The Boat of a Million Years

by Poul Anderson

  “He’s gone home.”

  “Good. I mean, he’d be welcome, but now we can bring Flora down to eat with us.”

  “Oh, is that her name? Well, certainly. I should have thought of that myself.”

  Jane left the kitchen, set the ladder against a wall, climbed it, opened the trapdoor, murmured. In a short while she returned with Flora at her heels. The colored girl walked warily, eyes darting to and fro. A gown of the wife’s rustled about her ankles. The knife quivered in her hand.

  “Thee can surely put that from thee now,” Edmonds told her. “We’re safe.”

  “We really is?” Her gaze searched his. She laid the knife on the counter.

  “Thee should never have taken it up, thee knows,” Edmonds said.

  A measure of strength had risen in the worn body. Pride rang: “Ah wasn’ goin’ back there nohow. Ah’d die fust. Hope Ah’d kill fust.”

  “’Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath; for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.’” Edmonds shook his head sadly. “I dread His punishment of this sinful land when it comes.” He stepped forward and took the swart hands in his. “But let’s not talk of such things. On second thought, we should eat right away and give thanks later, when we can feel properly joyful.”

  “What then, massa?”

  “Why, Jane and I will see to it thee get a hot bath. Later thee’d better sleep. We can’t risk keeping thee here. The hunters might be back tomorrow. As soon as it’s dark, tbee and I’ll be off to the next station. Have no fears, Flora. Thee ought to reach Canada in another month or less.”

  “Yo’s mighty good, massa,” she breathed. Tears trembled on her lashes.

  “We try our best here to do what the Lord wants, as well as we can understand it. And by the way, Fm nobody’s master. Now for pity’s sake, let’s eat before the food gets cold.”

  Shyly, Flora took Jacob’s chair. “Ah don’ need much, thank yo’, ma—suh an’ ma’m. The lady done gimme some-thin’ awready.”

  “Well, but we’ve a plenty of meat to get onto those bones of thine,” answered Jane, and heaped her plate for her— pork roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, squash, beans, pickles, cornbread, butter, jam, tumbler on the side full of milk that had sat in the cool of the spnnghouse.

  Edmonds kept up a drumfire of talk. “Here’s somebody who hasn’t heard my jokes and stories a score of times,” he said, and finally coaxed a few slight laughs from his guest.

  After pie and coffee the grownups left William in charge of Nellie and retired to the parlor. Edmonds opened the family Bible and read aloud while they stood: “—And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land and unto a good land and a forge, unto a land overflowing with milk and honey—”

  Flora shivered. The tears ran free down her cheeks. “Let mail people go,” she whispered. Jane hugged her and cried too.

  When they had prayed together, Edmonds regarded the girl a while. She met his look, flinching no longer. A sunbeam through a window turned her darkly aglow. For the first time today he felt unsure of himself. He cleared his throat. “Flora,” he said, “thee needs rest before nightfall, but maybe thee would sleep better for having told us something about thyself. Thee doesn’t have to. It’s just, well, here we are, if thee would like to talk to friends.”

  “ ’Tain’t much to tell, suh, an’ some of it’s too awful.”

  “Do sit,” Jane urged. “Never mind me. My father is a doctor and I’m a farm wife. I don’t flinch easy.”

  They took chairs. “Did thee have far to go?” Edmonds asked.

  Flora nodded. “’Deed Ah did, suh. Don’ know how many miles, but Ah counted de days an’ nights. Sebenteen o’ dem. Often thought Ah was gonna die. Didn’ min’ dat too much, long’s dey didn’ catch me. Dey was gonna sell me down de ribber.”

  Jane laid a hand over hers. “They were? What on earth for? What were you doing there? I mean, your duties—”

  “Housemaid, ma’m. Nuss to Massa Mon’gom’ry’s chillun, like Ah was to hisself when he little.”

  “What? But—”

  “’Twasn’ too bad. But dey sell me, Ah knowed Ah’d be a field nan’ ag’in, or wuss. B’sides, Ah’d been thinkin’ ‘bout freedom a long time. We heahs things an’ passes dem on to each othah, us black folks.”

  “Wait a minute,” Edmonds broke in. “Did thee say thee was a—a mammy to thy master when he was a child? But thee can’t be that old.”

