He said these words calmly enough, but he had a way of forming his vowels, and pronouncing them deep in his throat, that defies transcription. It was like listening to a volcano rumble.

“Take his right arm, then,” I said. “I’ll get on his left. The carriage is beyond that ridge.”

“I know where your carriage is. But, sir, I won’t put down this rifle. I don’t think that would be wise. You can help him yourself.”

I went to where Percy sat and began to lift him up. Percy startled me by saying, “No, Tom, I don’t want to go to the carriage.”

“What do you mean?” the assailant asked, before I could pose the same question.

“Do you have a name?” Percy asked him.

“Ephraim,” the man said, reluctantly.

“Ephraim, my name is Percy Camber. What did you mean when you said your son was inside this barracks?”

“I don’t like to tell you that,” Ephraim said, shifting his gaze between Percy and me.

“Percy,” I said, “you need a doctor. We’re wasting time.”

He looked at me sharply. “I’ll live a while longer. Let me talk to Ephraim, please, Tom.”

“Stand off there where I can see you, sir,” Ephraim directed. “I know this man needs a doctor. I’m not stupid. This won’t take long.”

I concluded from all this that the family of wild Negroes the landlady had warned me about was real and that they were living in the sealed barn.

Why they should want to inhabit such a place I could not say.

I stood apart while Percy, wounded as he was, held a hushed conversation with Ephraim, who had shot him.

I understood that they could talk more freely without me as an auditor. I was a white man. It was true that I worked for Percy, but that fact would not have been obvious to Ephraim any more than it had been obvious to the dozens of hotelkeepers who had assumed without asking that I was the master, and Percy the servant. My closeness to Percy was unique and all but invisible.