Sheriff Slaughter tilted his head to Hannah and surveyed the coal cart loaded with bundles and tools. “What’s all this?”
Jack was quick to answer, “Supplies for a coal run up the state, shipping to Canada.”
“Up Lake Michigan? Those are choppy waters, I hear.”
“Faster’n land,” Hannah said. “Don’t tell me my business, Sheriff.”
“I heard you were building a railroad out here?”
“In due time,” Hannah answered coldly. “What brings you?”
Sheriff Slaughter’s eyes kept going back to the cart. “You’ve heard about the killings.”
“We have,” Jack answered. “What of ‘em?”
“Terrible,” the sheriff said from atop his horse, his two men emotionless and steady behind him.
“Men hunting other men,” Hannah presumed, “that is tragic.” Jack shot her a little glance, which she ignored. The sheriff seemed not to.
Sheriff Slaughter went on. “You mean savages hunting whites.” Hannah just looked up at him, her thrust chin and tight lips her only answer. “Anyway, they were hunting escaped slaves, up from Tennessee. That means there’s errant slaves around, somewhere close.”
Hannah and Jack stood there, unflinching. Sheriff Slaughter seemed to read their silent response. “So we’re just goin’ around, checkin’ to make sure that good, respectable folks like yerselves are well and cared for, safe and secure and the like.”
“Well, that is your job, Sheriff, isn’t it?”
“Quite so, Miss Alexander, and I’m proud and pleased to do it. And searchin’ out these slaves, that’s my job, when it comes down t’it.”
“Then you best get to steppin’,” Jack said. “They’re probably on their way toward the border right now. Or they could be hunkered down in some white folks’ home, doin’ Lord knows what.”
“That’s just right,” Sheriff Slaughter said, “s’why we’re so … so eager to bring them bucks in.”
“Not for the money,” Hannah said, glaring up at the sheriff without a whiff of worry or fear. She was in the full thrush of the spirit of the She Bear, itching for a fight.
“No,” the sheriff calmly replied, “not just for the money.” Sheriff Slaughter climbed down off his horse and walked slowly around the cart. Hannah and Jack stood calmly, Jack’s eyes shifting to the sheriff’s men, still on their mounts.
The sheriff eyed the men at the cart’s helm, one with the reins and one with a rifle, neither having any reason to fear or a lie to protect, as far as they knew.
Jack glanced at Hannah and she allowed him his cocky smile in that particular moment. He’d earned it.
Sheriff Slaughter circled the cart around the other side, pushing through the piles of tools and blankets and bundles filling the cart. He pushed a few bundles aside and leaned in quickly, obviously expecting some terrific discovery.
Coming up empty, he let the sundries drop back down into the car and stepped away, back to his horse. “Never know here those rascals might sneak aboard,” he said with a tip of his hat as he climbed back onto his horse. “Just a friendly word to keep an eye out, folks. Glad yer both well and cared for—”
“Safe and secure and the like,” Hannah said, arms crossed in front of her.
Before turning his horse to lead his men away, Sheriff Slaughter said, “Well, that is my job, isn’t it?”
But both Hannah and Jack knew they’d been lucky this time, and that he’d be back, probably sooner rather than later.
Hannah said, “See to that building you were talking about, Jack. First thing.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Hannah had been busy in town, sending and receiving telegrams to New York, to Chicago, to Michigan City. Shipments were going across the lake with little loss of coal and no loss of life, and she even arranged to ship meat encased in ice for restaurants in Illinois and Indiana and back East; bear, elk, all of it staying fresher longer.
Riding back to the house, Hannah was taken by an eerie stillness, one she couldn’t quite explain. “Jack?” she called out. “Betsy?”
“In here.” Jack’s voice crept out of the shadows. Hannah stepped into the dining room, the early evening casting a magenta loom onto the candlelit room. Jack stood in his best dress clothes, smart waistcoat and tails, hair slicked back, black boots polished to a fare thee well. Hannah looked around, her footsteps slowing. Jack said, “I gave Betsy the night off.”
