“Father, you are not hearing me,” Jason said. “We are done! Stay with us. Help us rebuild.”
The Old Man stretched his lips in a crazy fashion. It weren’t a real smile, but as close as he could come. Never saw him out and out smile up to that point. It didn’t fit his face. Stretching them wrinkles horizontal gived the impression of him being plumb stark mad. Seemed like his peanut had poked out the shell all the way. He was soaked. His jacket and pants, which was always dotted full of holes, was a mass of torn and ripped clothing. On his back was a bit of blood where he’d taken a grape ball. He paid it no attention. “I have only a short time to live,” he said, “and I will die fighting for this cause. There will be no more peace in this land until slavery is done. I will give these slaveholders something to think about. I will carry this war into Africa. Stay here if you want. If you’re lucky, you’ll find a cause worth dying for. Even the rebels have that.”
He turned his horse ’round. “I have to go and pray and commingle with the Great Father of Justice upon whose blood we live. Bury Fred right. And take care of Little Onion.”
With that, he turned on his horse and rode off east. I wouldn’t see him again for two years.
PART II.
SLAVE DEEDS
(Missouri)
10.
A Real Gunslinger
The brothers started haggling not two minutes after the Old Man departed. They stopped their wrangle long enough to bury Frederick atop a knoll that looked down on the town from across the river, plucking some of his Good Lord Bird feathers and giving them out to each of us. Then they hanked among themselves some more about who said this or that, and who shot who and what to do next. It was decided they’d split up and I’d be tagged up with Owen, though Owen weren’t particular about the idea. “I’m going to Iowa to court a young lady, and I can’t move fast with the Onion on me.”
“You weren’t saying that when you kidnapped her,” Jason said.
“It was father’s idea to take a girl on the trail!”
On it went some more, just fussin’. There weren’t no clear leader between them once the Old Man had gone. Nigger Bob was standing ’round as they quarreled. He had run and been plumb gone and disappeared during all the fighting—that nigger had a knack for that—but now that the shooting stopped, he showed up again. I guess wherever he run to weren’t good or safe enough. He stood behind the brothers as they went at it. Hearing them fussin’ ’bout me, he piped up, “I will ride the Onion to Tabor.”
I weren’t particular about riding with Bob no place, for it was his pushing me along that helped me to my situation of playing girl for the white man. Plus Bob weren’t a shooter, which Owen was. I’d been on the prairie long enough to know that being with a shooter counted a whole mess out there. But I didn’t say nothing.
“What do you know about girls?” Owen said.
“I know plenty,” Bob said, “for I have had a couple of my own, and I can look after the Onion easily if it pleases you. I can’t go back to Palmyra nohow.”
He had a point there, for he was stolen property and was tainted goods no matter how the cut go or come. Nobody would believe nothing he said about his time with John Brown, whether he actually fought with the Old Man or not. He’d likely get sold to New Orleans if, according to his word, things went the way they did among the Pro Slavers, with white folks believing that a slave who tasted freedom weren’t worth a dime.
Owen groused about it a few minutes but finally said, “All right. I’ll take you both. But I’m going back across the river first to scrounge what’s left of my claim first. Wait here. We’ll head out soon’s I get back.” Off he went, harring up his horse and riding straight into the thickets.
Course the brothers one by one reckoned they too would scrounge what they could from their claims, and followed him along. John Jr. was the oldest of the Old Man’s sons, but Owen was more like the Old Man, and it was his notions that the rest followed. So Jason, John, Watson and Oliver, and Salmon—they all had different notions ’bout fighting slavery, though all was against it—they followed him out. They rode off, tellin’ me and Bob to wait and watch from across the river and holler a warning if I seen some rebels.
I didn’t want to do it, but it seemed like the danger had passed. Plus it brought me some comfort being near where Fred slept. So I told ’em I’d holler loud and clear for sure.
It was afternoon now, and from the knoll where we sat, Bob and I could see clear across the Marais des Cygnes River into Osawatomie. The rebels had mostly cleared out, the last looters hurrying out of town whooping and hollering, with a few bullets of a few early Free Staters who had started to make their way back across the river whistling in their ears. The fight had mostly gone out of everybody.
The brothers took the logging trail that looped out of our sight for a minute, heading to the shallow part of the river to wade across. From my position, I could see the bank, but after several long minutes of leaning over the knoll to watch them cross the river, I still didn’t see them reach the other side.
“Where they at?” I asked. I turned ’round but Bob was gone. The Old Man always had a stolen wagon and horse or two tied about, and every firefight usually ended up with all kinds of items laying about as folks scrambled to duck lead. As luck would have it, there was an old fat mule and a prairie wagon setting there among the stolen booty in the thickets just beyond the clearing where we stood. Bob was back there and he was in a hurry, digging out lines and traces from the back of the wagon. He slapped the lines onto the mule, hitched it to the wagon, hopped atop the driver’s seat, and harred that beast up.
“Let’s scat,” he said.
“What?”
“Let’s git.”
“What about Owen? He said to wait.”
“Forget him. This is white folks’ business.”
“But what about Frederick?”
“What about him?”
“Reverend Martin shot him. In cold blood. We ought to level things out.”
“You can seek that if you want, but you ain’t gonna come out clear. I’m gone.”
No sooner did he utter them words than a bunch of hollering and shooting came from the same direction as the brothers disappeared to, and two horseback-riding rebel riders in red shirts busted through the thicket and into the clearing, circling ’round the long row of trees and coming right at us.
Bob jumped down from the driver’s seat and commenced to pulling the mule. “Wrap that bonnet tight on your little head,” he said. I done it just as the redshirt riders come through the clearing, saw us in the thicket of trees, and charged us.
Both of them were young fellers in their twenties, their Colts drawed for business, one of them pulling a mule behind his horse loaded with gunnysacks. The other feller, he seemed to be the leader. He was short and thin, with a lean face and several cigars stuffed in his shirt pocket. The feller pulling the mule was older and had a hard, sallow face. Both their horses was loaded with goods, rolling fat, with bags stuffed busting to the limit with booty taken from the town.
Bob, trembling, tipped his hat to the leader. “Morning, sir.”
“Where you going?” the leader asked.
“Why, I’m taking the missus here to the Lawrence Hotel,” Bob said.
“You got papers?”
“Well, suh, the missus here got some,” Bob said. He looked at me.
I couldn’t explain nothing and didn’t have paper the first. That set me back. God-damned fool put me on the spot. Oh, I stuttered and bellowed like a broke calf. I played it as much as I could, but it weren’t that good. “Well, I don’t need papers in that he is taking me to Lawrence,” I stuttered.