The fourth night after Broadnax made his threat, I went on a bender with a redshirt who’d stumbled into the saloon full of trail dust, and we was having a good go at it—me more than him, to be honest. He was a young feller, broad-chested feller, more thirsty for water than liquor it seemed. He sat at a table in a big hat pulled close over his face, a long beard, and his arm in a sling. He stared at me in silence while I laughed and joked at him and throwed his rotgut down my red lane while double-talking him and switching glasses so as to jug him more water than his whiskey. I overserved myself and he didn’t seem to mind it a bit. In fact he seemed to enjoy watching me get out my skull, which, on the prairie, if you can’t please a man one way, why you can always please him another. I seen Pie do that a million times. I took this big young feller for one of those, and after several toots and tears and swipes at his glass with him watching and saying nothing, I flat out asked him if I could polish off the entire bottle of whiskey which he had purchased, as it sat on the table hardly getting used by him in the proper manner and it was a waste of breakfast, lunch, and dinner and mother’s milk to let such a precious thing go to waste.
He remarked, “You drinks a lot of rotgut for a girl. How long has you worked here?”
“Oh, long enough,” I said, “and if you allows me to finish that bottle of bleary on the table there, sir, why, this lonely colored girl will fillet your ears with a song about fish.”
“I will do just that if you tells me where you is from, dear maiden,” he said.
“Many places, stranger,” I said, for I was of the habit about lying about myself, and the “dear maiden” part of his talking meant that he was prone to perhaps buy me a second bottle of that buttercup whiskey after we finished the first. Fact is, when I thunk on it, seemed like he hadn’t drunk much at all, and seemed to enjoy watching me do all the sipping and soaking of the alkie for him, which at that point was more than a thrill, for I was already two sheets to the wind and wanted more. I said, “If you buy us a second bottle of moral suasion, I’ll give you the whole sad story, plus a haircut, stranger. Then I’ll sing ‘Dixie Is My Home’ for you, which will stir your spirits and put you right to sleep.”
“I will do that,” the feller said, “but first I needs a favor. I got a saddlebag on my horse, which is tied outside on the alley side of the hotel. That saddlebag needs cleaning. On account of my arm”—and here he pointed to his arm, which was hung in a sling—“I can’t lift it. So if I can trust you to go out and fetch that saddlebag and bring it inside and lather it up with saddle soap, why, I’ll give you two bits or even three and you can buy your own whiskey. I rides the brown-and-white pinto.”
“I will be happy to do that, friend,” I said.
I went outside and untied his saddlebag from his pinto in a jiffy, but it was loaded up full, and that thing was heavy. Plus I was pixilated. I lost my grip on it when I got it loose from the horse and it fell to the ground, and the leather top flap popped open. When I bent to close the flap, I noticed in the moonlight an odd thing sticking out the top of that flap.
It was a feather. A long, black-and-white feather with a touch of red on it. Drunk as I was, I still knowed what it was. I hadn’t seen a feather like that in two years. I seen a plume of them very same type feathers on Frederick Brown’s chest when he was buried. A Good Lord Bird.
I quick stuffed it back into the saddlebag, turned to go inside, and walked straight into the feller who’d sent me out there. “Onion?” he said.
I was two sheets to the wind and seeing double, and he was so tall standing up there in that dark alley that I couldn’t quite make out his face, and I was seeing threes anyway. Then he pulled off his hat, throwed back his hair, leaned down to look at me close, and I seen past his beard into his face, and found myself staring at Owen Brown.
“I been seeking you for two years,” he said. “What is you doing here, carousing around like a drunk?”
I was shocked out my petticoat, practically, and didn’t know what to cook up to tell him on the spot, for lying takes wit, and that was on a high shelf in my brain on account of that essence, which tied up my tongue, so I blurted the truth: “I has fallen in love with someone who don’t want no parts of me,” I said.
To my surprise, Owen said, “I understands. I too has fallen in love with someone who don’t want no parts of me. I went to Iowa to fetch a young lady but she said I am too grumpy. She wants prosperity and a man with a farm, not a poor abolitionist. But that didn’t turn me into a drunk like you. Is I too grumpy, by the way?”
Fact is, there weren’t a soul in Kansas Territory more grumpy than Owen Brown, who would grumble to Jesus Himself on account of just about anything that weren’t to his liking. But it weren’t for me to say. Instead I said, “Where was you at Osawatomie? We was waiting for you.”
“We runned into some rebels.”
“Whyn’t you come back and get me and Bob?”
“I’m here, ain’t I?”
He frowned, glanced up and down the alley, then picked up his saddlebag, and throwed it on his horse with one hand, tying it, using his teeth to hold one of the straps as he did so. “Set tight,” he said. “We’ll be ridin’ here soon. And quit sipping that joy juice.”
He mounted up on his horse. “Where’s the Old Man?” I hissed. “Is he dead?”
But he had already turned his horse up the alley and was gone.
16.
Busting Out
It was the next day before I got a chance to slip out to the pen. Someone had tipped off the town that the Free Staters was coming, and that made the white folks get busy and also watch the niggers close. The town loaded up all over again. They never really geared down after Sibonia’s hanging, truth be told, but now the sure sign of Free Staters picked things up. The saloon bar was packed three deep with rebels and militia armed to the teeth. They made plans to block off the streets to the town, this time with cannons on both sides, facing outward. They posted watchouts on both ends and on the hills around the town. They knowed trouble was coming.
I was sent to draw water after lunch the next afternoon, and got out to the yard. I found Bob pining at the edge of the pen by himself as usual. He looked about low as a man can get, like a feller waiting for his execution, which I reckon he was. As I trotted to the gate, Broadnax and his men seen me and peeled away from their side, where they was working with the hogs, and come on over. Broadnax stuck his face inside the rails.
“I got news,” I said.
The words hadn’t left my mouth when the back door of the hut on the other side of the alley opened and Darg rolled out. That big Negro always moved fast. The slaves scattered when he came, except for Broadnax, who stood alone at the gate.
Darg stomped up to the gate and glared inside the pen. “Git along the back of the fence there, Broadnax, so I can make my count.”
Broadnax took his face out the fence railing and stood up straight, facing Darg.
“Git along,” Darg said.
“I ain’t got to jump like a chicken every time you open that hole in your face,” Broadnax said.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
Without a word, Darg removed his shawl, pulled out his whip, and moved to unwire the gate and unlock the fence to go inside.