Since his uncle William’s death, Darren hadn’t heard anyone criticize Clayton’s comfort in the world of academia. He might have scolded Marcus if not for the strange feeling of pride rising in his own chest. Say what you would about Darren’s struggles with what the badge meant to him, he was at least living out the question every day. He was in the struggle right now.

“So there were Caddos on one of the islands on the lake?” he said.

“Gogo Island,” Marcus said, nodding. “So named for what folks heard from the Indians living there if they tried to trespass. Screams of ‘Go, go.’ Followed sometimes by a shot from an arrow or, later, a pistol they somehow acquired. They actually traded with some white folks living on the water out there, locals who kept their secret, who had a live-and-let-live attitude. It was a change in leadership in Austin that later started the trouble. The Indians, yes, they took in the small family of Penelope Deschamps’s slaves. The old-timers in Hopetown, some I interviewed myself, talked about it freely, how the Caddos felt a kinship of circumstance with the black slaves, had a shared understanding of the reach for true freedom, the Indians from being shipped out of their homeland and into Indian Territory in Oklahoma and the blacks from being returned to enslavement.”

The slaves stayed for years, Marcus said, sharing agricultural ideas and learning to build housing from the scantest resources. They shared everything, and there was some mixing, of course, new bloodlines carved into the land, creating a love and trust that had endured for five generations. “They owe each other everything.” Which was why Leroy Page would do anything for Margaret and her family.