“You look familiar,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Shubel Morgan,” the Old Man said.
“What you doing ’round these parts?”
“Looking for work.”
Dutch paused a moment, peering at the Old Man. He smelled a rat. “I got some wood out back needs chopping,” he said. “I’ll give you fifty cents to chop wood half a day.”
“No, thanks,” the Old Man said.
“Seventy-five cents.”
“Naw.”
“How about a dollar, then?” Dutch asked. “A dollar is a lot of money.”
“I can’t,” the Old Man grunted. “I’m waiting on the steamer to come down the Kaw.”
“That steamer don’t come for two weeks,” Dutch said.
The Old Man frowned. “I am setting here sharing the Holy Word with a brother Christian, if you don’t mind,” he said. “So why don’t you mind your marbles, friend, and saw your wood your own self, lest the Lord see you as a fat sow and a laggard.”
Dutch carried a pepperbox in them days. Tight little gun. Got four barrels on it. Nasty close up. He kept it in his front pocket for easy pickings. Not in a holster. Right in his front pocket. He reached in that pocket and drawed it out, and held it, barrel down, all four barrels pointed to the floor, talking to that wrinkled Old Man with a gun in his hand now.
“Only a white-livered, tit-squeezing Yankee would talk like that,” he said. Several men got up and walked out. But the Old Man sat there, calm as an egg. “Sir,” he said to Dutch, “that’s an insult.”
Now, I ought to say right here that my sympathies was with Dutch. He weren’t a bad feller. Fact is, Dutch took good care of me, Pa, my aunt and uncle, and several Indian squaws, which he used for rootin’-tootin’ purpose. He had two younger brothers, William and Drury, and he kept them in chips, plus he sent money back to his maw in Germany, plus fed and clothed all the various squaws and assorted whores his brother William drug in from Mosquite Creek and thereabouts, which was considerable, for William weren’t worth a shit and made friends with everybody in Kansas Territory but his own wife and children. Not to mention Dutch had a stall barn, several cows and chickens, two mules, two horses, a slaughterhouse, and a tavern. Dutch had a lot on him. He didn’t sleep but two or three hours a night. Fact is, looking back, Dutch Henry was something like a slave himself.
He backed off the Old Man a step, still holding that pepperbox pointed to the floor, and said, “Get down off that chair.”
The barber’s chair was set on a wood pallet. The Old Man slowly stepped off it. Dutch turned to the bartender and said, “Hand me a Bible,” which the bartender done. Then he stepped up to the Old Man, holding the Bible in one hand and his pepperbox in the other.
“I’m gonna make you swear on this Bible that you is for slavery and the U.S. Constitution,” he said. “If you do that, you old bag, you can walk outta here none the worse. But if you’re a lying, blue-bellied Free Stater, I’mma bust you across the head so hard with this pistol, yellow’ll come out your ears. Place your hand on that,” he said.
Now, I was to see quite a bit of Old John Brown in the coming years. And he done some murderous, terrible things. But one thing the Old Man couldn’t do good was fib—especially with his hand on the Bible. He was in a spot. He throwed his hand on the Bible and for the first time, looked downright tight.
“What’s your name?” Dutch said.
“Shubel Isaac.”
“I thought you said it was Shubel Morgan.”
“Isaac’s my middle name,” he said.
“How many names you got?”
“How many I need?”
The talk had stirred up an old drunk named Dirk, who was asleep at a corner table nearby. Dirk sat up, squinted across the room, and blurted, “Why, Dutch, that looks like Old John Brown there.”
When he said that, Dutch’s brothers, William and Drury, and a young feller named James Doyle—all three would draw their last breath in another day—got up from their table near the door and drawed their Colts on the Old Man, surrounding him.
“Is that true?” Dutch asked.
“Is what true,” the Old Man said.
“Is you Old Man Brown?”
“Did I say I was?”
“So you ain’t him,” Dutch said. He seemed relieved. “Who are you then?”
“I’m the child of my Maker.”
“You too old to be a child. You Old John Brown or not?”
“I’m whoever the Lord wants me to be.”
Dutch throwed the Bible down and pushed that pepperbox right on the Old Man’s neck and cocked it. “Stop shitting around, you God-damned potato-head! Old Man Brown. Is you him or not?”
Now, in all the years I knowed him, Old John Brown never got excitable, even in matters of death—his or the next man’s—unless the subject of the Lord come up. And seeing Dutch Henry fling that Bible to the floor and swearing the Lord’s name in vain, that done a number on him. The Old Man plain couldn’t stand it. His face got tight. Next when he spoke, he weren’t talking like an Irishman no more. He spoke in his real voice. High. Thin. Taut as gauge wire.
“You bite your tongue when you swear about our Maker,” he said coolly, “lest by the power of His Holy Grace, I be commanded to deliver redemption on His behalf. And then that pistol you holding there won’t be worth a cent. The Lord will lift it out your hand.”
“Cut the jitter and tell me your name, God dammit.”
“Don’t swear God’s name again, sir.”
“Shit! I’ll swear his cock-dragging God-damn name whenever I God-damn well please! I’ll holler it up a dead hog’s ass and then shove it down your shit-eating Yank throat, ya God-damned nigger turned inside out!”
That roused the Old Man, and quick as you can tell it, he throwed off that barber’s bib and flashed the butt end of a Sharps rifle beneath his coat. He moved with the speed of a rattler, but Dutch already had his pistol barrel at the Old Man’s throat, and he didn’t have to do nothing but drop the hammer on it.
Which he did.
Now that pepperbox is a fussy pistol. It ain’t dependable like a Colt or a regular repeater. It’s a powder cap gun. It needs to be dry, and all that sweating and swearing must’ve sprouted water on Dutch’s big hands, is the only way I can call it, for when Dutch pulled the go switch, the gun hollered “Kaw!” and misfired. One barrel exploded and peeled sideways. Dutch dropped it and fell to the floor, bellowing like a calf, his hand nearly blowed off.
The other three fellers holding their Colts on Old Brown had stepped back momentarily to keep their faces clear of the Old Man’s brains, which they expected to splatter across the room any minute, and now all three found themselves gaping at the hot end of a Sharps rifle, which the old fart coolly drawed out all the way.
“I told you the Lord would draw it out your hand,” he said, “for the King of Kings eliminates all pesters.” He stuck that Sharps in Dutch’s neck and drawed the hammer back all the way, then looked at them three other fellers and said, “Lay them pistols down on the floor or here goes.”
They done as he said, at which point he turned to the tavern, still holding his rifle, and hollered out, “I’m John Brown. Captain of the Pottawatomie Rifles. I come with the Lord’s blessing to free every colored man in this territory. Any man who stands against me will eat grape and powder.”
Well, there must’ve been half a dozen drummers bearing six-shooters standing ’round that room, and nary a man reached for his heater, for the Old Man was cool as smoke and all business. He throwed his eyes about the room and said calmly, “Every Negro in here, those of you that’s hiding, come on out. You is now free. Follow me. Don’t be afraid, children.”