“No,” Sugar said, “just going to see my people is all.”
“Come on,” Cane said. “We don’t have time for this.” It was their third day in Ohio, and for the most part they were still riding at night. This morning they had made it as far as Buchanan, and, just before dawn, ended up in a soggy marsh filled with rotten logs. The rib cage of a deer had rested on a small ferny island rising up in the middle of the foul-smelling morass. After breakfasting on Chimney’s last two strands of licorice, they’d spread their blankets on a thick bed of pokeweed and nightshade and settled down as best they could. They had endured it until late afternoon, but finally agreed, though there were still several hours of daylight left, that even getting killed or raped by a posse would be better than the torture being inflicted upon them by the hordes of late-season mosquitoes and black gnats swarming over their stinking skin. They were as worn-out and miserable as they had ever been, and Cane was more determined than ever to find somewhere clean and safe to rest up for a couple of days.
“I don’t know, I surely do like that hat,” Chimney said.
“Well, then, buy ye one,” Cane said. “They probably sell lids like that everywhere.”
“Not that one, they don’t.”
Cane let out a long, exasperated sigh. “Then just take the goddamn thing.”
“No, I got a better idea,” Chimney said. Pulling the Lee-Enfield from a leather scabbard tied with rawhide to his saddle, he ratcheted a shell into the chamber and looked at Sugar. “Here’s the way it’s gonna work. I’m a-goin’ to let you make a run for it. And if I can knock that hat off your head, then it’s all mine, understand? And if I can’t, well, it’s yours to go on wearing down to the river or wherever the fuck it is you’re really going.”
“Brother, why would ye want that thing?” Cob asked, the first words he had uttered in hours. “It looks like something ye’d take a shit in.”
“Ha!” Cane said. “That’s a good one.”
“Well, I hadn’t thought of that, Cob, but maybe I will. Be mine to do with as I please, right?”
Sugar jerked the bowler off his head and attempted to hand it up to Chimney. “Here, mister, I don’t want it anyway. It’s all yours for the keeping, free of charge.”
“There,” Cane said. “It’s settled.”
“No, it’s not,” Chimney said. He scratched his chin and looked about, then pointed at a woods on the other side of a field overgrown with wild roses and goldenrod and white-flowered asters. “See them trees over there?” he said to the black man. “You put the hat back on and run that way. I promise ye I’ll count to thirty before I cut loose.”
“Please, mister,” Sugar said, “they no need to do this. I don’t even want—”
“Better get to moving, boy. One, two, three…”
Sugar looked around wildly, then leaped off the side of the road down into the pasture and started running for the tree line, his arms pumping like pistons and his legs stepping high and the sticker bushes ripping at his flesh.
“But this don’t make no sense,” Cob said. “He tried to give it to ye.”
Ignoring his brother, Chimney kept counting, but at twenty he stopped and settled the rifle on his shoulder. Even after the bowler fell off the black man’s head, he seemed intent on shooting. He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. But just as he started to squeeze the trigger, a loud blast went off beside him and his horse lurched sideways, causing his own shot to fly harmlessly into the sky. He watched his target dive into some tall weeds. “What the fuck?”
Cane put his pistol back in his holster. “Don’t ever pull no stunt like that again. What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Jesus, no sense in gettin’ so excited. I was just going to scare him a little, that’s all.”
“Yeah,” Cane said, “I bet you were. Well, hurry up, it’ll be dark before long.”
“Hurry up what?” said Chimney.
“Go find that hat.”
“Shit, you think I really wanted that goddamn thing?”
“I don’t care if you did or not,” Cane said. “Get your ass down there.”
A few minutes later, as they sat watching Chimney in the field cursing and flailing at the weeds, Cob said to Cane, “I bet that feller’s mad that he lost his hat. Ye could tell he was proud of it.”
“Yeah, he probably was. Hard to say how long he had to save up for that thing.”