Throwing the Scent
He pauses at that point in the story, each time, making a shaking gesture with the palsied right hand, sharp bones jutting up against his thin brown wrapping. It is a motion like gathering and then sprinkling - spreading out pieces and scattering grains. This is when he tells me about how the women put pepper in their shoes, and ran the brown boys down to wait in the swamp. Black pepper would throw the dogs from their scent. Then they could wait for the passing of the hounds, and the rage, and the set jaws of white-sheeted men who tied such perfect knots.