Chapter 7
Thomas Jefferson Walker sat at his desk in St. Louis and copied out the message from the cipher. He took out a sheet of paper and wrote a response. It was not written in cipher. “Mr. Durant: I do not tell you what you can do with your cotton, or your horse or your wife, for that matter. So, sir, do not presume to tell me what I can or cannot do with my niggers.”
He addressed the letter and gave it to his butler to be posted. “And find my son and tell him to get in here. If he’s not in the house, put out the word.”
While he waited for his son, he pulled out the ledger and did some calculations. Yes, he would do the deal if he could get his son and his matched pair of nigger hawks on their horses and on the scent. Picking off the stragglers from the parade of runaways was easy, but he preferred to get his slaves from the Union soldiers. It suited his sense of poetic justice: Trade stolen horses for runaway slaves captured by greedy Union soldiers assigned to supervise those runaway slaves, slaves who were enthusiastically building and digging and hauling, just as they had done for their masters. So much more satisfying than simply plucking the low hanging fruit. He was doing his part. Knowing that the captured runaways would be returned to the south to be traded for cotton and that the cotton would be traded for guns to arm rebel soldiers completed the circle.
When his son came in, the father gave him his orders and said, “More horses, too, if you want them for yourself. Just tell Bolin. I don’t want you bringing anything else back here. Take the niggers directly to Lexington. I don’t want to see them. Do the paperwork and bring back the receipts. And keep an eye on our big black nigger hunter.”
While Elliott Walker was taking his orders from his father, the butler made a show of delivering an envelope to the stables, where the ostler, who was eating, put it under his plate.
Quinn's War Page 7
