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“Hamden ain’t got no right to treat me like that,” shouted Lem.
“He has every right to,” said Marshal John Hart, who had been the town marshall for two years, standing just outside his cell. “You scared the bejesus out of the preacher’s wife.” John suppressed a smile. “To see a hairy wild man hollering and cursing that you’d never seen before coming down out of the hayloft must’ve been pretty scary.”
“The preacher shouldn’t have rented the horse and buggy so late in the afternoon. I had to warn ’em about the critters that live with the bats.”
“Mr. Hamden said the preacher and his wife needed it to go to the prayer meeting in Ogden that didn’t start till seven pm.”
“They shouldn’t go to prayer meetings in other towns. Can’t those people pray for their own selves? Let me outta here, Johnny, or do I hafta call you Mr. Marshal now?”
“You can call me Mr. Big Shit for all I care, but you’re not getting out of here till you sober up. I have to go home for supper in a few minutes. Tim will be in pretty soon. He’ll let you out after you sleep it off.”
“I don’t like your new deputy.”
“He’s not as patient with you as I am, but he’ll be around from now on, so get used to him.” And as Johnhe heard the front door open, he said, “Somebody’s coming in. Maybe it’s him now.”
He turned away from the cell and went back toward his office. Caroline Hart stood there holding one-year-old Harry Hart. John kissed her on the cheek and then his little son.
“You didn’t have to come fetch me,” he said. “I was about to come home for supper.”
“I needed to come because there’s someone outside who came to see us.”
He stepped outside to see Jacob, his brother Henry, who Caroline and he had met when they visited Jacob and Sarah Jane in Colorado, and three men he had never seen before.
John smiled at them. “Jake, Henry, good to see you guys again. I figured it was about your turn to visit us. Did you bring the womenfolk?”
“Yep,” said Jacob. “Sarie Jane and Verbena are at your house taking care of our littluns. I wanna introduce you to these fine fellows. This here is Linus, Jesse and Job.”
The three men shyly shook John’s hand and said, “Pleased to meet you.”
“They escaped from a plantation in Texas,” said Jacob. “The white owners down there never told their slaves they were free. We’re gonna change that. They’re going back to free their families and Henry and I are going to help them. We once lived like that.”
John was stunned to hear that. “How can the plantation owners get away with that?”
“The State didn’t see no reason to tell them the war is over.”
“Or,” said John, “that the Confederate states did something illegal and got their asses kicked.” He still had dreams about the men he had killed, especially the young one, but they weren’t as unsettling as they had been.
“That’s right.”
“Come along home,” said Caroline. “I’ve got a huge pot of beans cooking that Sarah Jane and Verbena are overseeing. We’ll have plenty of time to talk after we eat.”
During supper, the Texan men became more sure of themselves. They found the courage to tell John and Caroline how they had escaped their masters, learned from freed slaves how the Civil War had ended thewo years before and that they were now legally, if not physically, free.
“We’re going back to free our families,” said Linus, who seemed to be their spokesman, “and all the other slaves on that plantation.”
It angered John to think of people held in bondage illegally or falsely accused of capital offenses, either by morally degenerate slaveholders or, in Bobby’s case, by false law enforcement officers.
The three Texans had formed a band of sorts on the plantation. After supper, Caroline invited friends over, along with Bobby and his fiancée Virginia. The band started playing the instruments they had brought along that had been used in Africa from time immemorial. Jesse played the musical bow, Job the thumb drum and Linus switched between a kind of panpipe and a simple wooden flute.
The music sounded rather eerie and alien at first but Jacob and Sarah Jane and Henry and Verbena started dancing, round and two-step, types of dance familiar to everyone present. The musicians adapted the African beat to the American rhythms. After two numbers, Bobby and Virginia, made adventurous by a few beers, started dancing. Other young people joined in. Soon, everyone but the musicians and John and Caroline, who had Harry to tend, filled the dance floor. John sat apart, brooding.
After putting Harry to sleep in his cradle, Caroline came to join John. She said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
“How could you possibly know that?”
“We’ve been married for two years and I dreamed about you for years before that.” She sighed. “I don’t want you to go to Texas—I’ll worry all the time you’re gone—but I know you must.”
He took her hand. “You know me too well, but thank you, dearest.” He gave her a gentle kiss.
Later, when Caroline went to check on Harry, Sarah Jane joined her, and they sat next to the cradle talking.
Jacob came to sit by John. He chuckled. “Sarie’s gonna have our first one. We only found out just before we came.” He nodded toward the two women. “I see she’s getting advice from an expert.”
“Congratulations, Jake, but it’ll change your life forever.”
“Good. My life changed the day I left Arkansas and it’s getting better all the time.” They sat in silence for a while, but John knew Jacob had something else on his mind. After a time, Jacob said, “Do you suppose Arrowhead could use another carpenter, John?”
“Most certainly. Feelings turned so strong against Oliver Douglas and his helpers for building the gallows that no one would hire them, so they moved away. That only left Harold Crippen, and he’s getting too old to handle all the jobs. Now that we have Harry, I want another bedroom built onto the house when he gets old enough to need it, but Harold keeps putting me off.”
“Do you reckon folks around here would accept me and Henry? He’s my helper and there ain’t enough work in our little town.”
“Of course they would. We’d all be happy to have you. Your first project can be your house for yourself. We need another carpenter so bad, I’m sure I can talk the Mayor into providing the lumber and other materials you need.”
“We’ll do our best for your town. Oh, there’s Sarie Jane, waving for me.” He got up and went back to the women.
In a few minutes, Caroline approached John and held out her hand. “Sarah Jane told us to take the next dance. She and Jake will watch over Harry. She wants the practice.”
