“The laws are unjust and are in support of a terrible and tragic mistake on our nation’s part. Thomas Jefferson himself tells us to rebel against such a government, against such laws.”
“Himself a slave owner,” Jack said, turning to mutter under his breath, “among other things.” Off Hannah’s confusion, Jack explained, “He did more than own ‘em, s’what I hear.”
“Vicious rumors,” Hannah said, “and they’re quite beside the point. The man’s staying here is no crime on our part. He’s just an out-of-work shopkeeper, and I find him a suitable hire to look after my books, make sure the paperwork coming in from Seth Jenkins is up to par.”
Jack’s eyes peeled back the layers of her charm and artifice. “What are you really planning, Hannah?” Off her feigned innocence and surprise, he could only offer a bitter smile. “The mining, the orchard, now this?”
“I’m doing what has to be done, Jack. The railroads need my coal the same way the telegraph companies needed my copper.”
“But where do the slaves fit in? You’re not going to work them?”
“Of course not! These are men and women we’re talking about, their children, babies sometimes. It’s not right, Jack, and to stand against it is the only stand to take. I don’t see any other way.”
“Granted, there may not be another way. And letting events just take their natural course just … won’t be satisfactory?” Hannah’s icy stare answered for her. “You know it’s a felony to help an escaped slave, even in a free state.”
“I do,” Hannah answered.
“You know they could hang you, if you lived long enough to see trial?” Hannah didn’t need to repeat herself. “You’ll lose the property, every acre of it. The whole of your fortune, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to get away with your life.” Hannah sat silently. She knew he was right, that the mountain of reasons to stay out of it was great and high, precarious, ready to fall down and collapse on top of her, crushing and burying her in one fell swoop.
“The laws can’t last forever,” Hannah finally said.
“Then just let them change,” Jack said.
“That’s not how change comes,” Hannah said, her voice low and cold as she reflected on sacrifices and blood and the losses of her childhood. “Change comes hard, and it doesn’t wait for you to be ready. This is one change I’m going to be ready for, Jack, one change the whole country had better prepare for.”
Jack paced the small room, hands on his hips, eyes finding the Chinese rug. “We don’t know that the country can function without it.”
Hannah turned, fire in her eyes. “You’re not secretly in favor of it?”
“No, of course not, ghastly thing. Have you ever seen them come off the boat? The auctions, tearing their wounds, the look in their eyes. It’s … it’s less than human, the way we treat them.”
“Because they’re considered less than human.”
“Three-fifths, to be exact.”
“But not here, Jack, not in Marion County, in Indiana, not anywhere.”
Jack sighed. “You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you? Half the states—”
“Half the states can do my laundry,” Hannah said. “How long do you think this nation can survive keeping those poor people subjugated that way? They’ll rebel eventually, on a grander scale than you could imagine, and it’d be right and righteous that they should do! Think of all the brilliant minds among them, Jack, future thinkers, poets, our country can scarcely do without their aid, much less can we assume to demand their servitude.”
“Always the practical one,” Jack said.
“You’re the one who introduced that tack. I only rose to it.”
“As you always do.” Jack stepped closer to her, hands gentle on her forearms. “I’m not worried for myself, you know, but for you … I … I suppose I might have been right at the start.”
“That you’d fall in love with me?”
A sultry quiet enveloped the study, a lone candle flickering against the wall.
“And as for that fat little fellow,” Jack said, clearing his throat and stepping away to give himself room to improvise, “I say we send him up to Chicago, in an office somewhere, a company with a name that’s not your own. He could be a valuable spy for us up there, Hannah. And in the meantime, he can go on doing … whatever it is he wants to do, probably find a way to be of even greater help up there.”
Hannah wasn’t ready to be corrected, but she was always ready for a superior plan. And she wasn’t too proud or too stupid to fail to see that despite his sometimes baser instincts, Jack Kincaid was right, yet again.
“You’ve got connections in Illinois, having a man up there could be a good connection, information beneficial to him as well as to us?”
But Hannah was in no rush to congratulate him. Being the one to have the final decision was sometimes just a little too much fun. “Perhaps we’ll give it some thought, Jack.”
He smiled, relieved. “Good, good, I’m glad I was able to talk sense into you.”
“Don’t expect it to happen again.” They both chuckled a bit.
“And … the whole slave thing?”
“Oh, we’re going through with that.”
“What?”
“In fact, we’ll send Milton up to Michigan City, at the coast of the Lake Michigan, position him as ferryman.”
“Hannah, I—”
“I know, you’re eager to be congratulated … and rewarded … ”
“No, I— —”No?” Hannah reached into his pants, his body proving him wrong. “You seem nearly ready to me.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Jasper Bellamy’s paint clopped her heels, ready to pull the carriage out and onto the main road heading out of Marion County. Eugene Milton was revitalized, freshly dressed in new attire, bathed and fed and rested and ready, glad for the equipment and clothes and other things Hannah had given him for his trip and to establish him in Michigan City.
She said to Jasper at the carriage helm, “Keep a sharp eye out, find a room in the same boarding house once you arrive. I’ll send word when I want you back.”
