Walk in Hell

"Shootin' too good fo' dat white debbil bitch." Another woman's voice: Cherry's, A

"Oh, is you right about dat!" Julia agreed enthusiastically. "I wants to watch she burn. She use me like I's an animal, she do. Ever since she come back, I wants to see she dead."

See if I give you a Christmas present this year, Julia, A

Cherry said, "Her brudder done use me. He have hisself a high old time, right till de end." Her laugh was low and throaty and triumphant. "He don' find out till too late dat I usin' he, too."

So Scipio told me the truth about that. Thinking about what had happened kept A

Cassius said, "Don' matter how she die, so long as she dead. Top o'all de other crimes she do, I hear tell she behin'dat bill dat mystify de niggers to fight fo' de white folks' gummint. We strikes a blow fo' revolutionary justice when we ends de backers o' dat wicked scheme."

"So light de matches, den," Cherry said impatiently.

Through the tiny window cut in the outhouse door, light flared, brilliantly bright. Cassius and the other Reds must have doused the doorway to the cottage-and maybe the walls as well-with kerosene or perhaps even gasoline. Had A

"How you like it now, Miss A

Cassius and Cherry and the rest of the Reds howled abuse at the cabin, too. After a moment, so did a rising chorus of Marshlands field hands, roused from their beds by shouts and by flames.

A

She wished her nightgown were any color but white. It made her too easy to spot in the darkness. Putting the privy between her and the fire, she made for the closest trees. Those couple of hundred yards seemed ten miles long.

No sooner had A

Deliberately, she rolled in the mud, so her back was as dark as her belly. Then she set out for St. Matthews, four or five miles away. A couple of plantations between Marshlands and the town had a sort of spectral half-life, but, after what had just happened to her, she was not inclined to trust her fate to any place where the field hands vastly outnumbered the whites. "I kept the government off them," she said through clenched teeth, "and this is the thanks I got? They'll pay. Oh yes, they'll pay."

After Scipio had visited Marshlands, she'd taken him off her list. When she was in Columbia, she'd learned he'd quit his job and didn't seem to be in town any more. That had been wise of him. She bared her teeth. In the end, it would do him no good. She'd have her revenge on him as on all the others now.

She stayed in the undergrowth alongside the road instead of going straight down it. That slowed her and wounded her bare feet, but left her less visible. As far as she was concerned, the latter was more important.

Every so often, she stopped in the best shelter she could find and listened to try to find out if anyone was pursuing her. She heard nothing. That made her feel only a little safer. She knew how good a hunter Cassius was. But every painful step she took brought her closer to safety.

She was, she thought, more than halfway to St. Matthews when a horse-drawn fire engine, lanterns blazing in the night, came clattering up the road toward Marshlands. A couple of armed guards on horseback trotted along beside it.

A

"Don't go any farther," she said. "You haven't got enough firepower. Cassius and his Reds will be waiting to bushwhack you. And besides"-her mouth twisted-"the fire will have done whatever it can do."

The fireman who'd recognized her helped her up onto the engine. It stank of coal smoke from the steam engine that powered the pump. From a long way away, a rifle barked. The fireman grunted and crumpled, shot through the head. Another shot rang out, the bullet ricocheting off the engine before the sound of the report reached her.

"Get the hell out of here, Claude!" one of the guards shouted to the driver. The other guard started shooting in the direction from which the shots had come.

Claude could handle horses. He turned the six-animal team and headed back toward St. Matthews faster than A

Cassius, she thought. It has to be Cassius. The iron bulk of the pump shielded her from any more bullets. All she had to do, all the way back to town, was think about how the hunter, the Red, had ruined her twice. But she was still alive, still fighting-and so, in spite of the Negro uprising and everything else, were the Confederate States.

We'll whip the Yankees yet, she thought. And you, Cassius, I'll whip you.