Even though he was still ailing, Dewitt Willson came into town and stood up in front of a big meeting they was holding to try and solve the problem and said: “Now I swear to you, I’m not going home until I can take the African or what’s left of him with me. And let everybody know this: white or black, anybody who can give me news that’ll help me catch the African will be walking around the next day with a thousand of my dollars in his pocket.” And that news spread like the smell of cooking cabbage, spread all up and down the region so that years after, if you’d gone into Tennessee and mentioned you was from down this way, somebody’s ask: “Say, who did get Dewitt Willson’s thousand?”

Dewitt Willson kept his word; he set out after the African again. He tracked and trailed him for another month all over the state. Sometimes they’d come pretty close to getting him too, but not quite close enough. They’d come on him and his band, which they managed to thin out and keep down to twelve or so what with killing and capturings, and have a battle, but the African’d always wriggle out some way. One time they thought they had him trapped with his back to the river and he just turned around, dove in and swam it underwater. And you know some fellows can’t even throw a stone that far. They could never get their hands on that auctioneer’s Negro neither. He was always around, holding the baby while the African fought, looking at what went on out of them money-filled eyes which gleamed under that green derby. Yes sir, he still had the derby, though nothing else, was dressed now like the African in one of them long, multi-colored sheets.

Dewitt was changing again, doing the same things he’d done before he collapsed, not talking to anybody, not even to himself now, moody and silent all the time. And so it went on, the African raiding and freeing slaves, Dewitt Willson catching up with the band and taking most of the slaves back and killing more, keeping the African’s men down to twelve or thirteen, and the African and the auctioneer’s Negro never getting caught.

Then one night they was camped a little north of New Marsails. Everybody was asleep except Dewitt, who was sitting on his horse looking into the fire. He heard a voice behind him, what seemed like it could-a been the voice of the auctioneer’s ghost, but wasn’t. “You want the African? I’ll take you to him.”

Dewitt turned around and saw the auctioneer’s Negro standing there, wearing his sheet and his derby; he’d got into camp without being heard or seen.

“Where is he?” Dewitt asked.

“I’ll take you to him. I’ll go up to him and slap him on the cheek if you want it that way,” said the Negro.