“You got a thing about coats, Billy?” Starbuck asked.

“Coats?” Blythe managed to say as he stumbled backward against an elm trunk.

“You’re wearing a new one today. Ain’t as small as your last one.” Starbuck slung the rifle, then touched the blood patch on Tumlin’s chest. “Got hit, Billy?”

“Nothing serious,” Blythe said. He wiped sweat off his face and offered Starbuck a grin.

Starbuck did not return the smile. “So where have you been, Billy?”

Tumlin shrugged. “Saw a doctor,” he said.

“He patched you up?”

“Kind of,” Blythe said.

Starbuck frowned at the mess of blood on the gray coat. “Looks bad, Billy. Looks real bad. Man could die from that kind of chest shot.”

Blythe gave what he hoped was a brave smile. “I’ll survive.”

“You sure?” Starbuck asked, then he punched the blood patch, punched it forcefully enough to push the heavy man back against the tree. Blythe winced at the blow, but he did not react like a man who had been hit on a fresh wound. “I hear you’ve been skulking in the graveyard, Billy,” Starbuck said.

“No,” Blythe said unconvincingly.

“You bastard,” Starbuck said, suddenly overcome with a blinding anger, “you white-livered piece of shit.” He punched Tumlin on the bloody patch again, and this time the man did not even flinch. “That ain’t a wound, Billy. It ain’t even your jacket.” Blythe said nothing and Starbuck felt a pang of pure hatred for a man who did not do his duty. “Was John Brown wearing a coat when he was hung?” he asked.

Blythe licked his lips and glanced left and right, but there was no escape in sight. “John Brown?” he asked, confused.

“You saw him hang, didn’t you?”

“Surely did,” Blythe said.

“You and the whore, right? And she was leaning out the window and you were leaning on top of her, ain’t that right?”

Blythe nodded nervously. “About the size of it,” he said.

“So tell me about it, Billy,” Starbuck said.

Blythe licked his dry lips again. He wondered if Starbuck had gone mad, but guessed he had to humor the fool whose face was so drawn and hard. “I told you,” Blythe said, “we watched him swing on a gallows outside Wager’s Hotel.”

“In Harper’s Ferry?” Starbuck asked.

Blythe nodded. “Saw it with my own eyes.” He flinched as a shell crashed through the branches overhead and exploded farther down the wood. Leaf scraps sifted down.

Starbuck had not moved as the shell whipped overhead. “John Brown was hung in Charlestown,” he said, “and that’s a fair ways from Wager’s Hotel, Billy.” He took out his revolver. “So what other lies have you told, Billy?”

Blythe glanced at the revolver and said nothing.

Starbuck pulled back the revolver’s hammer. “Take off the coat, Billy.”

“I—”

“Take it off!” Starbuck shouted and rammed the revolver’s muzzle up under Blythe’s plump chin.

Blythe hurriedly unbuckled his belt, let it drop, then pulled off the borrowed coat. The only blood on his shirt was the small stain that had rubbed off from the inside of the jacket.