servants moved silently through the elite crowd. Ice, vastly more expensive than the liquor, tinkled in the glasses. Hushed conversations floated on the quiet air, conversations concerning thousands of acres and more thousands of bales of cotton. Somewhere back in the shadows Duggins waited with Beaumarchant. Butkis had yet to arrive with Rafe. Win or lose, one good thing out of all this would be to watch the impudent nigger learn what real fear was.

Rafe was thinking of fear. He had seen it in Jomo's face earlier. And now he stood alone, waiting. The rest of the pitbucks had avoided him like an evil charm. Looking relieved and glad they were staying behind, they watched silently from in front of the longhouse. And Old Chulem? Had he already seen the outcome, or was he huddled over a fire working his magic? Did he, too, watch?

Rafe was at the peak of condition. His body was lean and hard, over two hundred and twenty pounds of muscle, bone and sinew. Only a day ago he had bested five pitbucks, wrestling with them all at once. This Beaumarchant, this white man who practiced his strength breaking the backs and crushing the skulls of helpless field slaves.… Rafe felt a mounting rage swell in him. He was no field nigger.

Rafe stood naked, as he would fight. No weapons. Bare hands and feet only. He waited patiently for the guards, his body gleaming dully in the orange light of the single torch thrust in the ground near the gate. His shadow stretched across the compound to disappear in the secret darkness in the eyes of the watchers. No one moved.

A bolt rattled, shattering the heavy silence and thrusting it back on Rafe as the gate squealed open. Butkis strode in, stood with hands on hips in front of the only man who had taken his sword and lived to tell about it. His eyes searched Rafe's face, focused behind him to the silent shadows. “No need in waitin' tonight. This nigger's gonna die. He won't be back.” The shadows shifted, held. “Yer a dead man, nigger,” he said quietly. “I seen this Beaumarchant. No way you ken beat him. I don't know where I'm gonna hang yore black carcass. Maybe over the gate. Wherever, I'm gonna enjoy it. Now move.”

He turned and strode out the gate. Rafe followed, ignoring the guards who fell in behind him. The path led him. The same path, with its ruts of fear. Rafe walked to one side, sniffed the wind, savored the cool air on his body.

The peaches reached out to Him and suddenly Rafe left the path. “Hey!” Milo said.

Butkis turned, pulled his pistol. “What the hell? You stop there, nigger, or I'll put a ball through yore black hide.”

Rafe ignored the overseer's threats. He walked to the nearest peach tree and plucked two of the largest fruits he could find. Butkis was bellowing at him as Milo and the others came on the run. When Rafe turned he was staring into the maws of six muskets. He walked back toward them. Butkis was fuming. “Have a peach, Mistuh Butkis,” Rafe said laconically, tossing one of the fruits in the overseer's direction.

Butkis furiously batted it aside. “You son-of-a-bitch, I got a good mind to blow yer goddamn head off. Put that goddamn chunk o' fruit down.”

Rafe, biting off large chunks of the peach, grinned as the sweet juice ran down his chin. “You ain't gonna shoot me, Butkis. A lotta folks got money an' come a long way to see me kill that white man. You ain't gonna disappoint 'em. An' neither am I.” He spit the large, coarse seed out, wiped his hands on his naked belly and left the bewildered guards behind.

The last hundred feet. He entered the torchlit area. The men ringing the pit studied him in silence. His gaze ranged idly over them and came to rest on Ezra. The two stared at each other, Ezra searching for any sign of fear, finding only silent, mocking contemptuousness.