Some found a place among the freemen of New Orleans or worked boats, largely unmolested, along the Gulf Coast. A great many went West, where they were received with varying degrees of hostility. Five thousand “irredeemably criminal” black prisoners were taken from Southern jails and deposited in a Utah desert, where they died not long after.

Certain jobs remained open to black men and women—as servants, rail porters, and so forth—and many did well enough in these professions.

But add the numbers, Percy said, even with a generous allowance for error, and it still comes up shy of the requisite three million.

How many were delivered into the Liberty Lodges? No one can answer that question with any certainty, at least not until the evidence sealed by the Ritter Inquiry is opened to the public. Percy’s estimate was somewhere in the neighborhood of 50,000. But as I said, he tended to be conservative in his figures.

“We were warned there was a family of wild men up here,” I said.

“I’m no wilder than I have to be,” the gunman said.

“I didn’t ask you to come visit.”

“You hurt Percy bad enough, whether you’re wild or not. Look at him. He needs a medic.”

“I see him all right, sir.”

“Then, unless you mean to shoot us both to death, will you help me get him back to our carriage?”

There was another lengthy pause.

“I don’t like to do that,” the black man said finally.

“There won’t be any end to the trouble. But I don’t suppose I have a choice, except, as you say, sir, to kill you. And that I cannot bring myself to do.”