“All right already,” he snapped. “But you sporting trouble. Dutch got a mess of Missouri redshirts ’round his place. You just gived him a reason to set ’em loose. He’ll come after us hard.”
“Let him come,” the Old Man said. “Onion’s part of my family, and I aim to keep her free.”
“She ain’t part of mine,” the Reverend said. He sucked a pheasant bone and tossed it down coolly, licking his fingers. “I’m fighting to free Kansas, not to steal oily-headed niggers like this one.”
The Old Man said icily, “I thought you was a Free State man, Reverend.”
“I
“You shouldn’t’a rode with this company if you were planning to peck and hoot ’bout the colored being free,” Old Man Brown said.
“I rode with you out of common interest.”
“Well, my interest is freeing the colored in this territory. I’m an abolitionist through and through.”
Now as them two was wrangling, most of the men had finished up eating and sat on their haunches watching.
“That’s Dutch’s nigger. Bought and paid for!”
“He’ll forget about it soon enough.”
“He won’t forget that kind of wrong.”
“Then I’ll clear his memory of it when he comes.”
The Indian, Ottawa Jones, stepped to the Captain and said, “Dutch ain’t a bad sort, Captain. He done some work for me before he got his tavern. He weren’t for slavery then. He should have the chance to change his mind.”
“You just defending him ’cause you had a slave or two yourself,” another man piped up.
“You’re a liar,” Jones said.
That started more disruption, with several leaning this way and that, some with the Old Man, others with the Reverend. The Old Man listened in silence and finally waved ’em quiet.
“I aim to strike a blow at the slavers. We know what they done. They killed Charles Dow. They sent Joe Hamilton to our Maker right in front of his wife. They raped Willamena Tompkin. They’re rapists. Pillagers. Sinners, all. Destroying this whole territory. The Good Book says, ‘Hold thine enemy to his own fire.’ Dutch Henry is an enemy. But I’ll allow if he don’t get in the way, he won’t suffer injury from me.”
“I ain’t going up against Dutch,” Reverend Martin said. “I got no hank with him.”
“Me neither,” another man said. “Dutch gived me a horse on credit. Plus this here army’s got too many angles to it. I didn’t come all the way from Connecticut to ride with Jews.”
The Jew Weiner, standing next to Jones, stepped toward the man with his fists balled. “Peabody, you open your mouth sideways again, I’ll bust you straddle-legged.”
“That’s enough,” the Old Man said. “We riding on Osawatomie tomorrow night. That’s where Pro Slavers are. Whoever wants to ride, come on. Whoever don’t want to can go home. But go north by way of Lawrence. I don’t want anyone riding south to warn Dutch.”
“You wanna ride against Dutch, go ’head,” the Reverend said. “I won’t get in the way. But nobody tells me where to ride—especially not over a nappy-headed, bird-gobbling nigger.” He placed his hand on his shooter, which hung on his left side. Peabody and a couple of other men stepped aside with him, and suddenly, just like that, the Old Man’s army split in half, one side standing with the Old Man, the other angling behind the Rev.
There was a rustle in the crowd behind the Old Man, and the Reverend’s eyes growed to the size of silver dollars, for Fred came at him and he was hot, drawing his hardware as he come. He handled them big seven- shooters like twigs. Quick as you can tell it, he was on the Reverend and mashed both his seven-shooters on the Reverend’s chest. I heard the cocks snap back on both of them.
“If you say another word about my friend Onion here, I’ll bust a charge in your chest,” he said.
The sound of the Old Man’s voice stopped him. “Frederick!”
Fred froze, pistols drawed out.
“Leave him be.”
Frederick stepped away. The Reverend huffed and glared, but he didn’t pull his metal, and he was wise not to, for Owen had stepped out the crowd, and so had two of Brown’s other sons. They was a rough bunch, them Browns. They was holy as Jesus to a man. They didn’t swear, didn’t drink. Didn’t cuss. But God help you if you crossed ’em, for they didn’t take no backwater off nobody. Once they decided something, it was done.
The Reverend gathered his rifle and things, got on his horse, and hit off without a word. Peabody and two others followed. They rode north out the campgrounds, the way the Captain told ’em to do.
The Old Man, Ottawa Jones the Indian, and the Jew Weiner stood together and watched Reverend Martin and his men leave.
“You ought to duck-hunt that Reverend in his back while you got the chance,” Weiner said. “He won’t be out of sight five minutes before he turns south and heads to Dutch’s Crossing. He’ll hoot and holler to Dutch loud as he can.”
“Let him holler,” the Old Man said. “I want everyone to know what I aim to do.”
But he made a mistake letting the Reverend go that day, and it would cost him down the line.
4.
Massacre
The Old Man’s plan to attack Osawatomie got delayed, like most things he done, and we spent the next few days wandering the county, stealing from Pro Slavers so we could eat. The Old Man was always broke and delayed in everything. For one thing, he had a lot of men to feed, twelve in all. That’s a lot. I sometimes reckon that Old John Brown wouldn’t have started no trouble at all if he didn’t have to feed so many people all the time. Even at home he had twelve children there, not to mention his wife and various neighbors who throwed in with him, from what I’m told. That’s a lot to feed. That’ll make anyone mad at anything. Weiner fed us at his trade store in Kinniwick. But after two days, his wife was done with the slavery fight and throwed us out. “We’ll be slaves ourselves once this is done,” she growled.
Them first few days of wandering the territory gived me time to get a read on things. From the Old Man’s side of things, new atrocities was occurring all up and down Kansas Territory, the business in Congress being the last straw. From his point of view, the Yank settlers was being plundered regular by the Kickapoo Rangers, the Ranting Rockheads, the Border Ruffians, Captain Pate’s Sharpshooters, and a number of such bloodthirsty, low- down drunks and demon outfits bent on killing off abolitionists or anyone being suspected of being one. Many of them types was personal favorites of mine, truth be told, for I growed up at Dutch’s and knowed many a rebel. To them the Old Man’s Yanks was nothing more than a bunch of high-siddity squatters, peddlers, and carpetbaggers who came west stealing property with no idea ’bout how things was, plus the Yanks wasn’t fighting fair, being that they got free guns and supplies from back east which they used against the poor plainsmen. Nobody asked the Negro what he thunk about the whole business, by the way, nor the Indian, when I think of it, for neither of their thoughts didn’t count, even though most of the squabbling was about them on the outside, for at bottom the whole business was about land and money, something nobody who was squabbling seemed to ever get enough of.
I weren’t thinking them thoughts back then, of course. I wanted to get back to Dutch’s. I had an aunt and uncle back there, and while I weren’t close to them, anything seemed better than starving. That’s the thing about working under Old John Brown, and if I’m tellin’ a lie I hope I drop down a corpse after I tell it: I was starving fooling with him. I was never hungry when I was a slave. Only when I got free was I eating out of garbage barrels. Plus, being a girl involved too much work. I spent my days running around, fetching this or that for these young skinflints, washing their clothes, combing their hair. Most of ’em didn’t know their heads from their arses and liked having a little girl to do this and that for ’em. It was all, “Fetch me some water, Onion,” and “Grab that gunnysack and bring it yonder,” and “Wash this shirt in the creek for me, Onion,” and “Heat me some water, dearie.” Being free weren’t worth shit. Out of all of ’em, only the Old Man didn’t demand girl chores, and that’s mostly ’cause he was too busy praying.
I was done in with that crap and almost relieved when he announced after a few days, “We is attacking