As they danced, he told her about Jake’s desire to move to Arrowhead.
“That’s great, John. I’ve grown to like Sarah Jane and Verbena the few times we’ve seen them over the last two years.”
Later, as John and Bobby, the latter’s face shining from the sweat generated by dancing, sat on the house’s back stoop drinking beer, Bobby said, “I’m going with you.”
John choked on the swallow of beer he had just taken. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I know you’re going with Jake and Henry and the others. I owe you and Jacob more than I can ever pay you, and this is a way I make a slight payment to him.”
John frowned and then laughed. “I can’t keep a single one of my thoughts from you and Caroline.”
Bobby pushed his shoulder so hard that beer spilled from John’s bottle. John pushed him back.
When Caroline and Virginia came out to join them, they were pushing and shoving each other and laughing, wet from spilled beer, though still seated.
“Have they always been like this?” asked Virginia.
“Yes, I was raised with these two children, and they’ve never grown up.”
~ ~ ~
Marshal John Hart, Jacob and Henry Freeman entered came into the marshal’s office. Boboby Lowe sat in front of his desk and Deputy Tim Tillotson sat behind it.
“How did it go?” asked Bobby.
“I introduced Jake and Henry to Mayor Warner and told him we had a serious shortage of carpenters in town. He agreed. His wife can’t find anyone to repair the arbor in their backyard. I said these two gentlemen were master carpenters who I had invited to move to our town to ply their craft. But they were hesitant.”
“But Jacob, you asked if you could move here,” said Bobby. “Now you’re ‘hesitant?’”
“No, but John made the Mayor think so. Mayor Warner asked what it would take to encourage us to move here. John told me what to say. I said if the town would provide the materials Henry and me needed to build our houses, we’d build them ourselves. He said he’d think about it.”
“So, you lied to him,” said Tim.
“Sort of,” said John. “Then I said to Jacob and Henry that we’d go on to Ogden. I told them its mayor wanted to talk to them.”
“And it didn’t take no time,” said Jacob, “for that Mayor to call us back. He said he’d find a way to get all the lumber and stuff we needed to build our houses.”
John said, “I told him he had a couple of weeks to get it together. We had a little trip to make before Jacob and Henry could start to work on the houses.
~ ~ ~
John, Bobby, Jacob, Henry and the three Texans squatted in the corral outside John’s stable. Jesse asked John, “After we get our families, do you suppose there’d be a place for us here in Arrowhead?”
He nodded. “I don’t see why not.”
Linus scratched lines in the dirt. “These is the routes we took to Catawba. We didn’t go by roads, and we don’t know where this Arrowhead is from our place, Culpeper West Plantation.”
“Then how are we gonna get there?” said Bobby. “Texas is a big state. We won’t live long enough if we have to explore the whole thing to find one measly plantation, even if a big one.”
“What city is it close to?” asked John.
“Waco,” said Linus. “It’s to the east but I don’t know how far.”
“That’s all we need to know,” said John. “Among the maps Nash left in his office, he left one of Texas. We’ll find Waco, go west and ask where the Culpepper West Plantation is.” He nodded at Linus, Jesse and Job. “We’ll have to round up some weapons for you guys first.”
~ ~ ~
A week later, Jefferson Beauregard, the overseer of Culpepper West Plantation, heard the sound of approaching horsemen. He turned drew his attention away from the twenty-odd bent backs raking hay. The riders, two white men and the rest black,y were still some distance away, two white men and the rest blac.k. They must be some of the buffalo soldiers he had heard about, he thought,. They were bblack enlisted men with white officers. They got their name from the Indians due to their courage and tenacity and the resemblance of their nappy hair to that of buffalo.
As they got close, though, he noticed that they didn’t wear uniforms but just the wide-brimmed hats and everydaywork clothes of Western settlers. When they reached him, they stopped before him in a line, the two white men in the center. He didn’t know the two black men on his right, but he recognized Linus, Jesse and Job on the other side. All held firearms.
The blond one pointed his revolver directly at him. With a grin, he said, “Don’t worry. We only want to talk.”
Beauregard turned back to the laborers. They had all stopped work to stare, first at the newcomers and now at him. Eli, the rebellious one he had given the most thrashings, glared at him with unconcealed hatred, grasping his hay rake like a cudgel. His woman Nell, just behind him, held their two little girls close to her.
Linus said to the laborers, “Eli, Nell, and the rest of y’all, you’re free, just like us.”
The one with the wide-brimmed black hat told Beauregard, “We’ll try to protect you if you drop the rifle.”
“Well, shit,” said the overseer Beauregard as he looked down, dropped his rifle and spurted a perfectly aimed stream of tobacco juice at a Gila monster.
OFFER: A BRAND NEW SERIES AND 2 FREEBIES FOR YOU!
Grab my new series, "Grit and Glory on the Frontier", and get 2 FREE novels as a gift! Have a look here!
Hello there, I really hope you liked my new western adventure story and the extended epilogue! I would be very happy to read your thoughts below.
It’s well written! A good solid story like most of your work. I’ve read most of them and haven’t found a bad one yet
Thank you so much, David! So glad you enjoy my stories!
I have read a number of you books and I find that I feel like I am in the story. Somehow I can see and feel the experience of some of the characters. I feel the energy of the running horses , of the characters being part of a shot out , a round up or just having a good time enjoying friends and family. Your books take me to places that I wish that I was there in real time. Thank you.
Thank you so much for your kind words and support, Mo! So glad you enjoy my stories!
This is another very well written book and I enjoyed reading
Thank you so much for your kind words and support, Gwen!