got their hackles up. Their cold hands wrap round your neck and—”
“I’m goin’.” I hear Gus stand up so quick that the cotton trash scrapes his skin, and he lets out a string of cusses under his breath. “Quit talkin’ yer crazyment at me. I’m goin’. And git my dollar ready.”
“I’ll have it when you come back.” Lord, I hope I didn’t just do to him what Missy done to Juneau Jane. “Be careful, though, Gus, all right?”
“Ain’t nothin’ careful about this en-tire thang. Foolishment, that’s what this is.”
He’s gone and I’m left there to wait. And hope.
I jerk at every little sound. It’s deep into the dark of early morning before I hear rustling in the cotton bales.
“Gus?” I whisper.
“Gus’s drowned.” But I can tell right off, his mood is good. He’s chewing on some biscuits he light-fingered up in the passenger cabin. He hands a piece over. It tastes good, but the news is bad.
“They ain’t up there,” he says. “Not where I can tell it, anyhow, and I done a right fine job of lookin’. Lucky somebody didn’t wake up and shoot me, but I’ll tell you one thang—the night before it’s time for me to hop off’n this boat in Texas, I’m gonna know right where to go lift me some fine goods. Before them up-deck passengers wake and find their watches and wallets and jewelry missin’, I’ll be long gone.”
“Best be careful about things like that. Ain’t right.” But Gus’s habits are the least worry on me right now. “Two big trunks can’t just disappear. Or two girls.”
“You said that one is a half-haint child. Maybe she done disappeared herself on purpose. You ever think a’ that? Maybe she disappeared herself, and while she’s at it, she disappeared the other girl and both them boxes. A half-haint witch child wouldn’t have no trouble doin’ that.” Bits of chewed biscuit and spit land on my arm. “That’s what I think’s happened. Makes passable sense, don’t it?”
I brush the food off, rest my head, and try to think. “They got to be here someplace.”
“Unless they’s dumped off the deck, miles back downwater.” Gus tries to share me another bite, but I swat it away.
“That ain’t right to say.” My stomach goes up my neck and burns.
“I’s just postulatin’.” Gus licks his fingers, carrying on, noisy about it. No telling all the places them fingers been since they last saw soap. “Reckon we best git a wink,” he says, and I hear him scuttle around into his sleeping spot. “Be rested up for when we make the turn off the Mississip’ onto the Red River. Point our noses toward Caddo Lake and Texas. Texas, now that there’s the place to be. Hear tell they’s so many cattle runnin’ loose since the war, why a man can’t help but make his fortune. And quick, too. Just gather ’em up, build a herd. That’s what I aim to do. Gus McKlatchy is gonna make hisself a rich man. Just need me a horse and a outfit and I’ll go round up them free…”
I let my muscles go slack, drift off from Gus’s talking, start wondering where Missy and Juneau Jane might be hid on this boat. I try not to think about trunks getting pushed off in the river, filling with water a little at a time.
Gus pokes me with his toe. “You listenin’?”
“I was thinkin’.”
“So, I’s just sayin’,” he talks drowsy and slow. “Might be a right pearly sit’ation if you come on to Texas with me. Be foreman of my herd I’m gonna gather. We rake in all that money, why then we’ll—”
“I got me a home.” I stop him before he can run on. “Got people waitin’ for me down at Goswood Grove.”
“People is overrated.” He makes a strangled sound and coughs hard to cover it, and I can tell I’ve poked someplace tender. I don’t say sorry, though. What I got to be sorry to a white boy for?
“Ain’t no place in the world like that for me.” I don’t even know the words are set in my mouth