“Is that so?”
He smiled and took her hand, leading her to a chair he had pulled out from the table and waiting. Once she sat, Jack fell sweetly and gracefully to one knee. He took Hannah’s right hand in his left. She gasped. His right brandished a small diamond ring from a small pocket of his jacket.
“Hannah Alexander, I knew from the first moment that I’d wind up falling in love with you. I warned you as much. And know I’m spellbound, enthralled, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. I’m humbled to ask you this, but I would like to take your hand in marriage. I know I’m only half-worth it, but what is any man that he’d dare ask for you? I can only promise that I will do my utmost to rise to the occasion of being your husband, the father of your children, the man you turn to in times of need and of joy, the man you love and call your own.”
Hannah finally exhaled and said simply, “Yes,” and extended her hand, nearly trembling as he slipped the ring on it. “Rise, then,” she said, standing and letting him stand with her, tall and powerful in front of her. “Rise to the occasion, be my husband, the father of my children, the man I turn to in times of need and of joy, the man I love and call my own.” She stared at him adoringly, “My love.”
*
Two months later, they stood before their friends and associates in the sprawling backyard of the Alexander mansion, white silk and pink peonies everywhere.
Cutthroat’s Reverend Oliver Bean stood in front of them, holding the same bible he’d held during his first service there. “Do you, Hannah Adrienne Alexander, take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
“I do.”
Ethel Bean sat in the crowd with the others, beaming, a smile stretching across her chubby face. Next to her, Mayor Vernon Flannery sat with a smile to put Ethel’s to shame.
Reverend Bean continued. “Do you, Jackson Reuben Kincaid, take this woman to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, until death do you part?”
“I do.”
“Then by the power vested in me by the great state of Illinois, granted by the great state of Indiana, and sanctioned by the will of our Almighty God, I do hereby pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”
Their lips met as never before, the touch of equals, of two souls bound together in immortal unity.
The chamber quartet, directly from New York, struck the Wedding March, and Hannah and Jack walked back down the aisle as man and wife to the standing and rousing applause of their community.
The feast which followed the ceremony had taken days to prepare, hours to present, and almost half a day to enjoy. The roasted chickens and fine beef steaks were donated by local ranchers, the vegetables for the salads and slaws crisp and colorful, the wines were the best the French could deliver.
“I always knew my Hannah would come to greatness,” Flannery said before another sip of Merlot. “But I don’t suppose that even I would have guessed she’d recreate the entire county of Marion County!”
“Perhaps not the entire county.” The voice was not entirely unfamiliar to Hannah, though it was most certainly unwelcome.
The man’s graying beard and gentlemanly manner practically made his own introduction for him.
“Henry Chisholm,” Hannah said.
He tipped his stovepipe and smiled. “I’m flattered that you remember me. Of course, a person doesn’t often crush another under the heel and then simply forget them … not even a woman.”
Flannery in
sisted, “Who is this scoundrel?”
Chisholm said, “Former owner of this property … and the future owner of it as well.”
“Over my dead body,” Jack said, stepping forward.
“Such ugly talk,” Chisholm said with a smile. “And on your wedding day. I take it you’re not superstitious.”
“I can teach you the meaning of bad luck,” Jack snapped back.
But Hannah said to Chisholm, “You’ve made your point, threatening me on my wedding day. But you won’t steal our joy, you heartless so called man, and you won’t steal my land, not twice you won’t.”
But Chisholm just smiled and a chill ran up Hannah’s spine as he turned and walked alone across her property, back to whatever mysterious hole in the mountain spawned him.
But like Sheriff Slaughter, Hannah and Jack and the rest knew Henry Chisholm would be back and that he would return bringing death.
PART 2: Belle Robinson
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Kentucky, 1858
Belle Robinson had memorized the words, just as her mamma taught her. She didn’t know her letters, but little diagrams in the dirt after the master’s girls had gone to bed helped her remember them. “Follow the drinking gourd, follow the drinking gourd….”
