And with that the Old Man plopped me on his horse, and we sped down that alley, right past that cannon, out of Pikesville, and into legend.
PART III.
LEGEND
(Virginia)
17.
Rolling into History
A blizzard set on top of us as we moved out of Pikesville with three men on horses and the rest on wagons. Snow fell for a straight day and covered the trail. It left snow nearly a foot high in every direction. A warm snap followed for a day, melting some of the snow, then a deep freeze came. Ice on trees was two inches thick. Water froze in canteens by morning. We lay out under canvases wrapped in roll blankets, with snow blowing over our faces and wolves howling nearby. The Old Man had a new army, a bigger one, and each man took turns keeping the fires going, though they didn’t help much. The outdoors never bothered the Old Man, of course. He could sense a change in the weather like an old farmer, walk through the dead of night through a dark woods without nary a light, and step through a thunderstorm like it weren’t there. But I was hitting the trail after two years of smooth, dry, easy living and shoving rotgut ale down my throat. The second day I come down with a bad case of the ague. Lucky for me, the Old Man fell ill with the ague, too, so he announced, during the middle of the third day when yet another snowstorm fell, “Men, I has word from on high that there is a slave or two that needs freeing here in Missouri. We is heading to Vernon County.”
There weren’t no arguing with him in that weather. He had changed considerably since I seen him two years hence. He was a fearsome sight. His face was wrinkled like a raisin. His gnarled old hands looked like leather claws. His face was stern as a rock. His eyes were like gray granite. His speech changed some, too. He declared he had moved to the woods alone to study the works of some feller named Cromwell, and I reckon it moved him mightily, for he sprinkled his talk with more “thees” and “thous” and “thithers” than ever. Sitting atop his horse with snow falling off his flecked wool coat, sticking to his beard, he looked even more like Moses of old. “I ought to be a general,” he remarked one morning as we trudged through the freezing woods of Vernon County, “but our Redeemer of Trinity Who controlleth the weather and is Commander of all stations deems it fit to keep me at His feet. I was enjoined with nature for nearly a year, Onion, living in the woods on my own, studying my battle plans and commingling with our great King of Kings, I come away with the understanding that I serves His will as a Captain, Onion, that is the title He has charged me with. Nothing higher.”
“Why don’t God’s Captain take us to warm shelter,” Owen grumbled.
The Old Man snorted. “God protects us in winter, Owen. No Pro Slavers will be seen in this country till the grass grows green again. That allows us to do our work.”
He was right about that, for no creature with a brain would venture out into that snow. We trudged along through southwest Missouri territory for four days that way, freezing, not finding no slaves to free, till finally the Old Man declared, “Slavery in Vernon County is vanquished. We will march east to Iowa by land.”
“Whyn’t we take the ferry?” Owen asked. “That’s the fastest way east.”
The Captain smirked. “The ferries are run by Pro Slavers, son. They don’t take Yanks.”
Owen brandished his sword and pistols, nodding at the men behind us, three on horses and the rest on wagons, all armed. “They’ll take us.”
The Old Man smirked. “Did Jesus take a chariot down Jericho Road from eight thousand feet to sea level? Did Moses circle the mountain with the scroll of the commandments on a horse? Or did he climb the swell with his own feet? We shall march to Iowa as cavalry, like David of old.” Truth is, though, he couldn’t take the ferry ’cause he was on the run. The price on the Old Man’s head had gone up considerable in the two years since I’d been in Pikesville. Owen told me both Missouri and Kansas Territory had different prices on his head, and the folks back east had been stirred up considerable by their hearing of the Old Man’s doings, which included removin’ the head of Doyle and them others, not to mention freeing slaves wherever he went. Each week the Old Man sent one of his men to the nearby town of Cuddyville to get newspapers from back east, and them accounts was filled with all kinds of debates about the slave fight, not to mention the various wonderings about the prices on his head from various pickets, both territories, and Washington, D.C. To make matters worse, a federal company picked up our trail outside Nebraska City and chased us north, away from the ferry. They hung on through the snowstorm. We tried to ride away from them, but they hung back several miles, just out of sight. Each time we thought we’d lost them, the Old Man stopped and peered back through his looking glass and spotted them a few miles distant, struggling to keep up with us in the snow. This went on for days.
“Whyn’t they just come on and make a fight of it,” Owen murmured.
“They ain’t gonna do that,” the Captain said. “For Gideon told the people, ‘I will not rule over you. My son will not rule over you. The Lord will rule over you.’ Our Savior won’t let ’em fight us.”
After another three days of snow and freezing weather, the federals got tired of the game. They sent a horseman over to our camp bearing a white flag to speak to the Old Man. He was a rangy feller, with his uniform tucked neatly into his boots and his face beet-red from the cold. “I’m Lieutenant Beers,” he announced. “I brings words from my commander, Captain Haywood. He says if you was to come in quietly and not resist, we will take you to Lawrence for a fair trial and leave your men alone.”
The Old Man snorted. “Tell Captain Haywood to come and get me.”
“He’ll have to arrest you.”
“For what?”
“I ain’t certain of the charges, Captain,” the lieutenant said, “but the governor of Kansas Territory throwed a three-thousand-dollar price for your capture. President Buchanan has offered another two hundred fifty. You’d be safer with us than riding these parts with all that money hanging on your head.”
Sitting on his horse in the falling snow, the Old Man laughed. He had the oddest laugh of any man I ever saw. He didn’t make a sound, but rather crinkled his face and sucked in his breath. His shoulders heaved, he sucked in air, his face tightened up, and the wrinkles in his forehead would collapse around his eyes till they disappeared and all you could see was his yellow teeth, about to whoosh air out at you from what seemed like just about every hole in his head—his eyes, ears, and mouth. The overall effect was terrifying if you didn’t know him. The lieutenant got right unsettled watching it, and at that particular moment the Old Man sneezed, which flipped his body off his saddle for a moment and sent his frock coat tails flipping up, showing the handles of one of them great, big seven-shooters he carried in holsters on either side.
“That’s an insult,” the Old Man finally snorted when he was done. “I am fighting the cause in the name of our Holy Redeemer, who can expunge the word of any nation with a mere cough. I ain’t ruled by him. Deuteronomy thirty-two, thirty-five, says, ‘Their foot shall slide in due time.’”
He turned around and said to his men, “I herebys offer any man in this here army two dollars and fifty cents for President Buchanan’s head. He is presiding over a barbaric institution that does not answer to the throne of our most Holy Martyr.”