“Nigger?” Siggy glanced with a confused frown at Goldwin, who shrugged vaguely.

“Why didn’t Erma come down?” Goldwin asked.

“Don’t need that goddamn bitch here. She left us; she can damn well stay where she is.”

“Whoa, there. Hold on now.” Siggy all but physically tugged back on the reins as he pointed at Otto. “You haven’t told Erma her daughter was raped?”

“Not having that fuckin’ woman here causing trouble.”

“Shannon, Shannon,” Magnus lamented, “our Pocahontas, our Little Wanton, spinning her naked cartwheels around the fort.”

“What the goddamn’s he going on about?” Otto said.

Siggy threw out a dismissive gesture. “He’s drunk.”

“Could have been Annie,” Sal put in.

Otto responded furiously. “What you saying?”

“Not saying nothing.” Sal raised his hands in innocence. “Just saying could have been my girl, could have been anyone.”

“What you saying about my fucking daughter?”

“Not saying nothing.”

“I could tell you a few fucking things, you say anything about my daughter.”

“He’s just saying.” Goldwin tried to calm things down.

“He’s a fucking peckerwood, no-good, Eyetie, shit-for-brains, pantywaist sonofabitch.”

“You shuddup, you,” Sal shouted. “I’m fucking saying for you good things, you fucking…I’m saying coulda happen to all of us.”

“Sal’s right.” Bennet spoke up at last. He had been very quiet, sitting in the barber chair, staring into Otto with all the brooding intensity of someone staring into a campfire. He pinched together the wings of his nose. “Could have been any one of our women. Still can be, with him out there. So what we going to do?”

Otto didn’t seem to think this was addressed specifically to him, but Bennet kicked the side of his shoe. “He’s still out there, numbnuts. What are we going to do?”

Otto didn’t have an answer, so Bennet’s gaze shifted to the other men. Instantly, the barbershop turned into a classroom full of reprobates, the men looking down at their shoes, scratching their heads. Only Magnus remained as he was, leering blindly, like a mad prophet on the verge of thunderous revelation.

“Is this that damn city-slicking lawyer’s town?” Bennet said. “With his other fucking theory of the case?”

“Bastard,” Otto said. “I’m going to find out where he lives, fucking cut his pecker off.”

“What about the animal who did it?” Bennet said.

Otto looked a little more troubled now. “They’ll know it’s us, Mr. B.”

Bennet glanced over at his cousin, smiling. “Siggy, you going to arrest us?”

“Hell, yes,” he said, grinning.

“We couldn’t have done nothing anyway. We were all coon hunting up at Sharp Top. That’s where we are right now, ten miles away.”

“What are we going to do?” Finn said.

“Well, that’s up to Otto here.”

“I’m going to use a blowtorch on his balls.” Otto picked up his fifth of Jim Beam, but it was empty. He flung the bottle at Magnus. “You damn thieving snake.”

“You watch my place, here,” Goldwin shouted.

Bennet pulled himself up out of the barber chair. “Sig, where they find him?”