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wine stain in the shape of a hand, which gave one to believe it was the bloody print of some demon midwife who'd assisted in pulling him into a world he was reluctant to enter and which was equally reluctant to claim him. When he grew agitated, the birthmark seemed to glow, as if on fire. They called him Preacher, though there was nothing preacherly about him, and Cain could only surmise it was owing to the fact that he dressed all in black, with a flat-topped riding hat and a long black duster that came down to his ankles. Besides the bowie knife strapped to his leg, which he referred to as his Arkansas toothpick, he carried in his belt an ancient North flintlock .69 caliber pistol, a formidable thing that would put a hole in a person the size of a young girl's fist.
    The feeling Cain harbored for Preacher appeared to be mutual. From the start, the man seemed dead set against him. He was always second-guessing Cain's decisions. If Cain said they should stop for the night, Preacher would insist they had a good half hour of light left in which to ride. On the other hand, if Cain said they should push on, Preacher would grumble that they were flat-out tired and he was riding them too damn hard. If Cain suggested they take one road, Preacher, who'd never been out of Virginia in his life, would advocate another. "That way looks a might untraveled," he would say. If Cain suggested avoiding a certain city where there were known to be abolitionists or vigilance committees, Preacher would say Cain was just being finicky. At night, when Cain preferred his own company and would be reading his Milton, Preacher would glare at him with his snake eyes. More than once Cain had overheard him say he considered it "a thang womanish for a growed man to be readin' po'tree." And when Cain tried to ignore him, the other would purposely make noises, talk loud or fart or make fun of something Little Strofe had said, all with the aim of trying to distract Cain, or draw his attention--Cain could never tell which. The two had had words on several occasions, nearly coming to blows once over who had drunk the last of the coffee. Cain knew--just as surely as he knew it would rain when his bad leg ached--that there would be trouble with Preacher before this was all over.
    When they crossed the Mason-Dixon line not far from a small town called Gettysburg, Cain halted, waiting for the others to catch up.
    "We're in the North now, boys," he explained to them.
    "So?" Preacher replied.
    "We'll need to be careful. In this line of work, if you're not careful you could wind up dead real quick."
    "Maybe you're a'scart of these yellow-bellied Yankees, Cain. But I ain't," the blond-haired man continued.
    "It's not a bloody matter of being scared," he snapped at the other. "I'm just saying we need to watch our step."
    "We got the law on our side," Preacher said. "Got us a warrant for them two darkies."
    "Law makes no difference. Up here, they don't give a rat's ass about what the law says on runaways. From now on there'll be people that won't look kindly on our being here."
    "If'n they want trouble, they'll get a bellyful of it," he said, touching his pistol.
    "I won't risk my neck because you're a damn fool."
    "Who you callin' a fool?"
    "You heard me," Cain said.
    Preacher stared coolly at him. Then he let out a laugh. "They can kiss my corn cracker ass for all I care," he taunted as he spurred his horse on and pushed past Cain into the North.
    In eastern Pennsylvania, they came across the scarred, humpbacked hills where they saw huge mounds of coal and entire mountainsides clear-cut and oozing a black sludge. As they rode past a group of filthy miners trudging back after a day's work in the mines, Preacher called out, "Hell, they's blacker'n niggers."
    Several of the men stopped. They carried shovels and picks.
    "Who you calling niggers?" said one with a heavy German accent.
    "Let's go, Preacher," Strofe said.
    The farther north they went, the more they found