  As Flora answered, he thought that already she bore herself like one free and, yes, proud. Maybe too proud. “Oh, Ah is, suh. Dat’s wny dey was fixin’ to sell me. Wasn’ no thin’ Ah did wrong. But yeah by yeah, Ah saw how Massa an’ Missus was watchin’ me mo’ an’ mo’ strange, same as ever’body else. Den when she died—well, Ah knowed he couldn’ stan’ habbin’ me dere no mo’. Could yo’ of?”

  Both the Edmondses sat silent.

  “Happened befo’,” Flora went on after a minute during which the grandfather clock had seemed to tick as loud as doom. “Dat’s how come Ah knows what it’s tike bein’ a field ban’. Not jes’ watchin’ an’ feelin’ sorry fo’ dem. No, Ah been dere. When dat ol’ Massa sol’ me to Massa Mon’gom’ry’s father, he didn’ say nothin’ ‘bout man age den. So Ah Jiggered dere was man chance.” She stopped, swallowed, looked at the carpet. “Better not tell yo’ how Ah got’m to notice me an’ git me trained fo’ de big house.”

  Edmonds felt his cheeks go fiery. Jane patted the hand beneath hers and murmured, “Thee needn’t tell, dear. What choice has a slave ever had?”

  “None, ma’m, an’ dat’s a fack. Ah was ‘bout fo’teen de fust time Ah was sol’, away from mah father an’ mother, an’ dat man an’ bofe his sons—“ Flora’s glance touched the Bible on its stand. “Well, we s’pose fo’gibe, ain’t we? Po’ young Marse Brett, he done get killed in de waw. Ah saw his pappy when de wuhd come, an’ would’a felt sorry fo’ him ‘cep’ Ah was too tired fum wuhk.”

  A chill went along Edmonds’ backbone. “What war?”

  “De Rebolution, it was. Yay, eben us slabes heard ‘bout dat.”

  “But then thee— Flora, no, it can’t be! That would make thee ... about a hundred years old.”

  Again she nodded. “Ah buried mah men, mah real men, an’ Ah buried chillun, when dey wasn’ sol’ off fum me, an’—“ Suddenly her firmness broke. She reached out toward him. “It’s been too long!”

  “Were you born in Africa?” Jane asked low.

  Flora fought for calmness. “No, ma’m, in a slabe cabin. But mah dad, he was stolen away fum dere. Used to tell us young’uns ‘bout it, de tribe, de foe-rest—said he was part Ay-rab, an’—“ She stiffened. “He daid. Dey all daid, and nebba free, nebba free. Ah swo’ to mahse’f Ah was gonna be, in deir names Ah was. So Ah followed de Drinkin’ Gourd an’—an’ heah Ah is.” She buried her face in her hands and wept.

  “We must be patient,” Jane said across the bowed head. “She’s overwrought.”

  “Yes, what she’s been through, I suppose that would drive anybody kind of crazy,” Edmonds agreed. “Take her away, dear. Give her that bath. Put her to bed. Sit with her till she sleeps.”

  “Of course.” They went their separate ways.

  Though Jacob came home jubilantly, supper was quiet. His parents had decided to leave Flora resting as long as possible. Jane would pack a basket of food for the next stage of the journey. Once she said, “Matthew, I wonder what she meant by following the Drinking Gourd. Does thee know?”

  “Yes, I’ve heard,” he answered. “It’s the Big Dipper. The one constellation nobody can mistake. They have a song about it, the slaves, I believe.”

  And he wondered what other songs went secretly through the land, and what songs might awaken in the future. Battle h
ymns? No, please, God, of Thy mercy, no. Withhold Thy wrath that we have so richly earned. Lead us to Thy light.

  As dusk fell, he and Jacob rolled forth the buggy and harnessed Si to it. “Can I come along, father?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Edmonds said. “I’ll be gone till nearly sunrise. Thee has school tomorrow after chores.” He rumpled the bright head. “Be patient. Man’s work will come on thee quite soon enough.” After a moment: “Thee made a fine start today. I can only hope the Lord won’t later want far more.”

  Well, but Heaven waited, the reward that has no bounds. Poor half-mad Flora. What if somebody really did have to live on and on tike that, in bondage or hunted or—whatever menial thing she could become in Canada? Edmonds shuddered. God willing, as she met friendship along the Underground Railroad, she ought to recover her wits.