But instead of drawing a gourd, round and fat with a hard, curvy handle, made as if by God for workers to drink out of, Belle drew the gourd as her mamma had taught her to look for it; a series of dots in the shape of a scoop, a dipper, and when it shone brightly in the black sky of nighttime, Belle would look up at it and know what the wicked slave master Taggart and his kind never seemed to understand.
“For the old man’s a-waitin’ for to carry you freedom, follow the drinking gourd.”
Belle looked up at her mamma, Alice, and her daddy, Mo, tired from long days in the fields and in the kitchen. Alice rocked Joseph in her lap, the young boy already asleep in the center of the shack’s rotting wooden floors. At just five years old, Joseph still seemed a toddler, not saying a single word to anyone ever, locked in his own world. Still too young to work but getting too old to baby, Joseph was in danger of becoming useless to the master. But try as they all did, neither Belle nor her parents could rouse Joseph from his silent daze.
Belle’s stomach turned with hunger. She couldn’t help but recall the meals her masters, the Robinson sisters, had eaten that night, while she stood there, waiting to fetch them whatever they might need, sing for them or otherwise amuse them according to their whim. The smell of the roast beef was still clinging to the back of Belle’s nostrils, her mouth watering to imagine how succulent and juicy is must have been, the gravy hot and thick, steaming up from the creamy mashed potatoes, asparagus tips pale green and dripping in the master’s own white sauce.
Her own dinner of baked beans with a hunk of pig fat did little to soothe her, but her imagination could still take her to a dinner table of their own, fine white linens and gold-leafed china like the Robinsons used, the finest steaks still sizzling from the grill presented to them on silver platters with matching domes.
Their voices were low, four in a weary unison, just barely enough for each other to hear. But the shack walls were thin, and the din of the other slaves was hard to ignore. Some cried out to God for release, a woman’s shriek rose up from out of nowhere and vanished just as quickly, Belle and Alice sharing frightened eyes, heads shaking and sinking even lower. Belle’s family, called by their master’s name of Robinson, sang in a muttered hush, “When the sun comes back and the first quail calls, follow the drinking gourd.”
Belle could imagine the morning, any morning, sun rising up over that stretch of flat plain, the four of them hunkering down after a long night of running, waiting for the sun to pass before heading out for another night’s leg toward freedom on that wondrous Underground Railroad northward.
A coyote howled in the distance, an echoing cry which could be neither ignored nor fully understood. But Belle wasn’t frightened of the coyote or any of his brethren. Slave master Taggart and his men wouldn’t let one of their valuable slaves fall to some mangy coyote, at least not until every last bit of labor had been wrung from their breaking bones.
“For the old man is a–waiting for to carry you to freedom—”
The shack’s only door flew open and clattered against the wall, wrought iron hinges barely holding on. Belle froze, face down as her mamma had taught her. Daniel Taggart stepped through the doorway slowly, his heavy boots pressing against the floorboards, creaking with his weight. His tall, thick silhouette got bigger as he approached the huddled family, dark against the moonlight, chest like a beer barrel and legs like tree trunks, a rifle slung over his shoulder.
His straight hair was combed back, one or two errant stalks falling over his forehead.
The silence was thick, heaving, Joseph sitting silent in Belle’s arms. Taggart grunted at Belle’s kid brother, but since she dared not look up, Belle could only imagine what kind of nasty snicker was on his craggy, forever-angry face.
Taggart stepped closer to the family, his presence sending a frightened wave through Belle’s body. At just ten years old, she was still too young to be of any interest to him, but she wasn't too young to understand that, and to understand why.
Taggart stank of whiskey and beer, stretching his shoulders back and stepping slowly around the tiny shack, barely room enough for him to circle the huddled slave family in the center, his shoulders scraping against the bare walls.
“You were singin’,” he said, letting the lingering silence complete his thought, or rather his threat for him.
“Yes, sir,” Mo said, “yes we was, that’s a fact, that sho’ ‘nuff is a fact. But ain’t that allowed, Massah Taggart? We thought for sure’n it was.”
