On the morning of April 23, 1831, White Moss Plantation in Louisiana lay buried beneath a thick, swamp-heavy mist. Everything began like any other day… until a scream tore through the woods near the hog pens.Not one scream. Several. Sharp. Panicked. Then—silence.When the overseer and a few others rushed toward the sound, they stopped cold. The ground was soaked dark with blood. Torn clothing lay scattered. Five pairs of boots rested awkwardly in the mud, as if their owners had simply vanished from the earth. But there were no bodies.Only a familiar felt hat.Cyrus Maddox.Leader of the most brutal slave-catching crew along the lower Mississippi. The other four men were gone too—men known for hunting the runaway enslaved with dogs, whips, and laughter that chilled the spine.Nearby, the hog pen gate stood open. Three-hundred-pound hogs had wandered into the trees. And on the ground… bone fragments, gnawed raw.At that same hour, inside the plantation kitchen, Ada Maybel was chopping vegetables. Small. Quiet. Nearly invisible. Two years earlier, those same men had beaten her husband to death after he tried to escape. Days later, her six-year-old son disappeared.When they arrested Ada, she didn’t resist. Didn’t cry. In court, before a packed room, she looked straight at the judge and said:“Yes. I did it.”The courtroom held its breath.Then she began to talk about the jar of lard… the one that was never meant for cooking… and the night she returned to their camp in the dark, while the five men slept heavily, unaware that their supper was missing one thing… and had far too much of something else…