here and kill you.”
“Aw, they been here already and burned the barn. I wouldn’t even move to put it out. Ma done it.” He lay down again, his memories no doubt on the attack back behind his blank face. “As likely you boys will kill me. I don’t much care.”
This comment exhausted Jack Bull’s forbearance, as he had seen too many good men pass over the river who did not care for the trip.
“You want to die, do you?” Jack Bull’s voice was taut and his expression was unlovely. He could be mean. I knew this. “Perhaps you would choose to die now.” He pulled a pistol and held it aimed down. “I have considerable experience in the killing line, Clark. I could do you a fair job of it, this minute.”
Clark pondered this with wretched concentration showing in his face, then said, “No. No. Ma has her heart set on me livin’.”
“Are you sure of that?” Jack Bull asked. “I am here and now and loaded.”
After a few more of those sick songbird breaths, Clark said, “I don’t believe so. I think I’ll wait on it.”
Jack Bull slowly holstered his pistol and we walked to the door. There he paused and turned to Clark.
“Your mother is a fine enough woman. You might help her some, don’t you think? You get yourself a stick to lean on and you could limp around a good bit.”
“Uh-huh,” Clark said. “That could be next.” He was still flat on his back and staring up at the vastness. “That could be the very next thing.”
2
WHEN EVENING HAD been thrown over us, we were camped at a woods on a farm owned by a man named Sorrells. A brook sang near us, and our pickets had a good view from the mound we occupied. Fires were lit, as we knew the militia feared to travel in this country by night. We ruled the dark roads.
Arch Clay had produced his deck of cards and was trying to teach gambling games to the Hudspeth brothers. Neither of them had turned seventeen and they came of good family, so they possessed no skills in idolatrous pastimes. I did not join them, as I had no spirit for games.
“Now what have you?” Arch asked. Arch was a runtish, dandified man who killed more jollily than I found well mannered. He was Black John’s closest friend and sole confidant.
“Two of these here,” Babe Hudspeth said, holding his cards aloft toward the light. “The black-hearted ones—is that good?”
“We call them ‘spades,’ ” Arch instructed. “And you?” he asked of Ray Hudspeth.
“Three,” Ray said. He was beaming from the ease with which he had become a successful gambler. “All puppies’ feet—do I win the money?”
“Puppies’ feet!” Arch exclaimed. He looked at me sourly, though I was no more than one year senior to the brothers. “Can you fathom that? Puppies’ feet!” He threw his cards onto the blanket. “Them’s clubs, you damned children. No more gamblin’ for me. I can’t enjoy it like this.”
The Hudspeths shared glances, then Babe said, “Just who do you think you’re damning, Clay?”
Arch was half-sized on either of the boys but older and more certain.
“Did I hurt your feelings, son?”
“Well,” Babe answered, not quite convinced of how he should feel. “It was rude of you.”
“Ha,” Arch snorted, and lay back on the blanket, tipping his hat forward across his eyes. “That’s the least bad I’ve been for years. It was good of you children to note it for me. Makes me feel all warm and Christian.”
I left the Hudspeths to their own thoughts and wandered to join another group of comrades. I generally whittled something useless and strolled of an evening. It relaxed me and made me feel at home.
I joined Jack Bull Chiles, Coleman Younger and Pitt Mackeson on the dark ground beneath a tall oak tree. Cole regarded me intensely, watching as I sat and scraped at a branch. His eyes did not leave me when he thrust a whiskey bottle forward.
I sheathed my knife, then accepted the bottle. I appreciated his generosity to the measure of a quarter pint on the first swallow.
“Do not think you are a good man,” Coleman Younger said. “The thought will spoil you.”
“I am a southern man,” I said. “And that is as good as any man that lived ’til he died.”
Coleman Younger was reddish in skin and hair, with the temperament that is wed to that hue, and girth and grit enough to back it up.
“You are a