  A lantern glowed. Jane brought the fugitive out and helped her into the buggy. Edmonds mounted to the driver’s seat. “Good night, my dear,” he said, and gently touched whip to horse. Wheels creaked down the drive and onto the road. The air was still fairly warm, though a touch of oncoming cold went through it. The sky ranged from purple in the west to velvety black in the east. Stars were blinking forth. The Big Dipper stood huge. Presently Edmonds made out the Little Dipper and Polaris in it, that guided north toward freedom.

  XIV. Men of Peace

  1

  The ranch house was small, a one-room sod cabin, but the more defensible for that. Its two windows had heavy inside shutters and each wall a pair of loopholes. Picket stakes surrounded it, six deep. Men built like this in the west Texas cattle country—such of them as weren’t dead or fled.

  “Lord, but I wish we’d cleared out in time,” Tom Lang-ford said. “You and the kids, at least.”

  “Hush, now,” replied his wife. “You couldn’t run the spread without me, and if we gave up we’d lose everything we’ve worked for.” She leaned across the table, over the firearms and ammunition that covered it, to pat his arm. A sunbeam through a hole on the east side struck through the gloom within and made living bronze of her hair. “All we got to do is hold out till Bob brings help. Unless the redskins quit first.”

  Langford kept himself from wondering whether the va-quero had gotten clean away. If the Comanches had spied him and sent pursuit with remounts, he must already lie scalped. No telling. Though you could see a long ways around here, by day, the war band had appeared at dawn, when folks were just getting started on the chores, and arrived faster than you might believe. Of the hands, only Ed Lee, Bill Davis, and Carlos Padilla had made it to the bouse .with the family, and not before a bullet smashed Ed’s left arm.

  Susie bad set and bandaged that limb as best she was able after the warriors recoiled from gunfire and withdrew out of “sight. At the moment Ed had Nancy Langford on his lap.

  The three-year-old clung hard to him, terrified. Bill kept watch at the north end, Carlos at the south, while Jim flitted between east and west in the pride and eagerness of his own seven years. A sharpness of powder still hung in the air, and some smoke seemed to have drifted in from the barn as well. The Indians had torched it, the only wooden building on the place. The roar of its burning reached the defenders faintly, like a noise in a nightmare.

  “They’re comin’ back!” Jim shrilled.

  Langford grabbed a Winchester off the table and sprang to the west wall. Behind him he heard Lee say, “Bill, you help the missus reload. Carlos, you be with Tom. Jim, you go ‘round and tell me where I’m needed.” The voice was ragged with pain but the man could work a Colt.

  Langford peered through his loophole. Sunlight brightened the bare ground outside. Dust puffed and swirled ruddy from the hoofs of oncoming mustangs. He got a brown body in his sights, but then the pony veered and the rider vanished, except for one leg. Indian trick, hang yourself down the other side. But a Comanche without a horse was only half himself. Langford’s rifle cracked and nudged his shoulder. The mustang reared, screamed, went over, kicked. The warrior had thrown himself clear. He was lost in the dust and rampage. Langford realized he had pretty much wasted that shot, and picked his next target with care. The bullets had to last.

  Riders would never take this house. They’d learned as much, first time. They galloped around and around, whooping, firing. One toppled, another, another. I didn’t get them, Langford knew. Carlos did. A real marksman, him. Brave, too. Could likely have gotten away from where he was when they showed up, but stuck with us. Well, I never did hold with looking down on a man just because he’s Mexican.

  “Comin’ on foot, over here!” Jim cried.

  Yes, of course, the mounted braves provided covering fire, distraction, for those who snaked amongst the pickets. Langford allowed himself a glance backward. Bill Davis had left the table to join Ed Lee on the north. The black cowhand wasn’t the best with a gun in these United States, but his targets were close, slowed down by the barrier, scornful of death. He blasted away. Susie brought him a reloaded rifle, took his emptied weapon back, fetched Ed a fresh pistol. The screams, hoofquake, shooting went on and on, world without end. You weren’t scared, no time for that, but at the back of your head you wondered if there had ever been anything else or ever would be.

  Suddenly it was over. The wild men gathered up their dead and wounded and pulled off again.

  In the silence that followed, the clock sounded nearly as loud as—a hammer nailing down a coffin lid. It was a big old grandfather clock, the single treasure from her parents’ home that Susie had wanted carted out here. The dial glimmered through a blue haze. Langford squinted eyes which the powder smoke stung and whistled softly. Just about ten minutes since the attack began. No more, dear God?

