“Goddamn, Hershel, my wife’s gonna kill me if I come back empty-handed again,” a sour-smelling hog farmer in tattered bibs said under his breath to a lanky, hollow-eyed man standing beside him. He had followed Captain into action twice before after being promised a big payday, and twice he had returned to his wretched hovel poorer than when he left it.
A young man with a flat nose and hollowed cheeks that had been ravaged by the pox asked, trying to make his nasally voice sound as serious and respectful as possible, “What do you want us to do with him, sir?” He had been sitting on the log all evening spit-shining Captain’s boots and trimming the old man’s thick yellow toenails with a paring knife in an effort to gain favor, and he saw this as still yet another opportunity to demonstrate his undying allegiance.
The bearded leader glanced over at Sugar one more time, then returned his gaze to the fire, as if studying the crackling flames for an answer. Unfortunately, the nigger’s claim was liable to sabotage the rest of the outing if something wasn’t done to defuse it. Captain had convinced his men yesterday morning that the Jewett Gang would attempt to cross over the bridge any hour now, and they had been having a fine time drinking whiskey and telling tales, which, in his opinion, were two of the very best ways a man could spend his days. He didn’t really care one way or another if they caught the bandits, but he hated like hell to see the party come to an end or his authority be questioned. How he had come by this authority in the first place was a bit of a mystery, though he had allowed some to believe that he had been involved in the capture of several high-ranking chiefs during the last of the Indian Wars out west. In truth, he had never traveled any farther in that direction than Decatur, Illinois, his entire life, and had never seen a full-blooded redskin other than one he met doing a war dance on a table in a roadhouse somewhere in the Smoky Mountains for a free drink, let alone kill one with his bare teeth, which was how he had decided he was going to end the story he was telling just before the nigger showed up. Now, unless he thought of something fast, his hold over the men would be gone, except for maybe Bill Dolly and the pedicurist and one or two others. “Tie the lyin’ piece of shit up and throw him in the river,” he finally said.
Before Sugar could make a break for it, three of the men grabbed him and another secured his hands behind his back with a piece of cord. Everyone but Captain then gathered round and marched him out onto the bridge. The one in the lead carried a torch and didn’t stop until he came to a place in the tunnel where several side boards had been removed. “Over here,” he said.
“Wait, fellers,” Sugar pleaded. “I swear to God on a stack of—”
“Hell, I can’t see a damn thing,” someone said, sticking his head through the gap and peering over the side. “You sure we out far enough for him to hit the water?”
“What difference does it make? He’ll be dead either way. If he don’t drown, the fuckin’ fall will kill him.”
“Captain specifically said in the river,” the toenail-trimmer pointed out.
“On a stack of Bibles,” the black man cried, “I swear—”
“Shut that sonofabitch up,” someone said, and a hard, bony fist popped out of the dark, smashing Sugar’s nose and making him see stars.
“Maybe we should castrate him first,” Bill Dolly suggested. “That’s how it’s done in certain circles.”
“There was nothing in the order about cutting his—” the toenail-trimmer started to say.
“No, let’s just get it over with,” the one with the lantern interrupted, and two men picked Sugar up and roughly shoved him headfirst through the opening. “I want to see how that story turns out ol’ Cap was telling.”
“Please, misters, please,” Sugar cried, as he dangled in the air. “I can’t swim.”
“Most niggers can’t,” he heard someone say, just as the men let go of his legs and he hurtled downward through the darkness.
“That’ll teach the black bastard,” Dolly said after they heard the splash.
As the men headed back to the campfire, Cloyd Atkins said to no one in particular, “But what if he was tellin’ the truth? I mean, if’n those Jewetts already got by us, we might as well—”
“Don’t worry about it,” another with ginger-colored hair said sharply. His name was Tom Fleming, and three weeks ago he had lost everything he owned, including his wife, with one roll of the dice in a stables outside of Lexington. The way he saw it now, his entire future depended on getting a cut of that Jewett reward money.
“Yeah,” Cloyd said, “but I got crops that—”
“Like I said, don’t worry about it,” Fleming repeated. “I’ve drunk whiskey with Captain a long time now. He’ll figure things out.”
“Look, Cloyd,” the man with the lantern said, “you think a man who fucked Geronimo in the ass is ever gonna be played the fool by those stupid Jewett brothers?”
“Well, I don’t know if I’d call them stupid exactly, Jim. I mean, they’ve been on the run for quite a while now and nobody’s—”
“They stole a nigger’s hat, didn’t they?” Fleming said angrily.