At noon the next day the group stops and hides in the bayou for a rest, spending a day and a half evading their pursuers through the simple art of staying under cover. Once on the road again afterwards, they meet some of those pursuers - a group of seven - coming back from upriver along the road. There's a bit of a standoff. One of the men, a policeman from New Orleans, wants to take them in, but the others discover that when confronted by a group of people who aren't impressed by guns and who are thought to have practically destroyed an entire police station, their heart isn't it it. One of the pursuers helpfully points his gun at the policeman to prevent him from getting them all killed, and our heroes politely decline to do said killing and go on their way.

Soon after they decide to hole up again, at the carriage house of an abandoned river road plantation. That night they find out why no one has reclaimed it - a huge horde of slave ghosts surrounds them and threatens to beat their heads in. Robert's spirit magic can keep them back, and enables the posse to make an escape to the nearby woods. In the process, they also discover that wearing one of the many discarded rusty shackles around the plantation makes the ghosts think that you are one of their own. Several of the spare horses don't survive the escape, ripped apart by the ghosts.

Unwilling to let the dead continue to wander about (scratch that, the dead they don't know personally to wander about) they return to search the place the next day, discovering three mass graves. They decide to dig them up and rebury the bodies in a more respectful fashion in the hopes that this will improve things. Most of the digging falls to Robert, because Tobey can barely walk from her injuries at the station, Vorpwhistle can't bend at the waist due to lack of present stomach muscles, Joseph has one arm, and Cady just isn't very strong.

There follows about a week of digging during the day and retreating during the night. Vorpwhistle, wearing a shackle, observes the ghosts at night as they pull themselves out of the mass graves. As the bodies are reburied, fewer ghosts remain, until the final night there are none - but in the morning, the doctor finds his shackle has transmuted to pure silver, hundreds of dollars worth. Not that he'll ever sell it, of course.

Having spent a while out of sight, immediate pursuit has died down and they are able to get to Baton Rouge, spend three days heading up river, and then take Dixie Rails to Dallas. It's almost Thanksgiving when they get there.