Daughter of the Sword (13 page)

“Hah!” said Deborah. “You're not telling her because you know she'd take it away. But I suppose we'll have to hide them if we want them—and after the way those Missourians rode up on us, we need all the defense we can get!”

“Now blessed be God!” came a strange deep voice from the cabin. “I'm almighty glad to hear you talk that way.”

Brother and sister whirled, both” reaching for their knives. “Good!” The tall, gaunt graybeard in the doorway nodded. His blue-gray eyes burned into them. In his belt he wore a short sword and pistol.

Even before he spoke, Deborah knew him. “I'm John Brown,” he said.

vi

Brown of Osawatomie, descended from Plymouth Pilgrims, who with four of his tall sons had, during the brief Wakarusa “war,” driven to the defense of Lawrence in a lumber wagon with fixed bayonets attached to it; Brown, who hated slavery with such fervor that he felt he did God's will to cut down five helpless men at Pottawatomie Creek; Brown, who'd stumped New England raising money to battle pro-slavers and help slaves flee their masters. What had Thoreau, who'd met him in Concord, thought of him? Or he of Thoreau, for that matter?

Madman, monster, devil-saint?

Deborah didn't know how to treat him, but Thos hurried forward, clasping his hand. “This is an honor, sir! What can we do for you? We're Tom and Deborah Whitlaw. Our folks should be home in about an hour.”

“I've seen them,” said Brown. He was called Old Brown, though he was only in his late fifties. Age wasn't a word to apply to him. His bony frame looked as indestructible as granite. Lined face relaxing in what seemed to be a smile, he said, “Put up your horse, boy. I won't vanish till your sister gives me something to eat, if she'll be so obliging.”

His cutlass winked in the sunlight. Controlling a shudder, Deborah wondered if it was the one he'd used on the Pottawatomie. Father had written a blazing condemnation of that; yet, when it came to the underground railroad, Brown was the heart and soul of it here, and for that they respected him.

He was too obsessed, too bloody, for man to judge. God must do that. God or the devil.

“Of course I'll give you a meal, Mr. Brown.” Deborah stepped across the threshold. “But can't you stay and have supper with my parents?”

“No. I must be down near Fort Scott tomorrow. But your good parents will have company.” He raised his voice, but a gentleness was in it. “Judith!”

The name stirred an echo. Wasn't that the name of Jed's “nigger wench”? From out of the bedroom moved a tall, slim woman. Her flesh was the color of dark honey and her hair leonine, almost yellow, cut short enough to mold her head like a curly, luxuriant helmet. She had uptilted hazel eyes, a full red mouth, and her broad nose increased the resemblance to a splendid tawny cat.

“Judith is on her way north,” said Brown. “Your parents said you'll keep Judith and help her on her journey.”

“Yes. Of course we will. But, Judith, was your owner named Jed?”

Judith's white teeth showed, but she only nodded. “Praise the Lord!” said Brown. “Your father told me what befell those scoundrels, Miss Whitlaw. A pity one escaped. God's will be done, I say! God's will be done!”

Strange words, terrible words, from the mouth of one who'd killed as many men himself. Brown's God was Jehovah of the thunders, God of Battles, Lord of hosts, who slew the first-born of Egypt, drowned Pharaoh's chariots, and rejected Saul because, though he obeyed God in slaughtering the Amalekites, “man and woman, infant and suckling,” he kept the fattest cattle and sheep.

“I'll get you something to eat,” Deborah said, trying to conceal her horror of the man.

She tucked the Bowie under her mattress and hurried to build up the banked coals, puitting on real coffee. Whatever she thought of Brown, Father would want him to have their best.

“I'll help.” Judith's voice was soft, slurring, fitting her graceful movements.

She was quite thin, with a fragility that made Deborah shudder to remember that Jed's big hairy hands had been able to do as they pleased with this woman. How could anyone think that was right? Infuriated with laws that made women the legal plaything and drudge of men, Deborah banged down a can of truffled woodcock, then apologized at Judith's nervous start.

“I'm sorry,” Deborah said, smiling quickly. “Will you eat with Mr. Brown or join my family later?”

“Never aten with white folk, missy.”

“Please call me Deborah.” Reaching for the other woman's hand, Deborah held it till Judith's eyes widened and she gave a little smile.

