Day of Independence by William W. Johnstone Page A

porch floorboard to steady himself. His eyes were downcast, staring at his bare feet.
    â€œYou know dreams, Jacques,” Henriette said.
    A shake of the gray head, then, “I know nothin’ about dreams, me. When a man has a dream his soul wanders an’ sometimes it don’t ever come back.”
    â€œYou dream, Jacques. We all dream.”
    â€œNo. Never, Miz Henriette. I tole you so.”
    â€œYou read your Bible, Jacques?”
    â€œEvery day, Miz Henriette. I got a t’ing to atone for. That’s what Father Jarreau say.”
    â€œYou poor thing, you strangled a cheating, painted woman and you paid for it,” Henriette said.
    â€œIt was a bad t’ing I done, Miz Henriette.”
    â€œYes, it was a bad thing, Jacques.”
    â€œAn’ that’s why I read my Bible every day, me.”
    â€œYou remember the plague of locusts?”
    â€œOh yes, ma’am. I remember. The king of Egypt wouldn’t let the slaves go free an’ God sent locusts to devour the land.” Jacques shook his head. “It was a bad t’ing that king done.”
    â€œLast night I dreamed I saw locusts destroy the land and my grandson tried to stop them, but they devoured him and picked his flesh clean to the bone.”
    â€œIt was a bad dream, Miz Henriette.”
    â€œWhat does it mean, Jacques?”
    â€œI don’t know what it means.”
    â€œYou know dreams, Jacques.”
    â€œDon’ ax me no more.”
    â€œWhat did I see in my dream?”
    Jacques looked around him, into the swamp where the loups-garous lived. The mist had grown thicker and the air smelled and tasted foul, of black ooze and decay.
    â€œWhere is your grandson?” Jacques said.
    â€œI saw him beside a great river. The locusts came from beyond the river and spread over the land and destroyed everything in their path.”
    Jacques closed his eyes, looking into his own darkness where the pictures formed.
    Finally, after several minutes, he said, “Invaders will come across the river and your grandchild will try to stop them, but they’ll kill him and flay his skin from his bones.”
    â€œCan I help him?” Henriette said.
    â€œThe dream says nothin’ about he’p, Miss Henriette. Maybe you can, maybe you can’t, the dream doesn’t tell me.”
    â€œWho are these invaders, Jacques? It is an army?”
    The black man shook his head. “No, they are a people, Miz Henriette. Like the Children of the Book who fled Egypt. They seek the Promised Land.” Jacques let go of his support and sat back in the canoe. “Don’ ax me any more, because I don’t know any more, me,” he said.
    Then, before he was out of earshot the old man turned.
    â€œBut I seen the river, Miz Henriette,” he said. “And it ran red with blood and dead men and horses.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
    The sound of boots thudding in the hallway woke Baptiste Dupoix from shallow sleep.
    Dawn angled gunmetal light into the hotel room as he swung out of bed and stepped to the window. Outside, four horses stood tethered to the hitching rail, a paint mustang among them. Dupoix recalled that the pony belonged to a kid called Matt Husted, one of the young Texas guns Hacker had hired.
    The four youngsters, all of them blue-eyed towheads, had the fresh-faced look of farm boys, and they had been raised well enough that they always walked carefully around Dupoix and called him “Sir.”
    But looks were deceiving.
    Each wore his gun with confident ease, as though he’d been born to it, and all four had run with some pretty hard crowds and had killed their man.
    Husted was the fastest with the iron, maybe as fast as Mickey Pauleen, or so the kids said, but none of them would be a bargain in a gunfight.
    The four young men stepped onto the porch to the right of Dupoix’s window, and then Pauleen, already dressed in the garb of a malevolent preacher, joined