Jasper nodded and glanced over, his brothers Barney and Don standing there, wordless nods repeated what they’d shared in private the night before.
Hannah turned to Eugene, climbing into the car. “Find a suitable storefront by the water, get the biggest boat you can, but only the one. We don’t want anybody getting the idea we’re over-extending ourselves.”
“Oh no,” Jack said, “we wouldn’t want that!”
Hannah went on. “When you’re ready to make your first shipment across the lake, wire us back. We’ll have the carts loaded up and ready, hopefully with some … additional cargo in the hidden compartments beneath.”
“You really think that will fool a keen-eyed inspector?”
“They won’t be the ones looking,” Hannah said. “Between me and my new trade partner in Canada, the local officials are well and paid. It’s the slave hunters I’m more worried about and that damned Sheriff Slaughter. But I’ve got another thing in mind for them.”
Jasper Bellamy shook the reins, his armed guard beside him, and the carriage rolled off, the first step on a tremendous new journey for them all.
Jack said, “So by cart to the coast and by boat across to Canada. But the traffic up to our place in Marion County, even you won’t be able to govern that. Once the word gets out, it’ll be bedlam.”
“Must I explain again? The Indians will keep both the local law and the southern powers that be busy enough and give the slaves time to get to us unfettered. Not even Slaughter can be both sheriff during a series of Indian massacres and serve as an ad-hoc slave hunter.”
Jack nodded, just as Hannah expected. “Yeah, and it is a pretty good plan … if it weren’t reliant on a bunch of savages.”
“They’re not savages, Jack, they’re people, people with communities, loved ones, pasts they treasure and futures they’re looking forward to.”
“And they’ve got no particular fondness for folks of our color, I can tell you that.”
“That, my dear Mr. Kincaid, is exactly what I’m counting on.”
*
Hannah stood in front of the tribal campfire, the Chippewa Chief and his braves and their squaws and children sitting at her feet in quiet respect, reverence, even awe. Their silent fear of her, the weight of the legend which preceded her granting untold power and conviction hung in the air. The fire was hot, she was hotter. The flickering light of the flares, accentuating the auburn in her hair, made her appear as though she were one with the magical light. The flames crackled, but she burned like a living spirit, letting the power of her myth flow through her, exploiting her position to the uttermost.
“You know the black man, the black woman,” Hannah said, words slow and heaving with import, “you know them as friend, as enemies of the white, who are your enemies also.” Hannah paused to let her words sink in, reading the focus of each pair eyes as they were locked on her.
“How many of your men and women, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, have the whites taken from you? Beyond counting, beyond measure.”
A disgruntled murmur spread through the crowd, and Jack looked at Hannah with an unspoken urgency toward caution.
“You’ve taken others in return, my own mother killed by one of your own, without need, without provocation, the anger of a lone warrior turned outward, to rage against the coming of that white tide, powerful enough to wash you all away from the land you know and love so well.”
Hannah paced a bit, the fire illuminating her with an otherworldly air as she pointed an angry finger at the crowd.
“You and the black man share that enemy, and just as the badger and the beaver must fear the cougar, they must also band together to survive its brutal onslaught.”
They nodded at one another, and Hannah glanced at Jack to see that his worry had ebbed in favor of even more admiration.
Hannah went on. “But your enemy isn’t every white man, nor every white woman. You look at me, and do you see an enemy?” She could sense their fear rising just a bit. “If you are an enemy of the land, perhaps you do. But if you are no enemy to the land, you are no enemy to the Daughter of the She Bear, she’ll find no fault with you or your crops or your people.”
Hannah raised the peace pipe they’d shared and pointed them out with it, various members of the crowd in turn. “The She Bear finds no fault with these black men and women or their children, slaves to the cruelest of the white, though not of all. Not all whites are the same, just as the Chippewa differ from the Blackfoot, who differ from the Crowe. The She Bear finds no fault with anyone of any color who is a friend to the land.”
The Chippewa nodded and shared a relieved murmur. “But the She Bear does find fault,” Hannah said, louder and more forceful than was necessary, “and she sends her daughter to tell you in her own words the fault she finds and where! It is in the hearts of the men who hunt these black men and women, your brothers and sisters in spirit! The She Bear finds darkness in their hearts, hatred in their souls, powder in their guns. Those who are enemies of such men, these hunters of humans, those are the friends of the She Bear, those are the ones who will enjoy her favor in battle, her shelter in the storm. It is they who will prosper against the rising white tide. For every scalp of such men, the She Bear will be greatly pleased and your people dutifully rewarded with greater peace, harmony with your brothers and sisters, and a brighter future. Those who fail and let these hunters overrun the poor black, those who have taught you the white tongue, those who have shown you kindness and to whom you have shown kindness, those who have fought beside you and died beside you, those whom you have fought beside and died beside, those will be the sons and daughters of the She Bear, now and to the last of their ancestors, and will be so blessed.”
*
Word of the first attack against a slave hunter didn’t come for two weeks, but the news hit hard. The three men had been ambushed en route from the south and scalped where they lay, their bodies left as a warning to others who might and most certainly would follow.
