FRANK’S EYES SNAPPED OPEN. He’d heard someone scream, in the dark of his dreams or outside his head. It sounded like Evie. His heart was hammering and he was already sitting up in bed, throwing off his covers, his bare feet slapping the duckboard floor. He went to the tent door in his long johns to find Bonney and Lacey already there, breathing hard.
“Another raiding party,” said Bonney. “Coming at speed.”
“Troopers?”
“A whole carload.”
Brockus and his men had arrested more than thirty miners from Lick Creek after the Stone Mountain burned. A reprisal. But they’d narrowly missed the Bad Seven, who were on their way home from Doc Moo’s office in Matewan at the time. Frank’s forearm was still in bandages, seared when a silo of slack coal went up like a torch, sending out flaming debris.
Now Bonney reached under his shirt and held out a pistol, butt first. “We get arrested, ain’t no getting out, not for us. They’ll make sure of that.”
The twins knew Frank kept his rifle hidden in a hollow log high up on the ridge, far out of range of Mama-B, who would raise hell on him if she knew he had a rifle-gun. Too far to grab it in time. Frank took the pistol.
“Godspeed,” said Bonney, squeezing his shoulder. Then the brothers were gone, sprinting off to their own posts. They expected he’d do the same.
Frank looked over his shoulder. The old woman was still asleep, wound up like a corpse in her quilt, breathing through her mouth. Frank looked down at the pistol. It was an old cap-and-ball Colt, a Civil War–era revolver modified to fire cartridges. Something Devil Anse might have carried back in the feud days. Frank thumbed the release and checked the cylinder. Only half the six chambers were loaded.
“Hell.”
A hiss behind him: “The Devil’s right hand.”
He wheeled to see Mama-B sitting upright in bed, pointing one long crooked finger at the pistol in his hands. She was wild-eyed, her hair crazed from sleep, her remaining teeth bared. “Hell you doing with a pistol-gun in my house?”
“It’s another raiding party coming, Mama-B. Almost here.”
Her face changed and she threw off her quilt. “Run now, boy. You got to run!”
Outside, Frank could hear the roar and splash of automobiles coming, shouts and barks and the ringing pans of the camp’s makeshift alarms. He shook his head. Mama-B slung her swollen, twisted feet onto the floor but Frank went to her instead, cupping the back of her neck with his free hand, kissing her on the forehead.
“Run, baby,” she said, pushing on his chest with both hands. “Please, baby, run!”
He shook his head again. “I’m tired of running, Mama-B. It ain’t like you taught me.”
“I done taught you to stay away from pistols. Ain’t the same as no rifle-gun. Please, baby. Give it here.”
He kissed her on top of the head, keeping the pistol out of her reach. “I love you, Mama-B. Whatever happens, remember that.”
“You’re just angry, son. Leave it.”
“Maybe that’s what the world needs, this anger I got.”
She was screaming behind him, wailing as he stepped out onto the small duckboard porch. The motorcar had come to a halt fifty feet short of the tent, parked slightly crosswise in the muddy street, and the state troopers were just stepping down in their dark green uniforms, holding Thompson submachine guns high in the crooks of their arms. Their roving eyes would find him soon.
Frank felt the pistol hanging low beside his leg, heavy with power, the single long finger of the barrel. The Devil’s right hand. The woman had always taught him that. He looked at the screaming camp, the blighted ridges and ashen sky.
He raised the pistol.