is, I don’t think the Old Man knowed what his plan was hisself.
He knowed what he wanted to do. But as to the exactness of it—and I knowed many has studied it and declared this and that and the other on the subject—Old John Brown didn’t know exactly what he was gonna do from sunup to sundown on the slavery question. He knowed what he
Four months in that cabin gived me plenty of time to hear the Old Man’s thoughts, for he was in a fever and prone to blab ’bout himself. Come to find out he’d failed at just ’bout everything. He had several businesses that failed: cattle rustling, tannery, land speculating. All gone belly up. Bills and lawsuits from his old business partners followed him everywhere. To the end of his life, the Old Man wrote letters to creditors and throwed a dollar here or there to whomever he owed money to, which was a considerable amount of people. Between his first wife, Dianthe, who he outlived, and his second wife, Mary, who he did not, he had twenty-two children. Three of them, all little ones, died in a bunch in Ritchfield, Ohio, where he worked in a tannery; one of ’em, Amelia, was scalded to death in an accident. Losing them children hurt his heart sorely, but Frederick’s dying, he always seed that as murder, and it was always the biggest hurt on his heart.
We caught Frederick’s murderer, Rev. Martin, by the way. Cold got the drop on him back outside Osawatomie, Kansas, six months earlier, in fall, while rolling through there out of the western territory. We come upon him sleeping in a hammock at his settlement, a small spread tucked in a valley beneath a long, sloping ridge just outside Osawatomie. The Old Man was leading his crew along the edge of that ridge with his eye out for the federals when he suddenly stopped and held up the column, peering down at a figure in his front yard laying in a hammock, dead asleep. It was Rev. Martin, all right.
The Old Man sat atop his stolen mount and stared at Rev. Martin a long time.
Owen and Kagi rode up next to him.
“That’s the Rev,” Owen said.
“It is,” the Old Man said.
Kagi said calmly, “Let’s ride down there and have a talk with him.”
The Old Man stared down the ridge a long time. Then he shook his head. “No, Lieutenant. Let’s ride on. We’ve a war to fight. I don’t ride for revenge. ‘Revenge,’ says the Lord, ‘is Mine’s.’ I ride against the infernal institution.” And he upped and nicked his horse on the side, and we rode on.
His fever stayed on into May, then June. I nursed him during that time. I’d come in to give him soup and find him sleeping, only to bust awake in a sweat. Sometimes, when his mind came back to him, he’d brood over military books, poring over maps, land drawings, circling various towns and mountain ranges with a pencil. He seemed to edge toward getting better at them times, then suddenly bust back into full-out sickness. When he felt better, he’d wake up and pray like a fiend, two, three, four hours at a time, then drop off to peaceful sleep. When the fever got him again, he’d fall into feverish talking with our Maker. He had whole conversations with the Lord then, with backbiting arguments and sharing thoughts and biscuits with an imaginary man standing there, sometimes throwing pieces of cornmeal or johnnycake ’bout the room, as if he and the Maker, who was standing somewhere ’bout him, was having a marriage spat and throwing food ’bout the kitchen. “What do you think I am?” he’d say. “A money tree? A fool for gold? But that’s hardly a righteous request!” Or he’d suddenly set up and blurt out, “Frederick! Ride on! Ride on, son!” then fall out, asleep, only to wake up hours later, not remembering a thing he’d said or done. His mind had gone off on a jolt and fling, so to speak, it had ginned and baled hay and gone on home, and toward July, the men got to burbling ’bout disbanding altogether. Meanwhile, he allowed no one except me to enter his cabin to nurse and feed him and see ’bout him. It got to when I’d come out the cabin, his men would gather ’round me and say, “Is he living, Onion?”
“Yet living. Sleeping.”
“He ain’t dying, is he?”
“No. Praying and reading. Eating a little.”
“He got a plan?”
“Nar word.”
They waited like that and didn’t make a fuss with him, busying themselves under Kagi by clanking away with their swords, reading the military pamphlet written by Colonel Forbes, which is all the Old Man got out of that little gamer. They played with a cat named Lulu that wandered in, and picked corn and done other odd jobs for farmers that lived nearby. They got to know one another in that fashion, and Kagi stuck out in that time as a leader of men, for fighting and squabbling erupted among them during many an idle hour of chess and fighting with wood swords and fussin’ ’bout spirituality, for some of ’em was nonbelievers. He was a thoughtful feller, firm and steady, and he kept them together. He talked into line the more doubtful ones who mumbled ’bout disbanding and going back east to teach school or work jobs, and kept the rest of the rough ones in check. He didn’t take no backwater off nobody, not even Stevens, and that scoundrel was rough work and would bust out the brains of anybody who looked at him sideways. Kagi could handle him too. Come one evening in late June, I walked into the Captain’s cabin bearing a bowl of turtle soup, which always seemed to revive the Old Man some, and found him setting up on his bed, looking strong and wide-awake. A huge map, the favorite one he always fiddled with, lay in his lap, along with a bunch of letters. His gray eyes was bright. His long beard flowed down his shirt, for he never cut it from that day forward after he got that ague. He seemed well. He spoke in a strong way, his voice high and tight, like it is when he is in battle. “I has spoken with God and He has given me the word, Onion,” he said. “Summon the men. I’m ready to share my plan.”
I gathered them up and they congregated outside his cabin. He emerged shortly after, pushing back the canvas flap covering the door, stepping before them with his usual stern expression. He stood tall, without his jacket, without a walking stick to lean on nor did he lean against the doorway, to let them know he weren’t weak or sick no more. The campfire was lit before him, for dark was coming, and the prairie dust blowed leaves and tumbleweeds ’bout. In the long ridge behind his cabin, wolves howled. In his old knarled hands he held a sheaf of papers, his big map, and a compass.
“I has commingled with the Lord,” he said, “and I has a battle plan which I aims to share. I knows you all wants to hear it. But first off, I wants to give thanks to our Great Redeemer, He Who sheddeth His blood on the cross of holy held high.”
Here he folded his hands before him and prattled off a prayer for a good fifteen minutes. Several of his men, nonbelievers, got bored, turned on their heels, and wandered off. Kagi departed to a nearby tree, sat down under it, and fiddled with his knife. Stevens turned around and walked off, cursing. A feller named Realf produced pen and paper and commenced to scribbling poetry. The others, Christians and heathens alike, stood patiently as the Captain railed at God, the wind blowing against his face, going high and low with his prayer, up and down, round and round, asking the Redeemer for guidance, direction, chatting ’bout Paul when he wrote Corinthians and how he weren’t good enough to take the strap off Jesus’s shoes and so forth. He gone on with that railing and ranting at full steam, and when he finally throwed out the last “Amen,” those who had departed to read their mail and monkey with their horses saw he was finally ready and returned hastily.
“Well, now,” he said, “as I said before, I has commingled with our Great Redeemer, He Who hath sheddeth
