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.
I couldn’t stand it. There was rebels three deep in the saloon just inside. A dustup between them two would bring Miss Abby and twenty-five armed redshirts out of the back door ready to throw lead at every colored out there, including them two. I couldn’t have that, not with freedom so close. Owen said he was coming, and his word was good.
I stepped in front of Darg and said, “Why, Mr. Darg, I am glad you is here. I come out here to check on my Bob, and Lord these niggers is ornery. I don’t know how to thank you on account of your kindness and bravery for keeping these yard niggers in check. I just don’t know how to thank you.”
That tickled him. He chuckled and said, “Oh, I can think of many ways to thank me, high yeller, which I’ll get to in a minute.” He flung the gate open.
When he done that, I fell out. Fainted dead out right in the mud, just like I seen the white ladies do.
Gosh darnit, that done it. He hustled over to me, leaned over, and picked me up clear off the ground by the collar with one hand. He stuck his face close to mine’s. I didn’t want that, so I come out my swoon and said, “Lordy, don’t do that. Pie might be looking out the window!”
Well, he dropped me to the ground like a hot potato, and I bounced in the mud and played dead again. He shook me a couple of times, but I didn’t come to right off this time. I played possum good as I could for a few seconds. Finally I come to and said, “Oh, Lord, I is ill. Is it possible for a gallant gentleman like you to get a girl a glass of water? I’m ever so shook now with gratefulness, having been jooped and jaloped around by your kind protection.”
That done him. He was right loopy over me. “Wait here, little sweetness,” he grumbled. “Darg’ll take care of you.”
He bounced up and runned toward the alley of the hotel, for there was a big water barrel along the side of it that the kitchen used. The moment he scampered off, I pulled my head out the mud long enough to bark at Broadnax, who stood there, and he caught my words.
“Be ready,” I said.
That’s all I had the chance to do, for Darg came racing back holding a ladle. I played sick while he picked up my head and throwed a slug of nasty, putrid water down my gullet. It tasted so terrible I thought he’d poisoned me. Suddenly I heard a bang, and the ladle knocked into the fence post, which was right next to my head. The thing struck that fence post so hard, I thought that nigger had figured my ruse out and swung at me with it and missed. Then I heard another bang, and that fence post was nearly sheared off, and I knowed it weren’t no ladle that busted that wood apart, but steel and powder. I heard more blasts. Them was bullets. The back door of the hotel suddenly flung open, and somebody from inside hollered, “Darg, come quick!”
There was blasting out front, a lot of it.
He dropped me and rushed inside the hotel. I picked myself out the mud and followed.
There was chaos inside. Soon as I hit the kitchen doorway, two Indian cooks knocked me over scrambling for the back door. I got up and scampered through the dining room, and hit the saloon just in time to see the front window blast inward and shower several rebels with pieces of glass. Several Free Staters followed the glass in, leaping into the room and blasting as they come. Behind them, outside the broken window, at least a dozen more could be seen charging on horses down Main Street, firing. At the front door, about the same number kicked their way inside.
They came in there in a hurry and all business, kicking over tables and throwing their pistols on every rebel dumb enough to reach for his hardware, and even those that tossed their guns to the floor was aired out, too, for it was a shooting frolic. A few rebels near the back of the room of the dining hall doorway managed to throw up a table as a barrier and fire back on the enemy, backing toward the doorway where I crouched. I stayed where I was once they got there, trying to get up enough guts to make a dash for the stairs in the dining room to check on Pie, for I could hear the girls on the Hot Floor screaming, and could see from my view out the window that several Free Staters had hopped to the second-floor roof from outside by standing on the backs of their horses. I wanted to go up them stairs, but couldn’t bring myself to make a dash for ’em. It was too hot. We was overrun.
I stayed crouched where I was long enough to see the rebels in the saloon make a small comeback, for Darg had been preoccupied somewhere else and come in the saloon fighting like a dog. He smashed a Free Stater in the face with a beer bottle, tossed another Free Stater out the window, and made the dash into the dining room without being hit, despite heavy fire. He took the back stairs to the Hot Floor on the quick. That was the last I ever saw of him, by the way. Not that it mattered, for no sooner had his back disappeared up the stairs than a fresh wave of Free Staters rushed in the front door to add to those that was chewing up the remaining rebels in the saloon, while yours truly was still cowering in the corner near the dining room, where I could see both rooms.
The rebels in the dining room put up a fight, but in the saloon they was outnumbered, and that room was already compromised. Most of the rebels in there was down or dead. In fact, several Free Staters had already gived up the fight for the dining room and pillaged the bar, grabbing bottles and drinking them down. In the midst of that, a tall, rangy feller with a wide-brim hat walked into the busted front door of the saloon and announced, “I’m Captain James Lane of the Free State Militia, and you is all my prisoners!”
Well, there weren’t hardly no prisoners to speak of in the saloon where he spoke, for every Pro Slaver in there had gone across the quit line or was just about to, save for two or three souls squirming on the floor, giving their last kicks. But the rebels who had backed into the dining room caught their breath now and put up a fight. The size of the room favored them, for the dining room was tight and there weren’t room for the superior numbers of Yanks, which made shooting at the remaining Pro Slavers in there sloppy business. There was some panic, too, for several drummers fired within ten feet of each other and missed. Still, a good number of the Free