“Never run away before, neither. Reckon I have to get used to lots of new things. And I'm hungered. I could maybe eat with Mr. Brown?”

“Fine.” Thos came in and Deborah introduced him to Judith before he went out to grain and water Brown's horses.

On the table Judith put marmalade, white bread baked from flour that had been one of Dane's almost daily gifts, glasses of buttermilk and butter, which Deborah fetched from the well-house, warmed-over greens, fried mush and sorghum, and the woodcock. Brown and Judith started in voraciously.

“You keep some luxury here.” Brown's craggy brow furrowed as he glanced from the truffled delicacy to the sugar and coffee Deborah had brought on a tray. His manner left no doubt of his opinion of such fripperies when their exorbitant cost might go toward operating the underground railroad. It took money to smuggle slaves into Canada and provide subsistence till they found homes and jobs.

“The luxuries are gifts from the English gentlemen who helped fight off Jed and his Missourians,” Deborah said. “I hope you'll take a packet of food with you.”

Brown grunted assent and partook of the woodcock, as if to prevent mortals of lesser integrity from wallowing in such corporeal delights. Thos brought in fresh water and sat down eagerly across from Brown.

“Are you bringing many ‘trains' in, sir?”

“Why do you care?”

Thos flushed. “Why, I—I'd like to do more than I am. I was wondering if—what—”

“I can use bold men.” Brown's stormy eyes swept him with the force of a strong wind. “I'm going to run a hundred thousand dollars' worth of slaves through this Territory before I'm done! But you're useful here, young man. I won't use you across the border without your parents' consent. Get that and then seek me out.”

“Thos!” Deborah cried, but his eyes were shining.

Across the table he reached for John Brown's bony hand. When he shook it, Deborah's scalp crawled. For a moment, the hand her brother gripped seemed skeletal, stained with drying blood.

“I'll come,” vowed Thos. “It may take a while to convince my parents, but I'll come to you as soon as I can.”

Deborah's fingers shook as she put sardines, white bread, figs, raisins, and a cut of Gloucester cheese into an aged pillowcase. Why did the dreadful old firebrand have to turn up and kindle Thos's already nearly uncontrollable yearning for action? Yet, though she blamed Brown, she knew in her heart that Thos, since the Missourians' night raid, had been like a spirited young horse plunging against restraints. He was bound to break loose soon.

But not with Brown—please, not with Brown! Who knew what midnight slaughters and massacres the grim old wretch might carry out?

Distressed though she was, Deborah offered him more coffee. He refused, rising and rearming himself before he closed his veined hands over Judith's. “Do as the Whitlaws tell you, and may you get safe to Canada,” he said.

“Can't thank you enough.” The hazel eyes glittered with held-back tears. “I'll pray for you every day of my life, Mr. Brown.”

“Bless you for that,” he said gravely. “Men say I've committed crimes, but I prayed long and hard before—and after—every enterprise. I believe God is with me.”

No,
thought Deborah as he nodded to her and took the food.
The shadow of death is with you. Or you are the shadow.
He seemed to tower, gray, angular, an Old Testament prophet of wrath and desolation. She closed her eyes in a kind of panic. When she looked again, he was gone.

Mother and Father greeted Judith kindly when they came home that night, but they had shocking news. A smoldering quarrel over a boundary between Jim Lane and Gaius Jenkins, also a Free State man, had ended with Lane shooting Jenkins dead.

Ex-sheriff Jones, pro-slaver and leader of the 1856 sack of Lawrence, walked through the gathering crowd, urging them to lynch his old enemy, Lane, but the present sheriff, Sam Walker, warned Jones that if the crowd hanged anyone, they'd probably begin with their old scourge, Jones himself.

Sheriff Walker brought a carriage and took Lane to jail. Since Lane had been fired on first, it was unlikely that he'd be indicted. “But,” said Father, much distressed, “it's frightful that Free State men should kill each other. The New Englanders have tended to back Jenkins, while the Midwesterners have believed all of Lane's stories about Jenkins being taken into Lecompton by a ‘nigger'—pardon me, Judith, but that's how he put it. And Lane swore that Jenkins had plowed over his daughter's grave.”

