“Don’t say nothing or interrupt my talking. Just wave the Good Lord feather in your bonnet.” That was our sign, see. That feather he gived me from the Good Lord Bird, which I gived to Frederick, and got back from Frederick after he died. I kept that thing stuffed in my bonnet flush to my face.
I allowed that I would do as he said, and he went up to the pulpit while I moved into the room.
He walked up to the podium wearing both his seven-shooters and his broadsword with a look on his face that showed he was ready to crust over on some evil. When the Old Man got to boiling and was ready to throw hot grits around and raise hell, he wouldn’t get excited. He’d go the other way. He’d calm up, get holy, and his voice, normally flat like the plains, would get high and tight, curvy and jagged sharp, like the Pennsylvania mountains he favored. First thing he said was, “I has word a federal agent is on my tail. If he is present, let him show himself. I will meet him with an iron fist right here.”
Blessed God if you couldn’t hear a pin drop in there let me drop a corpse by the telling of it. Good God, he put a scare into them Yanks then. They growed quiet when he said that, for he feared ’em up something good. They seen his true nature. Then, after a few moments, they got their courage up, and growed mad, and booed and hissed. They flew hot as the devil, and shouted out they was ready to leap on anyone who would so much as look at the Old Man sideways. That brought me some relief, but not much, for they was cowards and talkers, whereas the Old Man, when he beat his drum wrong about somebody, he’d drug ’em over the quit line without too much tearing his hair out ’bout the whole bit. But he couldn’t kill nobody in there, not with all them people there, and that gived me some comfort.
The room quieted after he shussed ’em and assured ’em no agent would dare show himself anyhow. Then he went on into his normal speech, pissing all over the Pro Slavers as usual, hollering ’bout all the killings they done, without mentioning his own, of course.
I knowed that speech like the back of my hand, having heard it many times by then, so I got bored and fell asleep. Near the end of things, I woke up and runned my eyeballs along the walls, just to be safe, and darned if I didn’t spot a feller who seemed suspicious.
He stood along the back wall among several other fellers who hooted and hollered against the Pro Slavers. He didn’t join them in that. Didn’t gnash his teeth or grind his hands or nod his head, or cry and pull his hair and holler against the Pro Slavers like those around him did. He weren’t enraptured with the Old Man. He stood stone-cold silent, cool as spring water, watching. He was a clean-cut feller. Short, stout, pale from living inside, wearing a bowler cap, white shirt, and bow tie, with a handlebar mustache. When the Old Man paused in his speech for a moment, the crowd shifted, for it growed hot in the room, and the feller removed his hat, showing a mane of thick, oily hair. By the time he pushed back a lick of that oily hair and throwed the hat back on his head, the thought had gathered in my mind. That was an oily-haired man if I ever saw one, and I ought to go over there and at least smell him for bear.
The Old Man had kicked his speech into full-out blast by that time, for near the end of his speech he always worked his talk up full, and was in high spirits anyway for he knowed he was heading west after this last big throw-down. He gived his usual proclamations against the dreaded master and the poor slave not prospering and so forth. The crowd was loving it, the women crying and pulling out their hair and gnashing their teeth—it was a good show—but I was alarmed now, watching that spy.
I weren’t taking no chances. I slung my feather out my bonnet and waved it toward the podium, but the Old Man was in high spirits and had peaked by then. He had launched into the final part of his talk, where he busted loose to God in prayer, which he always done at the end, and course he always done his praying with his eyes closed.
I already done told you how long the Old Man’s prayers went. He could tear into a prayer for two hours and spout the Bible easy as you and I can spout the alphabet, and he could do that alone, by hisself, with nobody standing around. So imagine when he had a few hundred folks setting there listening on his thoughts and pleas to our Great King of Kings who made rubber and trees and honey and jam with biscuits and all them good things. He could go on for hours, and we actually lost money on account of that, for sometimes them Yanks got worn out with his rumblings to our Maker and cleared the hall before the basket got passed. He growed wise to that tactic by that time and begun to keep his speculatings short, which for him meant still at least a half hour, his eyes shut at the pulpit, howling at our Maker to hold him in high stead while he done His duty of murdering the slavers and sending them to Glory or Lucifer, though he had a devil of a time keeping it to that length.
I reckon the agent had spied the show before, ’cause he knowed the Old Man was winding down, too. He saw the Old Man close his eyes to start his Bibling and quickly slipped off the back wall and worked through the crowd gathered along the side aisle of the hall, making his way to the front. I quick waved my feather at the Old Man again, but his eyes was shut tight as he gived the Lord ninety cents on the dollar. There weren’t nothing to do but move with the agent.
I came off the back wall and worked my way around the room behind him fast as I could. He was closer to the stage than I was, and movin’ quick.
The Old Man must’a smelled a rat, for in the middle of his proclamations ’bout immortal souls and the afflicted, his eyes suddenly popped open and he blurted out a quick “Amen.” The crowd hopped out their seats and surged to the front of the hall, making a beeline to commingle with their hero and shake his hand and get his autograph and give him coin donations and so forth.
They swarmed the agent as well, and slowed his progress. But he was still ahead of me, and I was but a colored girl, and the crowd pushed me aside in the scramble to shake the Old Man’s hand. I was being thumped ’bout by Yankees trying to swarm the Old Man. I waved the Good Lord feather again but I was drowned out by taller adults all around. I caught a glimpse of a little girl up front who beat the crowd to the Old Man, holding out a paper for him to sign. He leaned down to sign it, and as he done so, the agent busted through the crowd and made it to the front of the room and was nearly on him. I jumped into the pews and leaped over the seats toward the front.
I was ten feet off when the agent was within arm’s length of the Captain, who had bent down with his back to the agent to put his mark on the paper for the little girl. I crowed out, “Captain! I smell bear!”
The crowd paused a moment, and I do believe the Captain heard me, for his head snapped up and the old, stern, wrinkled face clicked to alertness. He stood and spun around in a snap, his hands on his seven-shooters and I ducked low, for that gun makes a powerful boom when it wakes up. He caught the feller cold. Had the drop on him, for the agent hadn’t quite reached him yet, nor gone for his metal. He was a dead man.
“Aha!” the Old Man said.
Then, to my surprise, his hands came off his seven-shooters and his tight face uncrinkled. He stuck his hand out. “I see you has got my letters.”
The stout feller with a mustache and bow tie stopped short and bowed low in his bowler cap. “Indeed!” he said. He spoke with an English accent. “Hugh Forbes at your service, General. It is an honor to meet the great warrior of slavery of whom I have heard so much. May I shake your hand?”
They shook hands. I reckon this was the “special interest” the Captain had waited on, the thing he had hung around waiting for back east before heading back to the plains.