Free Fever Moon by Carolyn Haines

thinning and arms as big as hams.
    “I’m checking your prisoner inventory.”
    “Just because you’re wearing that tin on your chest doesn’t give you the right to come in here and poke around.”
    “No, but Mrs. Bastion gave me that right.” He smiled. “She also told me to check the condition of the convicts. She’s wondering if their food ration is adequate.”
    “She doesn’t give a fuck about the food.”
    “You must be Veedal Lawrence.” Raymond held the papers in his left hand, his right easing ever so slowly to the gun at his side. Veedal didn’t look like a man who’d been refused by the army because of physical defects, yet Raymond knew he’d never served a day.
    “It ain’t no concern of yours if I’m Peter Piper. Now give me that list and get out of my office.” Veedal made a grab for the pages.
    Raymond stepped back. He took Veedal’s measure. He saw the foreman’s pale eyes, the way his jaw set and locked, loutish and eager for a fight. “Try that again, and I’ll have to shoot you.”
    “Put that gun and badge on the desk and fight me like a man.”
    Raymond smiled. “I’d rather blast your dick in the dirt and watch the show while you try to figure how to put it back in place.” His fingers closed on the grip of his gun. “Now I want to see Armand Dugas.”
    Veedal grinned. “I’d like to see him, too. Bastard pulled a runner last fall. Either he made it out of the swamp alive or a gator got him. Couldn’t rightly say which.”
    “You’re telling me that Dugas, half starved and in leg shackles, got away?”
    “Strange, ain’t it? Almost like some kind of magic. I come down that mornin’ and his leg irons was lying open on the ground. He was gone and no amount of whippin’ could get the others to say what happened.”
    “He just up and disappeared?” Raymond forced his grip on the gun to relax, fighting his impulse to pull the weapon and slam it hard into Veedal’s face, repeatedly.
    “Mr. Henri was right upset. Dugas was a good worker, for all of his oddities. The state sent two to replace him, though, so it worked out. Mr. Henri was satisfied.”
    Raymond had no doubt Armand Dugas’s body, or what was left of it, was somewhere in the swamp. Most likely Veedal had beaten him or worked him to death and then dumped the remains for the hogs to eat or the swamp to swallow.
    “How many other prisoners have you lost, Veedal?”
    The man grinned. “Dugas was the only escapee. We’ve had eight in the last year die from the fever.”
    The fever. Another convenient cause of death. “I’m sure you had Doc Fletcher out here to verify the cause of death.” He saw the negative answer in Veedal’s heated eyes. “You’d best see to it that the men’s food ration is increased. Considerably. I’ll be back by to check, and if they don’t look a little less like walking skeletons, you and I are going to have another talk, and you aren’t going to like the gist of what I have to say.”
    Veedal snapped a salute. “Yes, sir, boss. I’mma gonna do jus’ what you say.”
    Raymond dropped the papers he held to the floor. He walked past Veedal Lawrence. He’d intended to interview the convicts, but the men wouldn’t talk to him with Veedal around. He’d come back in a day or two. Check on the foreman’s progress.

7
     
    T HE sun hung above the treetops when Chula turned down the road to Louiselle Dumont’s home. The post office was closed for the day, but there were older residents, or those who lived alone or without transportation, whose mail Chula delivered whenever she could.
    She felt the familiar burn of tired muscles between her shoulder blades as she wrestled the car through a patch of wet sand. It would be good to get home to a hot bath, to the supper her mother would have planned for her. There were days she thought she missed the life of wife and mother, but mostly she was glad to remain a daughter. Once she left her mother’s home, no one would coddle her. In