“I don't trust Jim Lane,” said Mother. “And I think his wife's a ninny to have married him again. I don't know why he wants a farm. Precious little plowing
he
gets done trying to live up to that absurd name. Grim Chieftain! Chief of what?” When Thos, stricken at this assessment of his hero, started to protest, Mother shushed him. “Let the grand jury deal with him and let's have our dinner! Judith, my dear, you've had an ordeal, but we're glad to have you and we'll do our best to make you comfortable and safe.”

“Thank you, ma'am,” Judith murmured. From beneath her downcast dark lashes, she appeared to be carefully studying the elder Whitlaws, on whom her freedom and, perhaps life depended.

For her part, Leticia looked with sympathy at the younger woman's stained, torn calico dress, mute testimony to her flight through the brush of Missouri and southeastern Kansas. “We'll heat you some bath water, and I have a good salve if you have any deep scratches. Could you bring any other clothes?”

“Only had one other dress, ma'am, and I had to leave it 'cause when I got a chance to run away from that devil, Mr. Jed, I never stopped or looked back till I was on the Kansas side of them border mounds.”

Government surveyors had, beginning in 1854, surveyed the Territory into townships, sections, and quarter-sections, marked by stones wherever available, and when not, by posts set in deposits of charcoal with a mound heaped around the marker. Markers denoting state lines were often mounds two feet high a mile apart. Every sixth mound was four feet high, and sometimes tree seeds were planted at these conical heaps of earth.

A fortified stone wall, of course, wouldn't have turned back Border Ruffians hot on the trail of an escaping slave. Judith must know that better than anyone. But to be on free—if disputed—ground, rather than in absolute slave territory must have greatly lifted her spirits.

“I think one of my dresses will fit you better than Deborah's,” decided Mother, who was a few inches the taller. She took Judith's hands and kissed her. “Welcome, with all our hearts! Is dinner ready, Deborah? I declare, I'm famished!”

Judith refused to take Deborah's bed, but Thos persuaded her that he preferred sleeping outdoors, so she agreed to use the lean-to. She was shy of Father and Thos—small wonder after her experience of Jed—but she became passionately attached to Leticia and tried so insistently to please her that Deborah began to feel a bit displaced, a trifle jealous.

She scolded herself harshly. Wasn't Judith entitled to kindness and sympathy after what she'd endured? And it was still a long, hazardous way to Canada. Still, between bad conscience over hiding the Bowie, fear that Thos would join Brown, and Judith's absorbing considerable amounts of her parents' attention, Deborah was filled with unease.

Thos thought her restlessness had a different root. “Why're you always looking toward town?” he said and grinned the day when, with Judith helping, the twins started harvesting their acres of wheat.

This had been sowed by hand after the plowed field had been harrowed by a large dead plum bush, which had been dragged by Nebuchadnezzar to cover the seed. The grain stood six feet high, hadn't been beaten down by rain, and the Whitlaws, this year, should have their own good flour.

Deborah and Judith followed Thos, gathering the loose wheat and binding it with its own straw into bundles that they heaped into shocks. The cradle, wooden fingers fastened to a scythe, left the grain in swaths with heads in one direction, but it was hot, laborious labor, and Deborah, in no mood for her brother's teasing, scowled as he continued.

“Shall I tell Rolf you miss him?”

“I don't!” Deborah snapped, straightening to ease her aching back. “I'm glad he's gone!”

She was, certainly, yet there was no denying that his presence had made life interesting. She didn't want him to make love to her; but it was flattering to know he wanted to, and highly exciting. Perhaps she
had
begun to enjoy eluding him.

Vanity and wickedness, sure enough, but no woman could be completely indifferent to Rolf when he was on his best, most charming, behavior.

“If it's not Rolf you miss, it must be Dane,” persisted Thos. “Best not pin your heart on him, twin! I hear he escorted Mrs. Eden to the literary society the other night.”

Deborah's heart plunged. Could Dane be enamored of that
fast
widow? Was that why he never stopped by?

Thos said hastily, “He's been painting Dry Leaf and some other Shawnee, too. Been gone a tot.” Deborah scarcely heard this would-be comfort. She hadn't seen Dane since more than a week ago, when Johnny had given her the Bowie, though Rolf had stopped off once with the livery stable's smartest carriage. Deborah had refused to go driving with him, he'd left in a huff, and he hadn't been back, either!