“Depends on what yer singin’, Tall Charlie,” Taggart said.
“I’s Mo, sir,” Mo said with a smile. “Tall Charlie down two sheds over—”
Taggart moved with incredible speed for a man of this size, bending down and striking Mo hard on the back of the head, enough to send his body flying forward though not quite enough to put his face on the floor.
“Don’t you ever dare contradict me again,” Taggart roared, a voice so low and growly that it almost didn’t sound to Belle to be human; more like that of a bear or even a demon, neither of which would have surprised her one bit. “You ain’t worth all that much! You just keep yer mouth shut, yer hands busy, yer back bent, maybe squirt out a few more workers for Mr. Robinson.”
Taggart kept pacing around the family, feet slowly stepping around them, closer and closer, Belle huddled against Alice’s side, wrapping her arms around her and Joseph as Mo pushed himself back up into a sitting position.
“Master Robinson said you could sing about Jesus,” Taggart said. “You savages know your Jesus, don’t ‘cha? Yer good God-fearin’ niggers, ain’t ‘cha?”
“Oh yes, Massah Taggart,” Mo said with an eager nod, Belle and Alice keeping their heads down.
“And you do what your master tells ya?”
“Always do, Massah, always do.”
His voice louder, pushed through his gritted jaw, “Then why ain’t you singin’ ‘about Jesus like your master told y’to?”
Mo bent down to protect his head from another vicious strike. “Yes sir, yes sir, we was, Massah, we was singin’ ‘bout Jesus, yes sir.”
“You said freedom,” Taggart said, leaning down to lord over Mo. “I was listening, I heard you say freedom. I could kill you all for that, Tall Charlie. No slave’s worth that kind of trouble. And if yer just gonna go rabbit, what’s the point in wasting the room and board? You niggers ain’t cheap.”
Mo nodded. “It’s a song ‘bout Jesus, yes it is, sir. Words go, ‘For the old man’s a-waitin’ for to carry you to freedom.’ But the old man be Jesus Hisself, Massah, when He finally g’wine lead us up to heaven, sir.”
“Heaven?”
“Yes, Massah Taggart, sho’ ‘nuff. ‘Cause’n heaven be the only freedom niggers
like us ever g’wine knowd.”
“You got that right,” Taggart said, his big feet lingering next to Mo’s bent body. “Even then, I wouldn’t hold my breath. You think God wants the likes of you around? You think you got souls to get into heaven with in the first place? You think a dog gets into heaven or a pack mule? Heaven’s for people, Tall Charlie, don’t you get any lofty notions about that.”
Mo just shook his head, face to the floor, so low that Belle could see him without looking up to show her face. Alice’s fearful squeal leaked out of her throat as Taggart pulled her up by the hair, her hands reaching up to cling to his beefy arm. But she didn’t stifle her cry fast enough.
“Shut yer trap, piglet. I ain’t gonna touch you none.” He dragged her the few steps across the little shack to the door. “I owe the stable master, and you’ll settle the debt.”
“Please, Massah Taggart,” Mo said, looking up from the floor.
“That’s a good long rest then,” Taggart said. “I’ll have him bring her back.” With that, he stepped outside with Belle’s mamma and slammed the shed door closed, pulling down the iron bolt to lock it.
Belle huddled with Mo’s arms wrapping around her, her own wrapping around Joseph. There was no more singing that night.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Belle stood in the Robinson sisters’ bedroom. Twins of almost twelve years old, Belle had been their personal slave for most of her ten years. She did what she was told at all times, of course. The sisters had little need for Belle’s labor since they had no chores, no cleaning. And they had no need at all for Belle’s company, being twins meant they always had each other to play with.
What their father, plantation lord Beau Robinson, expected was that his daughters would learn how to properly deal with slaves, to treat them in such a way that they don’t rebel, thinking too much of themselves and too little of their masters. All three children had to learn their place in the world, and how best to live those lives. And Belle could see that her young mistresses were learning their lessons terribly well.
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