“He was one of the ones who whipped me.”

“That so?” Grubbs leaned in closer. “Is that true, Caleb? Did you take a whip to Brandon-Lee’s back?”

Celeb wasn’t sure he could speak through his terror, speak past his trembling lips.

Grubbs nailed him with an openhanded slap that he never saw coming. Caleb saw stars as he was knocked onto his right side.

“Set him back up,” Grubbs said, and a pair of hands yanked him back to a sitting position.

“Don’t feel good to get beat when you can’t use your hands to defend yourself, does it?”

Caleb shook his head no.

“So I’ll ask you again. Did you lay a whip against my son’s flesh?”

“Everybody did,” Caleb said to the ground. Another flash of light behind as another slap knocked him over, this time to the left.

“Set him up again. That’s not the question I asked you. I didn’t ask if everybody whipped Brandon-Lee. I asked you if you did.”

“Yes, sir. I–I’m sorry.”

Another slap.

“Don’t lie to me, Caleb. Don’t make a bad situation worse by lying. You’re not sorry you whipped Brandon-Lee. If you was, then you wouldn’ta done it in the first place. You’da said something like, Oh, I’m sorry, Brandon-Lee when you first saw him a minute ago. But that’s not what you did. You beat him and you didn’t give even the slightest shit that you did. I’m right, ain’t I?”

Caleb forced himself to say it. “Yes, sir.”

Grubbs wound back for another slap. Caleb braced for it, but it turned out to be a fake-out. “See? Bein’ truthful ain’t all that hard, is it?”

“No, sir.”

“Good. Very good. Now, was you one o’ the raiding party who murdered a lot of my family, including Brandon-Lee’s mama?”

Shit, shit, goddamn. Caleb didn’t know what to do. They obviously knew the answer—hell, that’s when they captured Brandon-Lee—but it really wasn’t murder. Was it?

His head was booming. He really didn’t want to be hit again.

“I was there for the gunfight,” Caleb said. “But it wasn’t murder. Your people shot first.”

This time, it was more than a slap. Caleb smelled blood as the blow spun him on his butt and knocked him backward into the thorns. His left eye started to swell right away. Then Grubbs grabbed a fistful of his jacket and pulled him back up. This time, when Grubbs spoke, their faces were so close that Caleb could smell the tobacco on his breath.