The people around Marion County were shocked, Hannah and Jack making sure to be seen sharing their dismay.
“How terrible,” Hannah said when overhearing the news at a local cafe. “Such savagery … whatever could have inspired them to such barbarism?” Jack kept shooting her little looks as if she were overplaying her role, but Hannah wasn’t the least concerned for the notions of the folks of Marion County.
And the attack meant that slaves were coming, and it was only a day or two later that the quiet of midnight was interrupted by a stuttered knock at the back door. Hannah heard it even from upstairs, glancing out the bedroom window to see utter stillness and coal black, the moon a lone bulb in the star-speckled sky. When Betsy’s feet came shuffling up the stairs, Hannah was already putting on her robe and slippers to see to the cause of the stir, though in truth she already knew.
“There’s two, Miss ‘Zander,” Betsy said, “at the back door ‘hind the kitchen.”
“I told you to let them in, Betsy!”
“I … I wasn’t sure if you’d still feel that way, miss.”
Jack joined then on the hurried trip down the stairs. “You mean to say they’re just standing around outside the back door! My God!”
“All right, Jack, all right.” Hannah walked quickly to the back door and opened it to see two huddled escaped slaves, both big males. Without thinking twice, she waved them into the house. Terrified, eyes wide as they glanced at one another, the two slaves nodded at one another and rushed into the house, Betsy closing the door behind them and locking it.
Hannah asked them, “Where are you up from?”
“Tennessee, ma’am,” one answered. “Heard there was a new way up’n’out, miss.”
“There is now,” Hannah said.
Jack looked around. “They shouldn’t be in the house.”
“Afraid for your safety, Jack?”
“Not even for yours. But going in and out like this, if they’re seen … there are better ways to do it.”
Hannah opened up the icebox and pulled out the remains of a roasted chicken, half the meat still on the bird. She set in on the kitchen table and nodded to the slaves, who sat down and tore at the morsel. Hannah said to Betsy, “See to some blankets, some twine or something. At least we can cover their feet for the rest of the trip.”
“A building outside where they can come and go … under some kind of guard, of course. Your man Don seems a likely hand for the job. Keep ‘em quiet, hustle them into the wagons and the like. No reason you should get your hands any dirtier than they already are.”
It made sense, though it left an unpleasant aftertaste in her mouth to think about his turn of phrase. To Hannah, her hands had never felt cleaner.
“If only I could find an architect nearby,” Hannah said.
“I’ll see to the designs first thing in the morning.”
“Good. ‘til then, these two will sleep in the basement. I made sure there is plenty of room down there, and go out with the first shipment of coal in the morning. Got those carts built just in time.”
Jack turned to the slaves. “You fellas won’t be comfortable in those compartments under the carriages, but they’ll keep you hid.”
“We’s much obliged, sir, much obliged.”
Hannah didn’t sleep that night, and not just because she knew Jack was standing in front of her bedroom door, armed for bear. But she didn’t entirely mind it either, for a variety of reasons; some that made her wince and some that made her smile.
They both were up an hour before sunrise to find Betsy still up from the night before as well, packing blankets and other supplies. “Only a portion of that,” Jack quietly admonished her. “How much room you think they’ll have in them boxes?”
“I’s sorry, Mr. Kincaid, I’s just so nervous ‘bout all this—”
“All right, B
etsy,” Hannah said, softly touching her hand, “all right. We’re all a bit high strung.”
“And we’ll all be strung high if we keep jawin’,” Jack said. “Let’s get ‘em across the yard and into the carts before the sun comes up, roll out at first light. I don’t want the drivers to know what they’re really bringing up to the lake.” Hannah looked at him askance, but he shrugged. “If they don’t know, they won’t reveal.”
“There won’t be an inspection—”
“Not at the border. Good distance ‘tween here and there, Hannah.” Hannah gave it some thought and couldn’t deny his logic. “What about our man in shipping? Last call, the boat wasn’t ready—”
“We’ll ride into town, wire him to have it ready. We’re going to have to step things up a bit, Jack.”
“Thanks to you,” he answered with just a trace of regret.
“No need to thank me,” she answered without the slightest trace of it, even if her tone was dripping with irony.
An hour later, the slaves were loaded into the coffin-like compartments built under the bottom of the single coal cart which lingered so close to the house, resembling nothing more than the cart’s bottom. But the doors opened outward and the slaves could climb in or out from the bottom.
And once the cart was about to hit the road, a single cart loaded with supplies to join the coal-laden carts back at the mine for the long journey to the southern tip of Lake Michigan, Hannah took a deep breath and relaxed for the first time in six and a half hours.
Then Don came riding up with his brother, Barney. “Miss Alexander! The sheriff’s riding in!”
“Riding in?”
Don nodded and turned to point out the sheriff and several other men riding across the property and straight toward them.
Jack called out, “Northward ho! Get this cart outta here!”
But as soon as Sheriff Slaughter was close enough, he shouted, “Stay that cart!” He rode up on Hannah, Jack, the Bellamy brothers, and Betsy. She looked around with sudden discomfort, excused herself under her breath and scuttled away, back toward the house.
Diamonds in the Rough Page 13
