“It must be something real sickening or you'd bribe me to do it instead of trying to strong-arm me. It must be something that you think I wouldn't be willing to do unless you scare me to death, and I keep trying to imagine what you think is so bad that you think I wouldn't do it. It ain't much of a list, Bill.”

Harrison shook his head. “Hooch, you got me wrong. Just plain wrong.”

“This town is dying, Bill,” said Hooch. “Things ain't working out like you planned. And I think it's cause you done some real dumb things. I think the Reds started going away– or maybe they all died off– and you made the stupid mistake of trying to make up for all that lost likker income by bringing in the scum of the earth, the worst kind of White man, the river rats who spent the night in jail with me. You've used them to collect taxes, right? Farmers don't like taxes. They specially don't like taxes when they're collected by scum like this.”

Harrison poured himself three fingers of whisky in a tumbler and drank off half of it in a single gulp.

“So you been losing your whisky-Reds, and you been losing your White farmers, and all you got left is your soldiers, the river rats, and whatever money you can steal from the United States Army appropriation for peace-keeping in the west.”

Harrison drank the rest of the whisky and belched.

“What that means is you've been unlucky and you've been stupid, and somehow you think you can make me get you out of it.”

Harrison poured another three fingers into the glass.

But instead of drinking it, he hauled off and threw it into Hooch's face. The whisky splashed in his eyes, the tumbler bounced off his forehead, and Hooph found himself rolling on the floor trying to dig the alcohol out of his eyes.

A while later, with a wet cloth pressed against his forehead, Hooch was sitting in the chair again, acting a lot more meek and reasonable. But that was because he knew Harrison had a flush and his own hand was just two pair. Get out of here alive and then just see what comes next, right?

“I wasn't stupid,” Harrison said.

No, you're the smartest governor Carthage ever had, I'm surprised you ain't King. That's what Hooch would've said. But he was keeping his mouth shut.

“It was that Prophet. That Red up north. Building his Prophetstown right across the Wobbish from Vigor Church-= you can't tell me that's just a coincidence. It's Armor-of-God, that's what it is, trying to take the state of Wobbish away from me. Using a Red to do it, too. I knew that a lot of Reds were going north, everybody knew that, but I still had me my whisky-Reds, them as hadn't died off. And with fewer Reds around here– especially the Shaw-Nee, when they left– well, I thought I'd get more White settlers. And you're wrong about my tax collectors. They didn't run the White settlers off. It was Ta-Kumsaw.”

“I thought it was the Prophet.”

"Don't get smart with me, Hooch, I don't have much patience these days.

Why didn't you warn me before you threw the glass? No, no, don't say nothing to make him mad. “Sorry, Bill.”

“Ta-Kumsaw's been real smart. He doesn't kill White folks. He just shows up at their farms with fifty Shaw-Nee. Doesn't shoot anybody, but when you got fifty painted-up warriors all around your house, these White folks didn't exactly figure it was smart to start shooting. So the White farmers watched while the Shaw-Nee opened every gate, every stable, every coop. Let them animals go on out. Horses, pigs, milk cows, chickens. Just like Noah bringing beasts into the ark, the Shaw-Nee walk into the woods and the animals trot on right behind. Just like that. Never see them again.”

“You can't tell me they never round up at least some of their stock.”

“All gone. Never find even their tracks. Never even a feather from a chicken. That's what run the White farmers off, is knowing that any day, all their animals can disappear.”

“Shaw-Nee eating them or something? Ain't no chicken smart enough to live long in the woods. It's just Christmastime for foxes, that's all it is.”

“How should I know? White folks come to me, they say, Get our animals back, or kill the Reds what took them. But my soldiers, my scouts, nobody can find where Ta-Kumsaw's people are. No villages at all! I tried raiding a Caska-Skeeaw village up the Little My-Ammy, but all that did was convince more Reds to leave, didn't even slow down what Ta-Kumsaw was doing.”

Hooch could imagine what that raid on the Caska-Skeeaw village was like. Old men, women, children, their corpses shot up and half-burnt– Hooch knew how Harrison dealt with Reds.

“And then last month, here comes the Prophet. I knew he was coming– even the whisky-Reds couldn't talk about nothing else. Prophet's coming. Got to go see the Prophet. Well, I tried to find out where he was going to be, where he was going to give a speech, I even had some of my tame Reds try to find out for me, but no dice, Hooch. Not a clue. Nobody knew. Just one day the word went through the whole town, Prophet's here. Where? Just come on, Prophet's here. No one ever said where. I swear these Reds can talk without talking, if you know what I mean.”

“Bill, tell me you had spies there, or I'll start to thinking you lost your touch.”

“Spies? I went myself, how's that? And do you know how? Ta-Kumsaw sent me an invitation, if that don't beat all. No soldiers, no guns, just me.”

“And you went? He could've captured you and–”

“He gave me his word. Ta-Kumsaw may be a Red, but he keeps his word.”

Hooch thought that was kind of funny. Harrison, the man who prided himself on never keeping a promise to a Red man, but he still counted on Ta-Kumsaw keeping a promise to him. Well, he got back alive, didn't he? So Ta-Kumsaw was as good as his word.

“I went there. Must've been every Red in the whole My-Ammy country there. Must've been ten thousand. Squatting around in this old abandoned cornfield– there's plenty of them in these parts, you can bet, thanks to Ta-Kumsaw. If I'd had my two cannon there and a hundred soldiers, I could've ended the whole Red problem, then and there.”

“Too bad you didn't,” said Hooch.

“Ta-Kumsaw wanted me to sit right up front, but I wouldn't. I hung back and I listened. The Prophet got up, stood on an old stump in the field, and he talked and talked and talked.”

“You understand any of it? I mean, you don't talk Shaw-Nee.”

“He was talking English, Hooch. Too many different tribes there, the only language they all knew was English. Oh, sometimes he talked in that Red gibberish, but there was plenty of English. Talking about the destiny of the Red man. Stay pure from White contamination. Live all together and fill up a part of the land so the White man will have his place and the Red man will have his. Build a city– a crystal city, he said, it sounded real pretty except these Reds can't even build a proper shed, I hate to think how they'd do at building a city out of glass! But most of all, he said, Don't drink likker. Not a drop. Give it up, stay away from it. Likker is the chain of the White man, the chain and the whip, the chain and the whip and the knife. First he'll catch you, then he'll whip you, then he'll kill you, likker will, and when the White man's killed you with his whisky, he'll come in and steal your land, destroy it, make it unfit, dead, useless.”

“Sounds like he made a real impression on you, Bill,” said Hooch. “Sounds like you memorized the speech he gave.”

“Memorized? He talked for three straight hours. Talked about visions of the past, visions of the future. Talked about– oh, Hooch, it was crazy stuff, but those Reds were drinking it up like, like–”

“Whisky.”

“Like whisky except it was instead of whisky. They all went with him. Pretty near all of them, anyway. Only ones left are a few whisky-Reds that're bound to die soon. And of course my tame Reds, but that's different. And some wild Reds across the Hio.”