The fire is going strong now. The brothers gather close and pass the bottle around again. Ronnie has found most of the coins, and he lays them out before the fire, counting them over and over again. Anger makes it hard to see straight. I fled one thief only to find another, and soon I’ll have just as much nothing as I did before.

“We got lucky tonight,” Emmett says.

“We did,” Zeke agrees.

“But think of those flatboats, drifting down the Ohio,” Ronnie says. “It’s like money at a fair, waiting to be picked up off the ground, and it’s a lot closer than California.”

“Eh,” Zeke grunts, and takes another drink.

“How about it?” Ronnie asks, looking at me. Whatever comes next, it’s how he plans to set me up. “You’ve a talent for robbing, at the very least. Murder, if you’re the one who killed Westfall. You want to go to Memphis with us, head down the Mississippi?”

Zeke sits up straight. “Hey, now, I don’t want to split shares four ways.”

Ronnie scowls and pokes at the fire, sending up a spiral of sparks. Its warmth is seeping back into me. My limbs twitch with readiness.

“I thought you didn’t want to come with us this year, Zeke,” Emmett says.

“Aw, I was just letting off steam,” Zeke says.

Emmett turns back to me. “So how about it? All these farmers from Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania—they complain about slavery, how bad the South is, how we ought to change our ways. But come early winter, they slaughter their hogs, fill their barrels full of pork, and float down the Mississippi. They stop at every plantation along the way, selling off their goods until they get to New Orleans. Then they walk back home, their pockets full of southern money. They’re a bunch of hypocrites.”

“God hates hypocrites,” Ronnie says.

“Amen,” Zeke says.

Emmett smiles. “So you see, we’re instruments of God’s justice. How would you like to be an instrument of God’s justice?”

I say nothing.

“A lot of these northern hypocrites like to gamble their way back home,” Emmett continues, “where their families can’t see them being hypocritical. And my brothers and I like a fair game of cards as well as the next man.”

“Not a fair game,” Ronnie amends.

Emmett says, “If they lose a little money to us, that’s fine. Keeps it here in the South where it belongs.”

“Some of ’em like to drink,” Ronnie says. He takes the jug from Zeke and tilts his head back for a swallow.

“That they do,” Emmett agrees. “And we happen to be drinking men too, and good company besides. But these northern fellows are weak, and if they can’t hold their liquor, and they fall down and hit their heads—”

“Or fall into the river,” Ronnie says.