  Nancy had crawled into a corner. She huddled hugging herself. Her mother went to give whatever comfort she could.

  2

  The wind across the high plains still bore much winter in it. This range wasn’t as bleak as the Llano Estacado, over which the travelers had come, but the spring rains had not started in earnest and only a bjeath of green touched endless sere grass. Trees—willow or cottonwood clumped by whatever streams ran through these miles, the occasional lonesome oak—reached bare limbs into a bleached sky. Game was plentiful, though. It wasn’t buffalo, except for white bones, the work of white hunters; buffalo were fast getting scarce. However, pronghorn, peccary, jackrabbit ran everywhere, with wolves and cougars to prey on them, while elk, bear, and cougar haunted the canyons. Jack Tarrant’s party hadn’t seen any cattle since well before they left New Mexico. Twice they passed abandoned ranches. The red terror woke to all its old fury while the states were at each other’s throats, and the Army had a lot of quelling yet to do, seven years after Appomattox.

  Sunlight dazzled eastward vision. At first Tarrant couldn’t see what Francisco Herrera Carillo pointed at. “Hwno,” the trader said. “No proviene de ningun campamento.” He was ;a pale-brown man with sharp features; even on the trail he kept his chin shaven, mustache trimmed, clothes neat, as if to remind the world that among his forefathers were Con-quistadores.

  Tarrant looked a bit like him, given aquiline nose and large, slightly oblique eyes. After a moment he too made out the stain rising athwart heaven. “Not from a camp, when it’s visible from below the horizon,” he agreed slowly in the same Spanish. “What, then? A grass ike?”

  “No, that would be wider spread. A building. I think we have found your Indians.”

  Burly and redbearded, hook newly strapped on to stick out of his right sleeve, Rufus Bullen stumped over to join them. “Christ!” he growled. Two missing front teeth made his English slightly slurred. If others than Tarrant noticed the new growth that had begun to push stubs through the gums, they had said nothing about it. “You mean they’ve set fire to a ranch?”

  “What else?” Herrera replied coolly, holding to his own language. “I have not been hi these parts for some time, but if I remember right and have my bearings, that is the Lang-ford property. Or was.”

  “What�
�ie we waiting for? We can’t let ‘em—“ Rufus broke off. His shoulders sagged. “Inutilis est,” he mumbled.

  “We will probably arrive too late, and can certainly do nothing against a war band,” Tarrant reminded him, also in Latin.

  Herrera shrugged. He had grown used to the Yanquis dropping into that lingo. (He recognized an occasional word from the Mass, but no more, especially since they spoke it differently from the priests.) This quest of theirs was mad anyway. “You wish to speak with the Comanches, no?” he observed. “You can hardly do that if you fight them. Come, let us eat and be on our way. If we’re lucky, they will not have moved on before we get there.”

  His sons Miguel and Pedro, young but trailwise, had wakened at dawn and gotten busy. A coffeepot steamed and two pans sizzled on a grill above a fire of buffalo chips—an abundance of which remained—and mesquite. As hard as. the seekers pushed, without time off to hunt, no bacon was left except fat for cooking, but they kept plenty of corn meal to make tortillas and two days ago the father had had the good luck to knock down a peccary. It had been quite a ways off. Every Comanchero was necessarily a crack shot.

  The travelers ate fast, cleaned camp gear, obeyed nature, left soap and razors till later, hit the saddle and set off. Herrera varied the pace between trot and canter, now and then a walk. The two whom he guided had learned to heed him. Easy though it seemed, this sparing of horseflesh covered many miles a day. Besides, the remuda amounted to just a pair of ponies each and three pack mules.

  The sun climbed, the wind sank. Warmth crept into the air and drew sweet sweat odors from the mounts. Hoofs thudded, leather creaked. The tall dry grass rustled aside. For a while the smoke rose higher, but presently it thinned, blew apart, faded away. Wings as black wheeled where it had been. “You can usually tell a Comanche camp from afar,” Herrera remarked. “The vultures wait for the leavings.”

  It was hard to tell whether Rufus flushed. Hats failed to keep skin like his from reddening and chapping. His voice did grate: “Dead bodies?” That was in Spanish, which he could speak after a fashion.